The theories which have been framed about the Great Pyramid in particular are almost as monstrous as itself, but have none of its solidity. Of these, perhaps the favourite, because of a certain romance attaching to it, and because of the reputation of some of those who have supported it, is, or rather one should say, was, that it was designed for an astronomical observatory. R. A. Proctor, to whose advocacy the idea owes a great deal of what vogue it had, has told us that the entrance passage is so placed that at the date which he assumes for the erection of the pyramid (3400 B.C.) it bore directly on the then Pole-Star, Thuban, or Theta Draconis, when the star was on the meridian below the pole, and further, that the great gallery which leads up to the King’s Chamber was designed to serve the purpose of a great transit instrument, through whose open upper end the transits of stars could be observed by astronomers occupying seats on cross-benches laid across the gallery at different levels! Still wilder are the fancies which would have us see in the measurements of the Great Pyramid divinely inspired revelations as to units of length, capacity, and so forth, and which gravely inform us that the granite sarcophagus of Khufu is really a standard measure of capacity, of which our British quarter is a fourth part. It seems rather a pity in view of this wonderful theory that Professor Petrie should have just told us of the inferiority of Khufu’s sarcophagus in accuracy to that of Khafra, as such a fact tends to disturb the mind as to the truth of our own measures; but it is a sufficient indication of the flimsy nature of the foundations on which all these theories rest. The fact is that no evidence worth consideration has been brought forward in support of any of them, and in especial that the idea of the great gallery having been a gigantic transit instrument (surely the most cumbrous and inefficient ever designed) is absolutely negatived by the knowledge which we possess of the object with which the whole building was constructed--an object whose all-important condition was absolute secrecy and concealment. To dream that Khufu built a pyramid to secure his body from discovery and destruction, and then allowed its passages to remain open to the sky for years that astronomers might observe the stars, and tomb-robbers the plan of the pyramid, is to put a fool’s cap on the whole business. The Great Pyramid, like all the other pyramids, great and small, was none of the extraordinary things which we have been told it was; it was something simpler and more wonderful than any of them--the greatest witness ever given on earth to the human craving for immortality!