Note 241 — IS THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GIZEH A METROLOGICAL MONUMENT?

Mr. Birch, however—and it is impossible to cite a higher authority in such a question—holds the cartouches of Shufu and Nu Shufu to refer only to one personage—namely, the Cheops of Herodotus; and, believing with Mr. Wilde and Professor Lepsius, that the pyramids were as royal sepulchres built and methodically extended and enlarged as the reigns of their intended occupants lengthened out, he ascribes the unusual size of the Great Pyramid to the unusual length—as testified by Manetho, etc.—of the reign of Cheops; the erection of a sepulchral chamber in its built portion above being, perhaps, a step adopted in consequence of some ascertained deficiency in the rock chamber or gallery below. Indeed, the subterranean chamber under the Great Pyramid has, to use Professor Smyth's words, only been "begun to be cut out of the rock from the ceiling downwards, and left in that unfinished state." (Vol. i. 156.) Mr. Perring, who—as engineer—measured, worked, and excavated so very much at the Pyramids of Gizeh, under Colonel Howard Vyse, held, at the end of his researches, that "the principal chamber" in the Second Pyramid is still undetected. See Vyse's Pyramid of Gizeh, vol. i. 99.