The mystery of the Great pyramid : traditions concerning it and its connection with the Egyptian Book of the dead : with numerous illustrations

MYSTERY OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

the Book of the Master that the clue to it was forthcoming.1 Had Smyth been acquainted with Egyptian hieroglyphs he might perhaps have forestalled Marsham Adams in his discovery.

This identification seems to supply a definite correspondence between the allegorical pyramid of the Book and the actual pyramid of masonry, and it will interest our readers to give Marsham Adams’ own words upon his discovery :—

** If we turn to the sacred texts of Egypt, and compare them with this sacred monument, we find them to be full of allusions to astronomical conceptions, and more particularly to what is called in the papyri the “ horizon of heaven ’—a circle evidently entirely different to what we mean in speaking of the celestial horizon of any given locality, and occupying a definite and important position in the universal sphere. Now more than two years ago * I drew attention to the identity of this circle, hitherto undefined by Egyptologists, with the great circle forming the celestial horizon of an observer stationed on the Equator, and having in his zenith the point of equinox (or, in other words, with the circle which we call the solstitial colure).2 But as that circle passes through the pole, the orb by which its position would be indicated was the pole-star, towards which the entrance shaft of the Great Pyramid is directed, and which imaged to the Egyptian the entrance to the unseen world. Accordingly,

1 Our diagram, which follows Smyth’s photograph, shows this hieroglyph slightly different to Marsham Adams’ illustration at p. 111 of his volume, as it appears to be placed over a rectangle.

2 Referring to his earlier work, House of the Hidden Places, published in 18098.

3 Colure is an astronomical term given to two great circles—the equinoctial colure and the solstitial colure—which are supposed to intersect each other at right angles in the poles of the earth, one passing through the solstitial and the other through the equinoctial points of the ecliptic.