The publisher and author John Taylor ‎(‎1781‎-1864‎)‎‎,‎ who took an interest in various antiquarian matters‎,‎ published this work in 1859‎.‎ Using the measurements taken by the seventeenth‎-century archaeologist John Greaves and by the French savants who had examined the Great Pyramid at Giza during Napoleon‎'‎s Egyptian expedition‎,‎ he deduced the existence of a ‎'‎pyramid inch‎'‎ ‎(‎fractionally longer than the British inch‎)‎‎,‎ which was one twenty‎-fifth of the so‎-called ‎'‎sacred cubit‎'‎ and was derived from ancient astronomical and time‎-measurement observations‎;‎ and as a convinced Christian‎,‎ he concluded that the British inch was therefore divinely inspired‎.‎ His work was very influential and had a considerable following ‎(‎the astronomer Charles Piazzi Smyth‎'‎s 1864 book on Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid is also reissued in this series‎)‎‎,‎ but was later debunked by the more accurate surveys and measurements of Flinders Petrie‎,‎ whose interest in Egypt was partly aroused by reading this book‎.‎