ll surface of which the Pole-star of the day might be mirrored
for one looking down the ascending passage.

Albeit, I cannot but think that this ascending passage must also have
been so directed as to show some bright star when due south. For if the
passage had only given the meridian plane, but without permitting the
astronomer to observe the southing of any fixed star, it would have
subserved only one-half its purposes as a meridional instrument. It is
to be remembered that, supposing the ascending passage to have its
position determined in the way I have described, there would be nothing
to prevent its being also made to show any fixed star nearly at the same
elevation. For it could readily be enlarged in a vertical direction, the
floor remaining unaltered. Since it is not enlarged until the great
gallery is reached (at a distance of nearly 127 feet from the place
where the ascent begins), it follows, or is at least rendered highly
probable, that some bright star was in view through that ascending
passage.

Now, taking the date 2170 B.C., which Professor Smyth assigns to the
beginning of the great pyramid, or even taking any date (as we fairly
may), within a century or so on either side of that date, we find no
bright star which would have been visible when due south, through the
ascending passage. I have calculated the position of that circle among
the stars along which lay all the points passing 26 deg. 18' above the
horizon when due south, in the latitude of Ghizeh, 2170 years before the
Christian era; and it does not pass near a single conspicuous star.[45]
There is only one fourth magnitude star which it actually
approaches--namely, Epsilon Ceti; and one fifth magnitude star, Beta of
the Southern Crown.

When we remember that Egyptologists almost without exception assert that
the date of the builders of the great pyramid _must_ have been more than
a thousand years earlier than 2170 B.C., and that Bunsen has assigned to
Menes the date 3620 B.C., while the date 3300 B.C. has been assigned to
Cheops or Suphis on apparently good authority, we are led to inquire
whether the other epoch when Alpha Draconis was at about the right
distance from the pole of the heavens may not have been the true era of
the commencement of the great pyramid. Now, the year 3300 B.C., though a
little late, would accord fairly well with the time when Alpha Draconis
was at the proper distance 3-2/3 deg. from the pole of the heavens. If the