The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid, by C. Staniland Wake, [1882], at sacred-texts.com

p. 92

NOTE

ONE of the most curious series of relations found by the Pyramidists is connected with the Great Coffer, or sarcophagus, of the King's Chamber. John Taylor and his followers assert that this coffer is the same in capacity with the Ark and with the Laver of the Hebrew Tabernacle, and that the Molten Sea of Solomon's Temple was just fifty times such capacity, and exactly equal in interior cubic space with the contents of the King's Chamber itself. There is nothing absurd or improbable in there being some such relation between those vessels, if the Pyramid was a temple dedicated to the god Seth. Judging, indeed, from the analogy presented by Hindoo usage, the coffer was "a sacred trough, filled by the Priests on certain festivals with sacramental water and lotus-flowers." This explanation of its use was given to Mr, St. John by some learned Brahmins, who said that the

p. 93

[paragraph continues] Great Pyramid was a temple, and that if it had an underground communication with the Nile it must have been intended for the worship of Pad Madévi. * An early English writer, Mr. Shaw, would seem to have been much of the same opinion, as he thought the coffer was intended for the celebration of the mystical worship of Osiris, and he supposed it to have contained images, sacred vestments and utensils, or water for lustration. If for Osiris we substitute Seth that opinion will be near the truth. The so-called King's Chamber, of which an enthusiastic pyramidist says, "The polished walls, fine materials, grand proportions, and exalted place eloquently tell of glories yet to come," if not "the chamber of perfections" † of Cheops's tomb, was probably the place to which the initiate was admitted after he had passed through the narrow upward passage and the grand gallery, with its lowly termination, which gradually prepared him for the final stage of the sacred mysteries.

Footnotes

93:* Referred to by Col. Vyse, "Operations," etc., Vol. ii. p. 313.

93:† This was one of the names of the principal chamber of a tomb. See "Records of the Past," Vol. xii. Egyptian Texts, p. 106.