Note 45 — THE PROBLEM OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.

There is a statement perfectly startling in its inaccuracy, in a chapter of Blake's "Astronomical Myths," derived from Mr. Haliburton's researches, asserting that in the year 2170 B.C. the Pleiades were "exactly at that height that they could be seen in the direction of the Southward-pointing passage of the pyramid." The italics are not mine. As this passage pointed 33-2/3°, or thereabouts, below (that is south of) the equator, and the Pleiades were then some 3-2/3° north of the equator, the passage certainly did not then point to the Pleiades. Nor has there been any time since the world began when the Pleiades were anywhere near the direction of the southward pointing passage. In fact they have never been more than 20° south of the equator. The statement follows immediately after another to the surprising effect that in the year 2170 B.C. "the Pleiades really commenced the spring by their midnight culmination." The only comment an astronomer can make on this startling assertion is to repeat with emphasis the word italicized by Mr. Haliburton (or Mr. Blake?). The Pleiades being then in conjunction with what is now called the first point of Aries, culminated at noon, not at midnight, at the time of the vernal equinox.