No one, I believe, has ever questioned the latter fact. Some, induced thereby, have thought them to be erected for the purpose of establishing the exact measure of the cubit; of which they happen to contain both in breadth and height a certain number of multiples. But as they were evidently constructed by persons well versed in all the niceties of exact measurement, and who consequently had no occasion for such colossal reference to refresh their memories, like the Lancasterian apparatus, it is ridiculous to suppose them erected with this view, nor should I have alluded to it but to expose its weakness. Others have fancied them intended for sepulchres; and as the Egyptians, _taught by their ancient Chaldean victors_, connected _astronomy_ with their _funereal_ and _religious ceremonies_, they seem not in this to be far astray, if we but extend the application to their _sacred bulls_ and _other animals_, and not merely to their _kings_, as Herodotus would have us suppose. The immense sarcophagus lying in the interior of the first or Great Pyramid, with the _bone_ found by the Earl of Munster[190] in the second, must put this question beyond the possibility of doubt; as Sir Everard Home, after a laborious examination of the properties of this relic, found it accurately to agree with the lower extremity of the thigh-bone of an ox, while it corresponded with that of no other animal. In conformity with this conclusion were the discoveries of Belzoni some time before, in Upper Egypt, which abounds in specimens of the most splendid antiquities, in a catacomb amongst which, called “Bîban el Moluk,” that is “the gates of the king”--meaning thereby the _universal king of the ancients_, the generating principle of vegetation and life, of which _Apis_ and _Mnevis_, _Osiris_ and _Typhon_, were but the representatives among the Egyptians, as other nations had adopted equivalent forms and names, according to the genius of their climes and languages--I mean the Sun--well, in one of the numerous chambers of this catacomb, Belzoni discovered an exquisitely beautiful sarcophagus of alabaster, 9 feet 5 inches long, by 3 feet 9 inches wide, and 2 feet 1 inch high, covered within and without with hieroglyphics, and figures in intaglio, nearly in a perfect state, sounding like a bell, and as transparent as glass: from the extraordinary magnificence of which, he conceives, it must have been the depository of the remains of Apis; in which idea he is the more confirmed by having found the carcass of a _bull_ embalmed with asphaltum, in the innermost chamber.