DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.15#0135
THE PROBLEM OF THE PYRAMIDS. 125
directed by architects knowing all that is now known
in science, and more ; but we are, at least, saved
from the incongruity of assuming that these won-
drously-gifted architects were idiotic enough to
adopt the blundering plan assigned to them—hid-
ing away for preservation their sacred symbolisms
and prophetic teachings, in a building so con-
structed that its interior could only be reached by
being forcibly broken into, and would as a matter
of fact be never properly measured until it had lost
in great part the perfection of form on which its
value for the supposed purpose depended.
This will appear still more clearly when we
consider the Great Gallery, which to the astronomer
is the most obviously astronomical part of the
building, but to the pyramidalist is a sort of
' Zadkiel's Almanac ' in stone.
All the features thus far have been such as we
should expect to find in a massive structure such
as this, intended—for whatever reason—to be very
carefully oriented. They are such, in fact, as could
not but exist in a building oriented so successfully
as the Great Pyramid unequestionably is, unless
remarkable as the nearest of all the stars, the brilliant Alpha Cen-
tauri, shone as it crossed the meridian right down that ascending
tube. It is so bright that, viewed through that tube, it must have
been visible to the naked eye, even when southing in full daylight.
directed by architects knowing all that is now known
in science, and more ; but we are, at least, saved
from the incongruity of assuming that these won-
drously-gifted architects were idiotic enough to
adopt the blundering plan assigned to them—hid-
ing away for preservation their sacred symbolisms
and prophetic teachings, in a building so con-
structed that its interior could only be reached by
being forcibly broken into, and would as a matter
of fact be never properly measured until it had lost
in great part the perfection of form on which its
value for the supposed purpose depended.
This will appear still more clearly when we
consider the Great Gallery, which to the astronomer
is the most obviously astronomical part of the
building, but to the pyramidalist is a sort of
' Zadkiel's Almanac ' in stone.
All the features thus far have been such as we
should expect to find in a massive structure such
as this, intended—for whatever reason—to be very
carefully oriented. They are such, in fact, as could
not but exist in a building oriented so successfully
as the Great Pyramid unequestionably is, unless
remarkable as the nearest of all the stars, the brilliant Alpha Cen-
tauri, shone as it crossed the meridian right down that ascending
tube. It is so bright that, viewed through that tube, it must have
been visible to the naked eye, even when southing in full daylight.