cognise a certain
convenience in this arrangement, for the actual centre of the platform
would be required as a position from whence observation of the whole sky
could be made. Observers stationed there would have the cardinal points
and the points midway between them defined by the edges and angles of
the square platform, which would not be the case if they were displaced
from the centre. Stationed as they would be close to the mouth of the
gallery, they would hear the time signallings given forth by the
observers placed at various parts of the gallery; and no doubt one chief
end of the exact time-observations for which the gallery was manifestly
constructed, would be to enable the platform observers duly to record
the time when various phenomena were noticed in any part of the heavens.

This corresponds well with the statement made by Proclus, that the
pyramids of Egypt, which, according to Diodorus Siculus, had been in
existence during 3600 years, terminated in a platform upon which the
priests made their celestial observations. The last-named historian
alleges, also (Biblioth. Hist. Lib. I.), that the Egyptians, who claimed
to be the most ancient of men, professed to be acquainted with the
situation of the earth, the risings and settings of stars, to have
arranged the order of days and months, and pretended to be able to
predict future events, with certainty, from their observations of
celestial phenomena. I think that it is in this association of astrology
with astronomy that we find the explanation of what, after all, remains
the great mystery of the pyramid--the fact, namely, that all the
passages, ascending, descending, and horizontal, constructed with such
extreme care, and at the cost of so much labour, in the interior of the
great pyramid, were eventually (perhaps not very long after their
construction) to be closed up. I reject utterly the idea that they could
have been constructed merely as memorials. Sir E. Beckett, who seems
willing to admit this conception, rejects the notion that the builders
of the pyramid recorded "standard measures by hiding them with the
utmost ingenuity." Is it not equally absurd to imagine that they
recorded the date of the great pyramid, by construction, by those most
elaborately concealed passages? Why they should have concealed them
after constructing them so carefully, may not be clear. For my own part,
I regard the theory that the Pyramid of Suphis was built for
astrological