The Solution of the Pyramid Problem; or, Pyramid Discoveries: With a New Theory as to their Ancient UseBallard, Robert
History
The Solution of the Pyramid Problem; or, Pyramid Discoveries: With a New Theory as to their Ancient Use
Ballard, Robert
Pyramids
The whole numbers of radius, sine, and co-sine divided by 280, give a
very pretty measure and series in R.B. cubits, viz., 43½, 30, and
31½, or 87, 60, and 63, or 174, 120 and 126;--all exceedingly useful
in right-angled measurements. Notice that the right-angled triangle 174,
120, 126, in the sum of its sides _amounts to_ 420.
Figure 33 illustrates the 20, 21, 29 triangle. Figure 34 shows the 5·2
and 7·3 triangles built up on the sine and co-sine of the 20, 21, 29
triangle.
The 5·2 triangle contains 21° 48′ 5·08″ and the 7·3 triangle
23° 11′ 54·98″.
Figure 35 shows how these two triangles are combined with the 20, 21, 29
triangle on the circumference, and Figure 36 gives a general view and
identification of these six triangles which occupied an important
position in the trigonometry of a people who did all their work by right
angles and proportional lines.
Fig. 36. Ratios of Leading Triangles.
§ 8. GENERAL OBSERVATIONS.
It must be admitted that in the details of the building of the Pyramids
of Gïzeh there are traces of other measures than R. B. cubits, but that
the original cubit of the plan was 1·685 British feet I feel no doubt.
It is a perfect and beautiful measure, fit for such a noble design, and,
representing as it does the sixtieth part of a second of the Earth's
polar circumference, it is and was a measure for all time.
It may be objected that these ancient geometricians could not have been
aware of the measure of the Earth's circumference; and wisely so, were
it not for two distinct answers that arise. The first being, that since
I think I have shown that Pythagoras never discovered the Pythagorean
triangle, but that it must have been known and practically employed
thousands of years before his era, in the Egyptian Colleges where he
obtained his M.A. degree, so in the same way it is probable that
Eratosthenes, when he went to work to prove that the earth's
circumference was fifty times the distance from Syene to Alexandria, may
have obtained the idea from his ready access to the ill-fated
Alexandrian Library, in which perhaps some record of the learning of the
builders of the Pyramids was stored. And therefore I claim that there is
no reason why the pyramid builders should not have known as much about
the circumference of the earth as the modern world that has calmly stood
by in its ignorance and permitted those magnificent and, as I shall
prove, useful edifices to be stripped of their beautiful garments of
polished marble.
My second answer is that the correct cubit measure may have been got by
its inventors in a variety of other ways; for instance, by observations
of shadows of heavenly bodies, without any knowledge even that the earth
was round; or it may have been evolved like the British inch, which Sir
John Herschel tells us is within a thousandth part of being one five
hundred millionth of the earth's polar axis. I doubt if the
circumference of the earth was considered by the inventor of the British
inch.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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