DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.8#0036
( 35 )
country to country, no greater variation has happened,
and this may be urged as a decisive proof of the advan-
tage of a permanent and universal standard.
To begin, then, with Herodotus : he asserts that the
length of the side of the base, in the greatest pyramid, is
800 feet : now if these were such feet as are handed
down to us by the moderns of a few centuries back, (as
the Greek or Attic foot, which is something longer than
our foot) his record is grossly erroneous -, even if we
were to suppose that he, like the French of late, had
opened the sands and measured at the foundations,
where it is found to be but 729 such feet. But there is
no reason to believe, Herodotus either dug out the sand
and rubbish to find the foundation, or used a foot mea-
sure even longer than ours ; or if he had, that he would
have made such a blunder in his measuring, and inserted
it in a history read by him before the highest and most
learned assembly in the world, and continually liable to
a disgraceful detection. No doubt, he measured on the
adventitious surface, and the foot he used was the pyrâ-
midic, 800 whereof are equal to 583.. 8.16 ofourmea-
ure : and at the foundations the length in pyramidic feet
is just 1000=100 times the length of the granite Chest
=400 cubits of Cairo.
Didorus Siculus who measured this base above four
or five centuries after Herodotus, states it at 700 feet.
And Mr. Greaves little more than a century ago, most
accurately measured the same on the surface he then
found, and made it 693 English, and this equal to 949.8
of pyramidic feet.
Hence it follows, as far as the accuracy of these recor-
ded dimensions can be depended on, that the accumula-
tion of the sands about the pyramid were higher when
Herodotus took the measure than at the time Mr. Greaves
E took
country to country, no greater variation has happened,
and this may be urged as a decisive proof of the advan-
tage of a permanent and universal standard.
To begin, then, with Herodotus : he asserts that the
length of the side of the base, in the greatest pyramid, is
800 feet : now if these were such feet as are handed
down to us by the moderns of a few centuries back, (as
the Greek or Attic foot, which is something longer than
our foot) his record is grossly erroneous -, even if we
were to suppose that he, like the French of late, had
opened the sands and measured at the foundations,
where it is found to be but 729 such feet. But there is
no reason to believe, Herodotus either dug out the sand
and rubbish to find the foundation, or used a foot mea-
sure even longer than ours ; or if he had, that he would
have made such a blunder in his measuring, and inserted
it in a history read by him before the highest and most
learned assembly in the world, and continually liable to
a disgraceful detection. No doubt, he measured on the
adventitious surface, and the foot he used was the pyrâ-
midic, 800 whereof are equal to 583.. 8.16 ofourmea-
ure : and at the foundations the length in pyramidic feet
is just 1000=100 times the length of the granite Chest
=400 cubits of Cairo.
Didorus Siculus who measured this base above four
or five centuries after Herodotus, states it at 700 feet.
And Mr. Greaves little more than a century ago, most
accurately measured the same on the surface he then
found, and made it 693 English, and this equal to 949.8
of pyramidic feet.
Hence it follows, as far as the accuracy of these recor-
ded dimensions can be depended on, that the accumula-
tion of the sands about the pyramid were higher when
Herodotus took the measure than at the time Mr. Greaves
E took