The great pyramid passages and chambers

LETTER XVIII.

Tents at the Great Pyramid of Gizeh. Tuesday, 13th July, 1909.

DEAR BRETHREN,—We were glad on Sunday to welcome to our village of tents, John, Grace and Stanley on their arrival from Jerusalem, and also to see that Stanley was quite himself again.

460 Since his return, John and I have been working in the First Ascending Passage, verifying the measurements taken by Jack and me. You will remember how we had found measuring in this passage very trying. The joints on the walls seemed so hopelessly confused that we had been inclined many times to give up in despair. However, we felt that we must continue, as otherwise the time already spent would be wasted. Our labour has been rewarded, for what at first was confusion to us, is now seen to be wonderful symmetry. There is design in the whole passage. This we discovered when we had carefully drawn to scale an elevation of each of the walls—Plate CX.

461 In Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, 5th edition, page 295, Professor C. Piazzi Smyth inserted the following as a footnote : “In the year 1872, Mr. Waynman Dixon applied himself long and steadily to mapping down everything measurable touching the reputed disorder of the joint-lines in the First Ascending Passage of the Great Pyramid, or that one leading up to the lower north end of the Grand Gallery ; and presently perceived a most admirable order pervading the apparent disorder, tending also to hyper-excellent masonic construction. For the chief discovery was, that at stated intervals the smaller blocks forming elsewhere separately portions of the walls, floor, and ceiling of the passage, were replaced by great transverse plates of stone, with the whole of the passage's hollow rectangular bore cut clean through them; wherefore, at these places, the said plates formed walls, floor, and ceiling, all in one piece.”

462 These plates of stone have been called Girdles. Before leaving home we had recognized the importance of the three upper ones as marking important dates in the Law Dispensation.' We therefore examined them with care, and found that while all of the Girdles are differentiated from the other stones in this passage by their remarkable structure, the upper three are distinguished by symmetrical joints in the stones above and below them. An examination of these joints, as shown in the diagram (Plate CX), will demonstrate the exact symmetry of their angles one with another. Additionally, let into the walls immediately below the three upper Girdles, there are peculiar inset stones, which look like pointers, as if to call the Pyramid students’ special attention to these Girdles. And as if still further to accentuate their importance, the inset

“pointer” stones are let into specially large wall stones, as a reference to the diagram will show.

‘In spite of long application we were unable to discover chronological significance in the lower Girdles,

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