Whether Professor Smyth is right in considering that this specially-prepared position of the floor was intended not for any practical purpose, but to escape the notice of the careless, while yet, when the right men "at last, duly instructed, entered the passage," this mysterious floor-sign should show them where a ceiling-stone was movable, on perceiving which they "would have laid bare the beginning of the whole train of those sub-aërial features of construction which are the great pyramid's most distinctive glory, and exist in no other pyramid in Egypt or the world," I leave the reader to judge. I would remark, only, that, if so, the builders of the pyramid were not remarkably good prophets, seeing that the event befell otherwise, the ceiling-stone dropping out a thousand years or so before the floor-sign was noticed; wherefore we need not feel altogether alarmed at their own prediction (according to Professor Smyth), that the end of the world is to come in 1881, even as Mother Shipton also is reported to have prophesied. For my own part, I am quite content with my own interpretation of the secret sign; as showing where the floor of the descending passage was purposely prepared for the reception of water, on the still surface of which the Pole-star of the day might be mirrored for one looking down the ascending passage.
Albeit, I cannot but think that this ascending passage must also have been so directed as to show some bright star when due south. For if the passage had only given the meridian plane, but without permitting the astronomer to observe the southing of any fixed star, it would have subserved only one-half its purposes as a meridional instrument. It is to be remembered that, supposing the ascending passage to have its position determined in the way I have described, there would be nothing to prevent its being also made to show any fixed star nearly at the same elevation. For it could readily be enlarged in a vertical direction, the floor remaining unaltered. Since it is not enlarged until the great gallery is reached (at a distance of nearly 127 feet from the place where the ascent begins), it follows, or is at least rendered highly probable, that some bright star was in view through that ascending passage.