Thursday, February 10, 2011

LESSON 3 OF 5: THE PYRAMID INCH

A third lesson to learn from the Great Pyramid of Giza is about metrology, or the science of measurement. Throughout history, astronomers studied the Great Pyramid for clues to the geometrical order of the cosmos. However, this geometry was only as precise as exact measurement.

In 1638, English mathematician John Greaves (1602–1652) journeyed to Egypt to derive the length of one of the oldest standard units of measure, the Egyptian royal cubit. In Egypt, Greaves met Italian scientist Tito Livio Burattini (1617–1681), who sought to determine the metrology used to build the Great Pyramid. They took measurements of the exterior, although the base was covered by sand and debris, and the interior passages/chambers. Later, during his tenure as an Oxford professor of astronomy, Greaves published these findings in a book called the Pyramidographia (1646).


Upon studying the Pyramidographia, Isaac Newton (1643–1727) postulated that the builders of the Great Pyramid used a “sacred” cubit measuring 24.9 to 25.02 inches instead of a “profane” royal cubit, measuring 20.6 to 20.65 inches. More than a century later, English publisher and pyramidologist John Taylor (1781–1864) used Newton’s conclusions concerning the “sacred cubit” to define a unit of measure called the “pyramid inch.” The pyramid inch is about 1/1000 greater than a modern British inch.

Although the pyramid inch is a subject of great debate, defining such a measure is noble meteorological exercise and pursuit. In principle, Newton’s sacred cubit expresses the Great Pyramid’s geometry as whole number multiples of exactly 25 “pyramid inches,” as opposed to multiples of 20.65 British inches with the royal cubit. Furthermore, the sacred cubit and pyramid inch allow one to interpret the measurements of the Great Pyramid in an intuitive manner.

It was Newton who suggested, and Taylor who championed the idea, that one pyramid inch is equivalent to one solar year. They believed that tracing the inner passages of the pyramid, with it’s twists and turns, reveals a chorological blueprint of man’s history throughout the ages – marking Biblical events such as the Exodus and Birth of Christ.


In addition, the base length of the Great Pyramid measures 365.24 sacred cubits, which is the number of days in a year. In comparison, using the royal cubit we obtain a base length of 440 royal cubits and perimeter equal to 36,256 British inches. With the sacred cubit, the perimeter is instead 36,524 pyramid inches, or 100 times the number of days in a year. This harmony of measurement magnitudes throughout the Great Pyramid present the pyramid inch as the likely unit of measure used by the builders in their metrological approach.

Taylor’s book The Battle of the Standards: The Great Pyramid Metrology and British Identity (1864) was a campaign against the adoption of the metric system in England, and relied on results from his book The Great Pyramid (1859) to show a divine origin for British units of measure.

1 comment: