(7.) _Sepulchral contents of Coffer when first discovered._--When, about a thousand years ago, the Caliph Al Mamoon tunnelled into the interior of the pyramid, he detected by the accidental falling, it is said, of a granite portcullis, the passage to the King's Chamber, shut up from the building of the pyramid to that time. "Then" (to quote the words of Professor Smyth) "the treasures of the pyramid, sealed up almost from the days of Noah, and undesecrated by mortal eye for 3000 years, lay full in their grasp before them." On this occasion, to quote the words of Ibn Abd Al Hakm or Hokm--a contemporary Arabian writer, and a historian of high authority,[250] who was born, lived, and died in Egypt--they found in the pyramid, "towards the top, a chamber [now the so-called King's Chamber] with an hollow stone [or coffer] in which there was a statue [of stone] like a man, and within it a man upon whom was a breastplate of gold set with jewels; upon this breastplate was a sword of inestimable price, and at his head a carbuncle of the bigness of an egg, shining like the light of the day; and upon him were characters writ with a pen,[251] which no man understood"[252]--a description stating, down to the so-called "statue," mummy-case, or cartonage, and the hieroglyphics upon the cere-cloth, the arrangements now well known to belong to the higher class of Egyptian mummies. In short (to quote the words of Professor Smyth), "that wonder within a wonder of the Great Pyramid--viz., the porphyry coffer,"--that "chief mystery and boon to the human race which the Great Pyramid was built to enshrine,"--"this vessel of exquisite meaning," and of "far-reaching characteristics,"--mathematically formed under alleged Divine inspiration as a measure of capacity (and, according to M. Jomard, probably of length also) for all men and all nations, for all time,--and particularly for these latter profane times,--is, in simple truth, nothing more and nothing less than--an old and somewhat misshapen stone coffin. STANDARD OF LINEAR MEASURE IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.