Proctor, Richard A.: The Great Pyramid: observatory, tomb, and temple (New York, 1883)

104 THE GREAT PYRAMID.

passage is liable to the objection that, the mouth
of the passage being walled up, it is not easy to
conceive how a star could be observed through it,
Beckett says, ' Certainly not, after it was closed ;
but what has that to do with the question whether
the builders thought fit to indicate the date to any-
one who might in after ages find the passage, by
reference to the celestial dial, in which the pole of
the earth travels round the pole of the ecliptic in
25,827 years, like the hand of a clock round the
dial ? ' But in reality there is no more extravagant
supposition among all those ideas of the pyramid-
alists (which Beckett justly regards as among the
wildest illustration of ' the province of the imagina-
tion in science ') than the notion that this motion of
the pole of the earth was known to the builders of
the pyramid, or that, knowing it, they adopted so
preposterous a method of indicating the date of
their labours.

Let us return to the purposes which seem to
have been actually present in the minds of the
pyramid builders.

Having duly laid down the north-and-south
line F D, in fig. 5, and being thus ready to cut out
from the nearly level face of the solid rock the
corner sockets of the square base, they would have.
to choose what size they would give the base. This