A Sammelband of Seven Titles.

Item Details

London/Dublin/San Francisco, V.p., 1876-1882

First

This sammelband consists of the seven following works: TRACEY, B. W.  The Pillar of Witness: A Scriptural View of the Great Pyramid (London: W. H. Guest, 1876). Folding frontispiece of a pyramid with copious printed notes,  83, [5] pp.; CASEY, Charles. Philitis: Being a Condensed Account of the Recently Discovered Solution of the Use and Meaning of the Great Pyramid (Dublin: Carson Brothers, 1880), fifth edition, revised and enlarged. Folding frontispiece as above, 128 pp.; SHAW, John Gilder. Britain (or Israel), The Fifth and Last, and the Unconquerable Empire (London: S. W. Partridge, 1878. Folding map entitled "J. G. Shaw's Illustrated Prophetic Map" viii, 60 pp.; SAVILE, Bourchier Wrey. Are We Israelites? The Testimony of History, Philology, and Ethnology on the Subject (London: W. H. Guest, 1879), 63, [1] pp.; GAWLER, J. C.  Dan, the Pioneer of Israel (London: W. H. Guest, 1880), [2], 40 pp.; GAWLER, J. C. The Two Olive Trees: The Story of the Two Witnesses; or, The Measuring of the Temple (London: W. H. Guest, 1881), 16 pp.; and OSWALD, H. W. 1881–1882; or, The Great Changes of the Near Future (San Francisco: A. L. Bancroft, 1881), 28 pp. All in a contemporary binding of plain brown cloth over marbled boards. A few relevant shoulder notes in pencil, small piece of blue tape to the lower part of the front blank. A very clean, tidy and focused gathering.

Sammelbands can often span decades but this one has a very narrow window (just six years) and all contributions are in support of the righteousness of the British Empire. All of thsi were likely assembled around 1881 by a person with very specific and somewhat conspiratorial ideas. While it is very likely that few people have ever heard of Briitish-Israelism now it was a much discussed topic and movement in the later part of the 19th century.  Three of the publications presented here are concerned with this idea. British-Israelism is a the belief that the people of Great Britain are "genetically, racially, and linguistically the direct descendants" of the Ten Lost Tribes of ancient Israel. It became something of a movement in the 1880s and by 1886, the "Anglo-Israel Association" had 27 affiliated groups throughout Britain. Adherents to this belief were said to number two million and some of its more fervent believers saw the British royal family as being direct descendants of King David. This would mean that the British were the chosen people and this provided a firm base for a justification of the British Empire. "The Stone of Scone, which has been used in the coronations of Scottish, English, and British monarchs for centuries, is traditionally claimed to be the pillow stone on which the biblical patriarch, Jacob, slept, and the stone used in David's coronation" (Wiki). 

Pyramidology is the focus of the first two (also the two longest works in this gathering) and they are a kind of occult and/or religious take on the meaning of the Pyramids. John Taylor and later Charles Piazzi Smyth formed many theories and prognostications upon the measurement of the pyramid using what was called the "Pyramid Inch" (said to be 1/25 of the sacred cubit). They and their followers "Found numerous apparent coincidences between the measurements of the pyramids and the geometry of the Earth and the Solar System. They concluded that the British system of measures was derived from a far more ancient, if not divine, system. A later contributor, Robert Menzies posited that the internal chambers of the Great Pyramid of Giza were a divine "prophecy in stone". Under this system, one "Pyramid Inch" equaled one solar year. Using erroneous measurements Menzies stated that in the inner chambers of Giza the upper, southern wall of the Grand Gallery yielded a length that mapped precisely to 1881–1882 AD The believers stated that there was coming a new age for mankind in 1881-2. The pyramid theorists aligned with the British-Israelites in this prophetic understanding. "The idea that the pyramid was designed by God as the tabernacle in the wilderness, and is 'the Bible in stone,' setting forth the divine plan of the ages, is the outgrowth and propaganda of another latter-day . . de­lusion. Known as British-Israelism, this belief has captured millions of adherents" (Anton Dars, The Pyramid Delusion, 1945). It was generally denounced after Flinders Petrie went to Egypt and made scientific measurements of the Great Pyramid that disproved all theories of the meaning of the Pyramids using the "Pyramid Inch." The American contribution at the end deals more specifically with the prophecies for 1881.

So this grouping is a rather tight one of alternative views of history and its monuments to place the British nation as one chosen by God to lead as well as on the the belief that a new age was soon to be revealed in the years 1881/2. A Victorian example of conspiracy theorists.