Charles Staniland Wake

Charles Staniland Wake approached the Great Pyramid as a historical, scientific, and religious monument rather than accepting claims of supernatural design. The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid grew from a paper read before the Hull Literary Club in 1882. In its preface, Wake explains that he began by testing Charles Piazzi Smyth’s theory of inspired origin, but found no need to attribute the structure to divine intervention. He instead considered astronomical purpose, funerary interpretation, early Egyptian civilization, and religious symbolism. The Origin and Significance of the Great Pyramid proceeds through those competing explanations before connecting the monument with scientific ideas and ancient worship. An 1882 London edition was followed by a twentieth-century reprint in the Secret Doctrine Reference Series. Readers should treat Wake’s conclusions as a document of nineteenth-century pyramid interpretation, useful for understanding how historical evidence and speculative religious comparison were combined in that period.