al" cubic inches, for that cubic size would make it
the exact measure for a chaldron, or practically the vessel would then
contain exactly four quarters of wheat, etc. Yet Professor Smyth himself
found it some 60 cubic inches less than this; while also the
measurements of Professor Greaves, one of the most accurate measurers of
all, make it 250 cubic inches, and those of Dr. Whitman 14,000 _below_
this professed standard. On the other hand, the measurements of Colonel
Howard Vyse make it more than 100, those of Dr. Wilson more than 500,
and those of the French academicians who accompanied the Napoleonic
expedition to Egypt, about 6000 cubic inches _above_ the theoretical
size which Professor Smyth has latterly fixed on.

* * * * *

(3.) _Its theoretical measure varied._--The _actual_ measure of the
coffer has varied in the hands of all its twenty-six measurers. But even
its _theoretical_ measure is varied also; for the size which the old
coffer really _ought_ to have as "a grand capacity standard," is,
strangely enough, not a determined quantity. In his last work (1867),
Professor Smyth declares, as just stated, its proper theoretical cubic
capacity to be 71,250 pyramidal cubic inches. But in his first work
(1864), he declared something different, for "we _elect_," says he, "to
take 70,970.2 English cubic inches (or 70,900 pyramidal cubic inches) as
the true, because the theoretically _proved_ contents of the porphyry
coffer, and therefore accept these numbers as giving the cubic size of
the grand _standard_ measure of capacity in the Great Pyramid." Again,
however, Mr. Taylor, who, previously to Professor Smyth, was the great
advocate of the coffer being a marvellous standard of capacity measure
for all nations, ancient and modern, declares its measure to be neither
of the above quantities, but 71,328 cubic inches, or a cube of the
ancient cubit of Karnak.[246] A vessel cannot be a measure of capacity
whose own standard theoretical size is thus declared to vary somewhat
every few years by those very men who maintain that it is a standard.
But whether its capacity is 71,250, or 70,970, or 71,328, it is quite
equally held up by Messrs Taylor and Smyth that the Sacred Laver of the
Israelites, and the Molten Sea of the Scriptures, also conform and
correspond to its (yet undetermined) standard "with _all_ conceivable
practical exactness;" though the standard of capacity to which they thus
con