y
regarded as a metrological monument and not a sepulchre, is legitimately
the subject of our present inquiry. In such an investigation springs up
first this question--

_Who was the Architect of the Great Pyramid?_

Mr. Taylor ascribes to Noah the original idea of the metrological
structure of the Great Pyramid. "To Noah" (observes Mr. Taylor) "we must
ascribe the original idea, the presiding mind, and the benevolent
purpose. He who built the Ark, was of all men the most competent to
direct the building of the Great Pyramid. He was born 600 years before
the Flood and lived 350 years after that event, dying in the year 1998
B.C. Supposing the pyramids were commenced in 2160 B.C. (that is 4000
years ago), _they_ were founded 168 years before the death of Noah. We
are told" (Mr. Taylor continues) "that Noah was a 'preacher of
righteousness,' but nothing could more illustrate this character of a
preacher of righteousness after the Flood than that he should be the
first to publish a system of weights and measures for the use of all
mankind, based upon the measure of the earth." Professor Smyth,
computing by another chronology, rejects the presence of Noah, and makes
a shepherd--Philition, slightly and incidentally alluded to in a single
passage by Herodotus[243]--the presiding and directing genius of the
structure;--holding him to be a Cushite skilled in building, and under
whose inspired direction the pyramid rose, containing within it
miraculous measures and standards of capacity, weight, length, heat,
etc.

THE COFFER IN THE KING'S CHAMBER IN THE GREAT PYRAMID AN ALLEGED
STANDARD FOR MEASURES OF CAPACITY.

A granite coffer, stone box, or sarcophagus standing in that interior
cell of the pyramid, called the King's Chamber, is held by Messrs.
Taylor and Smyth to have been hewn out and placed there as a measure of
capacity for the world, so that the ancient Hebrew, Grecian, and Roman
measures of capacity on the one hand, and our modern Anglo-Saxon on the
other, are all derived, directly or indirectly, from the parent
measurements of this granite vessel. "For," argues Mr. Taylor, "the
porphyry coffer in the King's Chamber was intended to be a standard
measure of capacity and weights for all nations; and all chief nations
did originally receive their weights and measures from thence."

The works of these authors show, in numerous passages and extracts,[244]
that, in their belief, the great object for which the whole