Note 260 — IS THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZEH A METROLOGICAL MONUMENT?

The fourth line in the table presents a most fatal and unfortunate error in a special calculation to which the very highest importance is professed to be attached. This fourth line gives the measurement of the Sacred Cubit as quoted by Newton from Mersennus, who laid down its length as 25·68 inches of Roman measurement. Professor Smyth changes this Roman measurement into 24·91 English inches, and then erroneously enters these same identical Roman and English measurements of Mersennus—viz., 24·91 and 25·68—not as one identical quantity, which they are—but as two different and contrasting quantities; and further, he tabulates this strange mistake as one of the "methods of approach" for gaining a correct idea of the Sacred Cubit. Never, perhaps, has so unhappy an error been made in a work of an arithmetical and mathematical character.