page_title: Charles Piazzi Smyth
section_title: Pyramidological researches
hierarchical_section_title: Charles Piazzi Smyth / Pyramidological researches
caption_attribution_description: English: Plate VII from Charles Piazzi Smyth: Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid. 3rd, much enlarged edition. London 1877.
context_page_description: Charles Piazzi Smyth FRSE FRS FRAS FRSSA was an Italian-born British astronomer who was Astronomer Royal for Scotland from 1846 to 1888; he is known for many innovations in astronomy and, along with his wife Jessica Duncan Piazzi Smyth, his pyramidological and metrological studies of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
context_section_description: Smyth corresponded with pyramid theorist John Taylor and was heavily influenced by him. Taylor theorized in his 1859 book The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built? & Who Built It? that the Great Pyramid was planned and the building supervised by the biblical Noah. Refused a grant by the Royal Society, Smyth went on an expedition to Egypt in order to accurately measure every surface, dimension, and aspect of the Great Pyramid. He brought along equipment to measure the dimensions of the stones, the precise angle of sections such as the descending passage, and a specially designed camera to photograph both the interior and exterior of the pyramid. He also used other instruments to make astronomical calculations and determine the pyramid's accurate latitude and longitude.
  Smyth subsequently published his book Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid in 1864 (which he expanded over the years and is also titled The Great Pyramid: Its Secrets and Mysteries Revealed). Smyth claimed that the measurements he obtained from the Great Pyramid of Giza indicated a unit of length, the pyramid inch, equivalent to 1.001 British inches, that could have been the standard of measurement by the pyramid's architects. From this he extrapolated a number of other measurements, including the pyramid pint, the sacred cubit, and the pyramid scale of temperature.
  Smyth claimed that the pyramid inch was a God-given measure handed down through the centuries from the time of Shem (Noah's Son), and that the architects of the pyramid could only have been directed by the hand of God. To support this Smyth said that, in measuring the pyramid, he found the number of inches in the perimeter of the base equalled one hundred times the number of days in a year, and found a numeric relationship between the height of the pyramid in inches to the distance from Earth to the Sun, measured in statute miles. He also advanced the theory that the Great Pyramid was a repository of prophecies which could be revealed by detailed measurements of the structure. Working upon theories by Taylor, he conjectured that the Hyksos were the Hebrew people, and that they built the Great Pyramid under the leadership of Melchizedek. Because the pyramid inch was a divine unit of measurement, Smyth, a committed proponent of British Israelism, used his conclusions as an argument against the introduction of the metric system in Britain. For much of his life he was a vocal opponent of the metric system, which he considered a product of the minds of atheistic French radicals, a position advocated in many of his works.
  Smyth, despite his bad reputation in Egyptological circles today, performed much valuable work at Giza. He made the most accurate measurements of the Great Pyramid that any explorer had made up to that time, and he photographed the interior passages, using a magnesium light, for the first time. Smyth's work resulted in many drawings and calculations, which were soon incorporated into his books Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid, the three-volume Life and Work at the Great Pyramid (1867), and On the Antiquity of Intellectual Man (1868). For his works he was awarded the Keith gold medal for 1865–67 by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, but in 1874, the Royal Society of London rejected his paper on the design of Khufu's pyramid, as they had Taylor's. The rejection of his ideas helped contribute to his resignation from his post as Royal Astronomer in 1888.
caption: This diagram from Smyth's Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1877) shows some of his measurements and chronological determinations made from them
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