Item #63210 The Great Pyramid: Why Was it Built? And Who Built It? [ together with ] The Battle of the Standards. Ancient Egypt, John TAYLOR, J. F. W. Herschel.
The Great Pyramid: Why Was it Built? And Who Built It? [ together with ] The Battle of the Standards.
The Great Pyramid: Why Was it Built? And Who Built It? [ together with ] The Battle of the Standards.

The Great Pyramid: Why Was it Built? And Who Built It? [ together with ] The Battle of the Standards.

London: Longman, Green, Longman and Roberts. 1859 / 1864. Second Edition [ New Edition ]. Hardcover. Octavo. Two books in one volume (as issued). (xxii) + 314pp & viii +94pp. Original gilt-decorated and blind-stamped blue cloth, index, works cited. Two b&w frontispieces, b&w illustrations. John Taylor (1781 - 1864 ) was a British amateur astronomer and mathematician who, in 1859, produced "The Great Pyramid: Why Was it Built? And Who Built It?" Taylor's contention was that the ancient Egyptians used a unit of measure he called the 'Pyramid Inch' when building the Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza, and that when this is understood, all sorts of relationships between the dimensions of the pyramids, and such measurements as the number of days in a year, the radius of the earth etc. which had been incorporated by the builders were revealed. He was also the first to suggest that the measure pi was deliberately used in the design of the pyramid. Taylor is thus acknowledged as one of the founders of 'Pyramidology,' although the work of Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, the Astronomer-Royal of Scotland and a British Israelite, who built on Taylor's theories is now better known. This is the stated "second" edition of "The Great Pyramid" which comprises a set of first edition sheets of that work (dated 1859) bound together with a set of first edition sheets of a new work "The Battle of the Standards" (dated 1859). "The Battle of the Standards" is basically a defence of the existing British systems of weights and measures, which Taylor believed were derived from the sacred units of ancient Egypt, against then current attempts to introduce the metric system (it only took another century!). The work includes an index, additional illustrations, a poem, essays on the origin of the ancient standard and the Great Pyramid, and supplementary material including letters or papers from Sir John Herschel, Bart., the Times newspaper, and the Astronomer Royal for Scotland. Cloth lightly rubbed, spine darkened, corners, spine edges and ends bruised and a little chafed. Front endpapers cracked at gutter (but hinge quite solid), contemporary owner's name and etc. on front blank, browning to inner margins of frontis and title page. Tiny penned name at lower inner margin of title page, several pin sized holes in title page, pages lightly toned but generally quite fresh and unmarked. Overall a VG+ copy of this very scarce edition. Item #63210

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