Gabb, Thomas: Finis pyramidis or Disquisitions concerning the antiquity and scientific end of the great pyramid of Giza, or ancient Memphis, in Egypt, and of the first standard of linear measure (Retford, 1806)

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explored the length, and are said to have found it to be
equal to the great Egyptian stadium = 400 cubits of
Cairo: and they report, that the inclosed excavated
chest, in the upper chamber, cut out of one hard granite
block, is in length, (as ascertained by Mr. Greaves, and
by some other visitors of this chamber,) 4 cubits exactly;
they (it is said) also report it to be one hundredth part
of the side of the base of the Pyramid: and these French
Savants also give it as their belief, that the excavation
of this chest was originally intended by the founders, not
for the repository of a corpse, as has been the prevalent,
but truly ridiculous opinion, but for a standard measure
of capacity ; in like manner, as the length was a stan-
dard of linear measure. And

From this opinion of the French literati, surely no
intelligent observer, well read on the subject of the
Pyramids, can possibly dissent. For who can entertain
the belief, that the discovered real length of the
base, happened accidentally to be just 100 times the*
length of the Chest? And since this Chest must have
been deposited where it is, at the building of the Pyramid;
for it is known to all, who have crept throught the strai-
tened long passage between immense blocks of granite,
and passed long descending and ascending galleries, to
visit the Chest furnished chamber ; I say to these it is"
known to be equally impossible to introduce such a
Chest after the Pyramid was finished, as it is now to
purloin it, in an intire state : and the same reasoning
obtains as to the supposed lid, of which some people
have dreamed, but which in fact never existed. Since,
I say, this curious Chest was there deposited by the
architect himself, he certainly knew it to be commen-
surate, in it's length, With the side pf the external

foundations