pyramid was
created, was the preservation of this coffer as a standard of measures,
and the "whole pyramid arranged in subservience to it." The accounts of
it published by Mr. Taylor, and in Mr. Smyth's first work, further aver
that the coffer is, internally and externally, a rectangular figure of
mathematical form, and of "exquisite geometric truth," "highly polished,
and of a fine bell-metal consistency" (p. 99). "The chest or coffer in
the Great Pyramid" (writes Mr. Taylor in 1859) "is so shaped as to be in
every part rectangular from side to side, and from end to end, and the
bottom is also cut at right angles to the sides and end, and made
perfectly level." "The coffer," said Professor Smyth in 1864, "exhibits
to us a standard measure of 4000 years ago, with the tenacity and
hardness of its substance unimpaired, and the polish and evenness of its
surface untouched by nature through all that length of time."

But later inquiries and observations upset entirely all these notions
and strong averments in regard to the coffer. For--

* * * * *

(1.) _The Coffer, though an alleged actual standard of capacity-measure,
has yet been found difficult or impossible to measure._--In his first
work, "Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid," Professor Smyth had cited
the measurements of it, made and published by twenty-five different
observers, several of whom had gone about the matter with great
mathematical accuracy.[245] Though imagined to be a great standard of
measure, yet all these twenty-five, as Professor Smyth owned, varied
from each other in their accounts of this imaginary standard in "every
element of length, breadth, and depth, both inside and outside."
Professor Smyth has latterly measured it himself, and this twenty-sixth
measurement varies again from all the preceding twenty-five. Surely a
measure of capacity should be measureable. Its mensurability indeed
ought to be its most unquestionable quality; but this imagined standard
has proved virtually unmeasurable--in so far at least that its
twenty-six different and skilled measurers all differ from each other
in respect to its dimensions. Still, says Professor Smyth, "this affair
of the coffer's precise size is _the question of questions_."

* * * * *

(2.) _Discordance between its actual and its theoretical
measure._--Professor Smyth holds that _theoretically_ its capacity ought
to be 71,250 "pyramid