I have said that the pentacle has been observed on a figure of Anubis. It would appear to have been well known and highly prized by the early Egyptians, or rather, perhaps, I should say Egypto-Chaldeans, if a recent writer, Mr. Robert Ballard, is to be believed. He declares that “it is the geometric emblem of extreme and mean ratio, and the symbol of the Egyptian pyramid, Cheops.”[547] Let a pentacle be formed within a circle. Around the interior pentagon of it describe a circle. Around this circle form a square. “Then will the square represent the base of Cheops.” Again, draw two diameters to the outer circle, intersecting at right angles, and each parallel to a side of the square. “Then will the parts of those diameters, between the square and the outer circle, represent the four apothems of the four slant-sides of the pyramid.” Still again, connect by lines the angles of the square with the outer circle at the four points indicated by the ends of the diameters. Then “the star of the pyramid is formed, which, when closed as a solid, will be a correct model of Cheops.” Mr. Ballard, it is to be feared, like Mr. Piazzi Smyth, has not the power to perceive coincidences and after-thoughts. His book, however, is decidedly original and interesting. [Illustration: FIG. 28.—THE PENTACLE AND THE GREAT PYRAMID.] I may observe that if the plan of the great pyramid was fashioned after the pentacle, and Mr. Proctor be right in saying that it is identical with “the ordinary square scheme of nativity,”[548] the figure of the astrologers used in casting horoscopes, it follows that the pentacle furnishes also a key to the latter. Then, if it be a fact that the pyramid was designed by and constructed under the superintendence of early Chaldeans, one has reason to infer that the pentacle was of Oriental origin. Probably it was at first a symbol of the sun,—a purpose for which it has been used by different bodies of mystics, and others. It is interesting to notice that the figure was one of the symbols of the great hero-myth, Quetzalcoatl, a light-god according to some, but really, according to Reville,[549] a god of the wind, who was generally represented in the form of a feathered serpent. Thus Dr. Brinton says: “In one of the earliest myths he is called _Yahualli ehecatl_, meaning ‘the wheel of the winds,’ the winds being portrayed in the picture-writing as a circle or wheel, with a figure with five angles inscribed upon it, the sacred pentagram. His image carried in the left hand this wheel, and in the right a sceptre with the end recurved.”[550]