Elementary arithmetic, with brief notices of its history... by Robert Potts.

8

VWEIGHTS AND MEASUTllS.

make a London bushel, which is the eighth part of a quarter."1 The
bushel here named was called the Winchester measure.
There is a twofold relation stated between weight and volume, for
Hindus as the primary elements of their weights. The weight of the seed of the
abrus was taken equal to two barleycorns.
Mr. Thomas has shown that, from comparative numismatic data of various ages,
he has found the true weight of the rati or gunja seed to be 1i grains Troy. In the
sixth volume of the Royal Asiatic Society he makes the following remarks, pp. 342,
343:-" The determination of the true weight of the rati has done much both to
facilitate and give authority to the comparison of the ultimately divergent standards
of the Ethnic kingdoms of India. Having discovered the guiding znit, all other
calculations become simple, and present singularly convincing results, notwithstanding the basis of all these estimates rests upon so erratic a test as the growth of the
seed of the gunja creeper (A/bras precatoriuz), under the varied incidents of soil and
climate. Nevertheless this small compact grain, checked in early times by other
products of nature, is seen to have had the remarkable faculty of securing a uniform
average throughout the entire continent of India, which only came to be disturbed
when monarchs, like Shir Shah and Akbar, in their vanity, raised the weight of the
coinage without any reference to the number of ratis inherited from Hindu sources
as the given standard, officially recognised in the old, but altogether disregarded and
left undefined in the reformed Muhammedan mintages."-Journalofthe RoyalAsiatic
Society, Vol. vi., p. 342. Article by Edward Thomas, F.R.S.
" The carat is a bean, the fruit of an Abyssinian tree called kuara. This bean
from the time of its being gathered varies very little in its weight, and seems to
have been, in the earliest ages, a weight for gold in Africa."-Bruce's Travels,
v., p. 66.
The carat has been adopted by most European nations in estimating the weight
and purity of the precious metals. As used by goldsmiths the carat is a weight for
gold. They divide the ounce Troy into twenty-four parts named carats, and each
carat into four grains, so that gold twenty-two carats fine means that an ounce of
standard gold contains twenty-two parts pure gold and two parts alloy.
i In the largest chamber of the Great Pyramid of Gizeh (Herod. ii. 124) is a
rectangular vessel cut out of a single block of Theban marble or porphyry. This
vessel is known by the name of the Pyramid Coffer, or the Porphyry Coffer. A
singular coincidence has been found to exist between the capacity of this coffer and
four quarters English measure. This sameness of volume affords a strong presumption that some relation exists between the measure of capacity of this ancient vessel
and the measure of four quarters, or a chaldron. This vessel has, at different times,
been carefully measured by scientific men, three of whom have reported the following dimensions:Professor Greaves in 1638-9 visited the pyramid and very carefully took the
interior dimensions of the coffer, and found them to be-Length, 77-856 inches;
breadth, 26'61G inches; depth, 34'320 inches; giving the content 71118'4 cubic
inches.
M. Jomard in 1799 reported the dimensions-Length, 77'806 inches; breadth,
26'599 inches; depth, 34'298 inches; giving the content 7096824 cubic inches.
Colonel Howard Vyse took the measures in 1837 and found them to be-Length,
78'0 inches; breadth, 26'5 inches,; depth, 34'5 inches; giving the content 71311
cubic inches.
The English gallon contains 277-274 cubic inches, and the measure of corn
called " the quarter" will contain 17745'536 cubic inches, and consequently the unit
sneasure of which this is the quarter will contain 70982-144 cubic inches. Hence
it appears that four English quarters have very nearly the same volume as thepyramid coffer according to the measurement of M. Jomard. This identity of volume
is surprising, and can scarcely be regarded as accidental. It may be observed that
it is highly probable that the coffer of the pyramid has been in the chamber for a
period above 4,000 years.
The student may read some interesting information in the following works:
Pyramidographia, or a Description of the Pyramids in Egypt. By John Greaves;,
Professor of Astronomy in the University of Oxford. London, 1646. The Great
Pyramid. Why was it built, and who built it? By John Taylor, 1859. Our
Inheritance in the Great Pyramid. By Prof. C. Piazzi Smyth, F.R.S.S. L. and E.,
Astronomer Royal for Scotland. London, 1864.