The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh. Flinders Petrie. Читать онлайн. Newlib. NEWLIB.NET

Автор: Flinders Petrie
Издательство: Ingram
Серия:
Жанр произведения: История
Год издания: 0
isbn: 9781528765244
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      1. THE nature of the present work is such that perhaps few students will find interest in each part of it alike. The ends and the means appeal to separate classes: the antiquarian, whose are the ends, will look askance at the means, involving co-ordinates, probable errors, and arguments based on purely mechanical considerations; the surveyor and geodetist, whose are the means, will scarcely care for their application to such remote times; the practical man who may follow the instrumental details, may consider the discussion of historical problems to be outside his province; while only those familiar with mechanical work will fully realize the questions of workmanship and tools here explained.

      An investigation thus based on such different subjects is not only at a disadvantage in its reception, but also in its production. And if in one part or another, specialists may object to some result or suggestion, the plea must be the difficulty of making certain how much is known, and what is believed, on subjects so far apart and so much debated.

      The combination of two apparently distinct subjects, is often most fertile in results; and the mathematical and mechanical study of antiquities promises a full measure of success. It is sometimes said, or supposed, that it must be useless to apply accuracy to remains which are inaccurate; that fallacies are sure to result, and that the products of such a method rather originate with the modern investigator than express the design of the ancient constructor. But when we look to other branches of historical inquiry, we see how the most refined methods of research are eagerly followed: how philology does not confine itself to the philological ideas of the ancient writers, but analyzes their speech so as to see facts of which they were wholly unconscious; how chemistry does not study the chemical ideas, but the chemical processes and products of the ancients; how anthropology examines the bodies and customs of men to whom such inquiries were completely foreign. Hence there is nothing unprecedented, and nothing impracticable, in applying mathematical methods in the study of mechanical remains of ancient times, since the object is to get behind the workers, and to see not only their work, but their mistakes, their amounts of error, the limits of their ideas; in fine, to skirt the borders of their knowledge and abilities, so as to find their range by means of using more comprehensive methods. Modern inquiry should never rest content with saying that anything was “exact;” but always show what error in fact or in work was tolerated by the ancient worker, and was considered by him as his allowable error.

      The reader’s knowledge of the general popular information on the subject, has been taken for granted; as that the Pyramids of Gizeh belong to the first three kings of the fourth dynasty, called Khufu, Khafra, and Menkaura, by themselves, and Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, by Greek-loving Englishmen; that their epoch is variously stated by chronologers as being in the third, fourth, or fifth millennium B.C.; that the buildings are in their bulk composed of blocks of limestone, such as is found in the neighbouring districts; that the granite used in parts of the insides and outsides was brought from Syene, now Assouan; and that the buildings were erected near the edge of the limestone desert, bordering the west side of the Nile valley, about 150 feet above the inundated plain, and about 8 miles from the modern Cairo.

      The probable error of all important measurements is stated with the sign ± prefixed to it as usual. A full description of this will be found in any modern treatise on probabilities; and a brief account of it was given in “Inductive Metrology,” pp. 24–30. Some technical details about it will be found here in the Appendix on “The Rejection of Erroneous Observations”; and I will only add a short definition of it as follows:—The probable error is an amount on each side of the stated mean, within the limits of which there is as much chance of the truth lying, as beyond it; i.e., it is 1 in 2 that the true result is not further from the stated mean than the amount of the probable error. Or, if any one prefers to regard the limits beyond which it is practically impossible for the true result to be, it is 22 to 1 against the truth being 3 times the amount of the probable error from the mean, 144 to 1 against its being 4 times, or 1,380 to 1 against its being as far as 5 times the amount of the probable error from the mean result stated. Thus, any extent of improbability that any one may choose to regard as practical impossibility, they may select; and remember that 4 or 5 times the probable error will mean to them the limit of possibility. Practically, it is best to state it as it always is stated, as the amount of variation which there is an