There is, of course, a tendency of the the human mind to wonder what may or may not be hidden in the Great Pyramid, or under the Great Pyramid, rather than trying to work out the significance of what has already been discovered in what was the most secret place of the pyramid.

It is, of course, extremely likely, that the Coffer is much more wonderful than anything which was placed elsewhere, but unfortunately its true significance has not, in my opinion, ever been appreciated.

Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer Royal for Scotland, effectively claimed that it was the most wonderful archaeological object ever likely to be found, perhaps anywhere, at least from a geometric perspective, and then Flinders Petrie, a young amateur surveyor, claimed it was so crudely made that it could not possibly have any significance beyond his own theories which were rather obtuse in some respects and inaccurate in others. Petrie was right to suppose it was made rather crudely made if he believed his own theories.

Petrie became the first professor of Egyptology in Britain, and if we look carefully at his survey report then we will find, hidden in many pages of rambling on the Coffer, as published in his first edition of the Pyramids and Temples of Giza, just one sentence in which Petrie concedes that the internal space could be attributed to a sphere with a diameter equal to a quarter of the width of King's Chamber. Unfortunately this model is omitted from Petrie's second edition, even though it was Smyth's principal theory of the Coffer, based on the work of John Taylor.

The theories of Taylor and Smyth influenced Petrie's father who was wealthy enough to equip his son with what they believed was the finest set of measuring equipment in private hands. Young Flinders Petrie devoted many years to becoming an extremely accomplished surveyor, and probably better than any professional surveyor at that time in the field of archaeology, perhaps with the exception of Smyth, as apparent from the measurements of the Coffer in relation to a theoretical model.

Unfortunately Petrie did not think that the digit was a proper sub-division of the cubit, but supposed it was an independent unit of length which he thought he had proved in his 1877 work on 'Inductive Metrology'.

Petrie and all his supporters overlooked that the King Chamber Circle, discovered by Smyth, is actually a scale model of the pyramid. There are five courses of granite blocks each with a height of 64 digits which extend down to 7 digits below the floor. The full height of the granite walls to foundation level is 320 digits. The length of the chamber is 20 cubits or 560 digits so the perimeter of the long walls is 1,760 digits (560 + 560 + 320 + 320).

Smyth claimed that the length of the chamber represented the diameter of a circle, so the radius equates to 280 cubits and the quadrant equates to 440 digits as 1,760/4 digits. The design height of the pyramid was therefore 280 cubits and the side-length of the base square was 440 cubits.

Similarly, the Coffer is a scale model of the intended design of the pyramid in digits. I have a theoretical model in which every dimension has a theoretical basis, and every dimension is in accord with the measurements accurate to a small fraction of a digit. The architect obviously contemplated a sphere in his design of the Great Pyramid. My model includes both the internal dimensions and the external dimensions, and it seems that Smyth and his supporters only grasped part of the design.

John Taylor's notion that the interior of the Coffer represented a volume was tested by Smyth, then promoted by Smyth. The same theory was tested by Petrie, then accepted by Petrie. All that work and Petrie gives us just one sentence, seemingly rather grudgingly.

It was not just a chance coincidence, but a structured design, so the granite Coffer may be now be viewed in relation to the granite walls of the chamber which was built to contain the Coffer. Both can then be viewed in relation to the size and shape of the pyramid.

Mark



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/18/2018 02:12AM by Mark Heaton.