Newton and Egypt
Newton's Interest in Egypt
Isaac Newton was at least slightly interested in Egypt! This seems to be slightly glossed over in his biographies. He seems to have taken the Bible slightly literally and to have believed in a pre-Diluvian world. He may or may not have believed that the previous people had already worked out all the physical laws, and sought the dimensions of the Egyptian cubit in the circumference of the Great Pyramid. This would give him the circumference of the Earth which would give him the gravitational constant if he plugged the Egyptian cubit into his formulae.
Unfortunately, working with the cubit as determined by Greaves, Oxford Mathematician, who was unable to measure the pyramid, the base being strewn with debris, Newton was unable to come to a satisfactory conclusion regarding the exact size of the cubit. The assumption also went that the base was an exact number of cubits, which is problematic.
Khufu, according to legend had a dream. He saw the stars spinning and wished to help the world out by building the great pyramid. He thought his dream might refer to the end of the world. I believe the great pyramid enshrined old sciences (this is what the legend says!),
Newton had an enormous library of thousands of books, and may have been aware of some of the older legends surrounding the Great Pyramid.
He actually read John Greaves' Pyramidographia as well as other books on Egypt as well the temple of Solomon. He quickly grasped the import, antiquity and implications of the Great Pyramid. He used Greaves' as well as Burattini's measures on the Great Pyramid, though these were inaccurate, and as a result was unable to put the final stamp on his theory of gravitation until 1671, when Jean Picard was able to finally measure a degree of latitude which came to 69.1 English miles.
Newton himself wrote the work: "A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews and the Cubits of several Nations: in which, from the Dimensions of the Greatest Pyramid, as taken by Mr. John Greaves, the ancient Cubit of Memphis is determined".