DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15#0113
THE PROBLEM OF THE PYRAMIDS. 103
would not know that the position of the slant
passage would tell future generations aught about
the pyramid's date. On all these accounts (1)
because the builders probably did not care at all
about our knowing anything on the subject, (2)
because if they did they would not have adopted so
clumsy a method, and (3) because there is no reason
for believing, but every reason for doubting, that
they knew the passage would tell future ages the
date of the pyramid's erection, we must regard as
Utterly improbable, if not utterly untenable, the
■proposition that the builders had any such purpose
in view in constructing the slant passage.
I am therefore somewhat surprised to find Sir
E. Beckett, who does not accept the wild ideas of
the pyramid religionists, nevertheless dwelling, not
on the manifest value of the slant passages to
builders desiring to orient such an edifice as the
great pyramid, but on the idea that those builders
may have wanted to record a date for the benefit of
future ages. After quoting a remark from Mr.
Wackerbarth's amusing review of Smyth's book, to
the effect that the hypothesis about the slant
trary, the pyramids, says Abbé Moigno, 'give the most solemn
contradiction to those who would of set purpose throw back the
origin of man to an indefinite remoteness.' It would have been
Well if he had explained how the pyramids do this.
would not know that the position of the slant
passage would tell future generations aught about
the pyramid's date. On all these accounts (1)
because the builders probably did not care at all
about our knowing anything on the subject, (2)
because if they did they would not have adopted so
clumsy a method, and (3) because there is no reason
for believing, but every reason for doubting, that
they knew the passage would tell future ages the
date of the pyramid's erection, we must regard as
Utterly improbable, if not utterly untenable, the
■proposition that the builders had any such purpose
in view in constructing the slant passage.
I am therefore somewhat surprised to find Sir
E. Beckett, who does not accept the wild ideas of
the pyramid religionists, nevertheless dwelling, not
on the manifest value of the slant passages to
builders desiring to orient such an edifice as the
great pyramid, but on the idea that those builders
may have wanted to record a date for the benefit of
future ages. After quoting a remark from Mr.
Wackerbarth's amusing review of Smyth's book, to
the effect that the hypothesis about the slant
trary, the pyramids, says Abbé Moigno, 'give the most solemn
contradiction to those who would of set purpose throw back the
origin of man to an indefinite remoteness.' It would have been
Well if he had explained how the pyramids do this.