The Great Phyramid of Giza

WHAT IS THE GREAT PYRAMID?

EVERY one knows that the Great Pyramid has a square base and four triangular faces or sides, though not coming quite to a point at the top. Julius Solinus tells the world that "the pyramids are sharp-pointed towers in Egypt, exceeding all height which may be made by man." Ammianus Marcellinus echoes the same idea, saying, "the pyramids are towers erected altogether exceeding the height which may be made by man. In the bottom they are broadest, ending in sharp points at the top, which figure is, therefore, by geometricians called pyramidal." Propertius talked of their leading up to the stars.

While astonishing the ancients by its vast dimensions, the pyramid failed to excite much interest further in the minds of Greek and Eoman writers. Some moderns are hardly astonished at it any way. Major Furlong merely calculates that it would now cost a million of pounds to build. M. Grobert, artillery officer under Bonaparte in Egypt, could not understand the fuss a few tavans made about it. In his official report, he says, " Travellers have not entertained their readers ahout these pyramids. Their construction is rude and not very remarkable." Denon, who brought out, under Napoleon Bonaparte's patronage, the most magnificent work ever published on Egypt, was just sufficiently interested in the subject to acknowledge in his book, " We had only two hours to be at the pyramids."

Yet there are others who look upon the edifice as an echo of the Past. Every stone in the fabric has a weird look. The very outline seems to melt into the blue sky against which it reposes. On it, around it, and within it, the spiritual eye sees forms not now of earth. The ear is supernaturally quickened, and the heart pulses in sympathy with the men that were, and are. It is not the object of undefined dread, but of nameless soul attraction. To such enthusiasts the pyramid is alive; and they wait anxiously for expected revelations from it.

Those there have been, and still are, who regard that building as suggesting what it did to the Cambridge Christian Advocate, Mr. Hardwick:—" There if ever," says he, " we may hope to find the master-clue which is to guide us through the intricacies of primaeval history, reveal afresh the hopes and fears which then were struggling in the human bosom, and resolve for us, it may be, many an arduous problem which concerns the origin, the early wanderings, and the final destiny of man."

Eor the present we have to dismiss romance and sentiment, and discuss the material question of the pyramid itself. Strong as it is—the embodiment of strength—it is not everlasting. The elements may prove to be kinder than man. The almost cloudless skies of Egypt have smiled upon the ruins of the old land, as if cherishing the remains of what the destroying hand of man has spared. As contending sects in the primitive days of Christendom not only destroyed life, but the books of the opposite party, so rising dynasties of Egypt have sought revenge in the destruction of edifices erected by their adversaries. Every change of religion has meant the mutilation of art symbols. The god dethroned spiritually beheld his very name removed from monuments. It has been the habit to abuse the Turk for the ruin of ruins in Egypt. History does not substantiate the charge. The cultured Semitic race, the Saracens, are more open to the reproof. Turkish pashas have ruled since Western European travellers visited the Nile; and not until the days of Mehemet Ali, of the European Albanian race, were these devastations known to any great extent. Mr. Gliddon declares that " until 1820 little injury had been done to the ruins." And this Vandalism has followed the presumed law of progress. The crushing of these glorious trophies of ancient civilisation has been in accordance with Western Ideas. Money was to be made. Money must be made. Money can be made by the breaking up of temples, and the using of their stones for sugar factories. And the progressive and much-extolled pasha broke up the temples and raised the sugar-houses.

In the sad lament of Mr. Gliddon, and his appeal to the really civilised for moral help against the barbarian, we read that three temples went to build the the factory of Esn£, a part of Dendera temple for a saltpetre factory, the temple of Abydos for a bridge, the temple of Latou for a quay, and that the very chambers of the Nilometer were invaded. The temple of Syene then disappeared. The sixty-six steps which remained of the noble staircase of Elephantine were then missed. The foot of the great pyramid was a quarry for this Albanian utilitarian." Twenty years ago," said Mr. Gliddon in 1842, that neighbourhood "abounded in legends and tablets, supplying many vacuums in history; scarcely one remains"

The very pyramid itself stood in danger. Mehemet Ali, in 1835, proposed to level it, for the sake of the blocks of stone. He only desisted from the undertaking on learning that it would be cheaper to quarry in the hill nearer Cairo. An Arab, about the year 1100, bitterly lamented that "vile and unhappy men " had broken some of the stones of the pyramids, making, as he expressed it, "all see baseness and their sordid cupidity." M. Kenan may well thus cry out in alarm, " The work of Cheops runs now greater dangers than it has encountered for 6000 years !"

A donkey ride of half an hour, or less, from that palace of comfort, " Shepheard's Hotel," brings one to the Nile bank at Old Cairo, Eostat, or Babylon. Tradition says that the great Sesostris, whoever he was, brought captives from Babylon to settle there, or build the city. It is a little beyond the interesting suburb of Boulaq, where the indefatigable and intelligent Mariette Bey has established his wonderful Egyptian Museum, till better quarters, long since promised, can be provided,

Cairo is one of the most delightful of residences, with a climate most enjoyable and healthful during the greater part of the year. In spite of certain oriental squalor, clinging to oriental romances everywhere, it is a city of palaces and luxury. The European element has long dominated in its architecture and customs, though these are mostly French, as they are Italian in Alexandria. Money can there procure every Parisian indulgence, and gratify every sensual desire. The place is fast becoming popular with the English, who are more admired by the natives than other foreigners, because reputed more liberal in payment and more true to promise. Again and again has the writer heard the wish expressed that the English, and not the Khedive, ruled in the land.

Egypt under the English would recover its lost dominion. In India we have learned, at last, and to some appreciable extent, how to govern native races. The Turks in 400 years made small progress in the work. We have had but 200 years to learn "the lesson, and have, according to some, made little advance. While condemning the Turk for despising the simple fellah of Egypt, the wily Greek, and the stolid Bulgarian, it is not for us to throw the stone while our Christian and educated countrymen in India call high-class Brahmins and other refined Hindoos by the contemptuous name of Niggers. It marks no more conciliatory policy.

Perhaps there is not a people anywhere more hopeful than the Egyptian. He is industrious, he loves the soil, he is patient, he is teachable, he is intelligent, and he is grateful for kindness. More than all, he has the blood of a noble ancestry. He is the offspring of a wonderful, though by-gone, civilisation. The oppression of foreigners for 2500 years has failed to crush his spirit, which seems as merry, buoyant, and free as the 5000 years old pictures display it to have been

Professedly Mahometan, but never bigoted, they accepted the faith of Mahomet when conquered by Saracens from Arabia, as they submitted to bow to the Cross when commanded by Christian authorities. Passive obedience has been the distinguishing trait of the Egyptians from the earliest of times. Who can tell what changes for the better will come from the government of the energetic, self-willed, self-impressing, progressive Englishman?

What a future for Africa to contemplate, should Egypt he our colony in the north, as the Cape in the south 1

But dismounting from the Pegasus of imagination, let us look at the pyramid in the most prosaic light.

It is of stone,—granite, marble, and limestone. The granite and marble are for the lining of passages and chambers. The main structure is of nummulitic limestone. This is generally called of Eocene tertiary age. There was an ancient period when a vast deep sea received an immense deposit, during untold thousands, or hundreds of thousands of years. It consisted of sandy debris of Older rocks, with limestone concretions; life, coralline and molluscous, existed in those warm watersGathering lime homes of various kinds, the animals took them to their graves in the oozy mud, and Time bound the whole as stone, and brought up the sea bottom to be a home for newborn men, from the pillars of Hercules to beyond the Indus. The empires of Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, of the Saracen, the Turk, the Moor, the Crusader, and the Pope have rested on this rock of history. The Babe of Bethlehem slept on it; the pyramid of Gizeh was built of it.

The fossil life of the stone is marvellous, millions of tenements of beings are therein crowded to a cubic inch or so. Some of the larger concretions puzzled Herodotus. He settled it that they were the petrified date-stones of the workmen. He was equally right in his testimony that outside was a record of the expenditure of 1,600 talents for onions, &c, provided for the workmen. But both stories are susceptible of another interpretation. The granite, doubtless, comes from Elephantine and Syene on the Upper №le ; as the alabaster from the Khalil mountains, towards the Red Sea. The pyramid stones contain 095 carbonate of lime, 0*04. of alumina, and *01 of oxide of iron. The Libyan hill on which the building stands is of that stone.

How Phyramid was Built

One reputed architect has informed the world that the whole was constructed of pisé. Water, by elaborate machinery, was led up to the required heights to mix with the sand, &c, to set in blocks of the needed size, and formed themselves tier by tier in the moulds. Mr. Perring thought scaffoldings were employed. Sir Gardner Wilkinson refers to the cutting away of the projecting angles, when they "smoothed the face of them to a flat inclined surface as they descended." This will meet the difficulty of its being finished downward.

Herodotus, the enigmatical historian, rather than the simple one, had before given this story. Dr. Lepsius, the German scholar, has his way of looking at it. " At the commencement of each reign," says he, " the rock-chamber destined for the monarch's grave was excavated, and one course of masonry erected upon it. If the king died in the first year of his reign, a casing was put upon it, and a pyramid formed; but if the king did not die, another course of stone was added above, and two of the same height and thickness on each side; thus, in process of time, the building assumed the form of a series of regular steps. These were cased over with stones, all the angles filled up, and stones placed for steps. Then, as Herodotus long ago informed us, the pyramid was finished from the top downwards, by all the edges being cut away, and a perfect triangle left."

Mr. Melville, the mystic, author of Veritas, has his view of the transaction; saying, " Herodotns tells ns the pyramids were finished downwards, and unquestionably they were. Books, learned hooks, as the writers fancy, have lately been published to explain this passage. Large blocks of stone have been supposed to have been lifted to their places, and then cut as required, and the debris thrown to the base. Oh, folly !"

This is the story of the Greek :—" Having finished the first tier, they elevated the stones to the second by the aid of machinery constructed of short pieces of wood; from the second, by a similar machine, they were raised to the third, and so on to the summit. Thus there were as many machines as there were courses in the structure of the pyramids, though there might have been only one, which, being easily manageable, could be raised from one layer to the next in succession ; both modes were mentioned to me, and I know not which of them deserves most credit."

Sir H. James, of the Ordnance Department, thinks the working rule of construction was by two poles, one horizontal, ten feet long, and the other vertical, of nine feet; as, " the inclination of each edge of the pyramid is what engineers call ten to nine." But Sir Edmund Beckett, as an architect, demurs; remarking, " I do not at all agree with him that the builders worked by any such inconvenient rule as thai;—carrying up diagonally, slanting standards at the corners, and making the courses' lineable by eye with them, however easy it may sound theoretically."

The Steps

He who has once been hauled up by the three muscular, good-tempered, but bakshish-loving so-called Arabs, but really Egyptian fellahs, will not forget the steps. The ascent is by the north-east angle, where the stones are sufficiently knocked about to give a better tread.

Herodotus wrote nearly 2300 years ago:—"This pyramid was built in the form of steps." He adds that some call them little altars. When he tells us that one of these stones is thirty feet, we stare. He may mean cubic feet, as he calls the least of them that size. M. Grobert declares they vary from 1 foot 5 inches to 4 feet in length. He noticed a gradation. The first tier gave him an average of 3 feet 10\ inches; the second, 3 feet 6| inches; the third, 3 feet 1| inch; then, 2 feet 11 inches ; 2 feet 8 inches ; 2 feet 3 inches. Mr. Perring, the accurate surveyor, gives the average of these courses at from 2 feet 2 inches to 4 feet 10 inches. About the largest stone is one 9 feet long and 6^ broad. Mr. Eergusson the architect has the average at 30 inches. The stones diminish as they approach the top.

One authority gives an elevation of 223 inches for the fifth course of masonry; 869 for the twenty-fifth; 1686 for the fiftieth; 3052 for the hundredth; and 5830 for the total vertical height. The Queen's chamber is said to be on the twenty-fifth course; and the King's on the fiftieth bourse.

The number of steps has been a most unnecessary puzzle. Pococke, there in 1743, notes the difference from 207, Greaves's number, to 260, the number of Albert Lewenstein. But he goes on to say, " as Mallet, who also was very exact, counted 208, it is possible the number of the steps is 207 or 208, though I counted them 212." Thevenot, in 1655, made 208 ; Denon, in 1799, 208 ; while Lewenstein, or Lewenstainius found 260 ; Vausleb, in 1664, 255; Sandys, in 1610, 255. Belloniusgot 250; Lucas, 243; Johannes Helfricus, 2.30; and Grimino, 210. Siccard, in 1711, counted 220 ; Davidson, in 1763, 206 ; Beckett, 210 ; Grobert, in 1798, 205, with three crumbled ones, or 208. Fergusson has the number 203; while M. Dufeu has 202, the last two being in the centre of the upper platform. Prosper Alpinus, in 1591, could only count 125. The majority give 208.

The mortar, or cement, varies according to the work. Where used for passages or casing, it was of pure lime. But Perring, to whom we are so indebted for his work in 1837, found the ordinary mortar to be an odd mixture of pounded bricks, gravel, crushed granite chippings, and Nile mud. Sometimes it proved nothing but a simple grout, or liquid mortar, of sand and gravel only.

One architectural estimate of the time to rear the pyramid is as follows: allowing fifteen miles for carriage, and 300 days a year of ten hours a day for labour, the time for quarrying, elevating, and finishing would be 164 years. Herodotus, whose words need sometimes an interpreter, talks of 100,000 men and twenty years; that is, we may say, 10,000 men, as many as could work at it, for 200 years.

Size of Phyramid

According to Perring, the original quantity of masonry was 89,000,000 of cubic feet, or 6,848,000 tons. As far as is known, the passages and chambers make but one-sixteen-hundredth part of the block. He states the present base is 12 acres, 3 roods, 3 poles; the former, with the casing, was 13 acres, 1 rood, 22 poles. The Egyptians had a great dislike to visitors prying about the place, particularly with a measure in their hands. A sheik once drew M. Grobert aside, and said, " It is useless to give yourself so much trouble, there is no silver down in there ; I swear it by Allah and my faith."

The height of the pyramid has been widely estimated. Herodotus made it equal to the length. Bryant, in 1807, wrote : " It seems at first to have been 500 feet in perpendicular height." Thevenot gave 520; Greaves, in his " Pyramidographia," 499 ; Perring, 450J; Vausleb, 662 ; Perry, 687; Lucas, 729; Niebuhr, 440; Gemelli, 520; Denon, 448. In the last-named, the French architect employed to measure in 1799, was M. Le Pere, aided by Colonel Coutelle, of the Engineers. Fergusson states the present height to be 456, and Colonel Howard Vyse, 450f. The inclined height, says the last authority, is 568^. The vertical height, says M. Dufeu, was never greater than it is now.

The base is practically a square. Herodotus gave the length eight plethra or 800 feet, the same as the height. But that height must have been the side of the triangle up. Transcribers may cause authors to err. Thus, he is said to have declared the third pyramid " wanting 20 feet on each side of three plethra." It should have read plus twenty. Diodorus appears to make the size 700 by 600 feet; Strabo, 652 by 600; Thevenot, 704 by 682. Pliny gave the size, 708; Grobert, 745|; Perring, 746 now, but once 764; Colonel Howard Vyse accepts Perring's calculation. Sir Edmund Beckett speaks of a difference of 4 feet in 761 "between the measure made by highly competent persons." He deems the 761 of Sir H. James as "the best measure to adopt." This includes the casing stones at the base. The Eoyal Engineers, on their return from the Sinai survey, got these results : east side, 9,129-5 inches; north, 9,127-5 inches; west, 9121 inches;south, 9,140-5; yielding an average of 76Of feet. Mr. Piazzi Smyth has chosen a mean calculation of 763*81 feet.

The corner socket was found in 1797. The Prench dug down through the rubbish at the north-east angle. This encastrement or large hollow socket worked in the rocks, yet quite uninjured, received the corner stone. It is an irregular square, three and a half metres by three. At the north-west corner the other socket has been discovered. The measure between, 232*747 metres, or 763*63 feet, was the base line. But Colonel Vyse's grand discovery, in 1837, of a couple of the casing stones on the parent rock, enabled us to get the more modern estimate of correctness, 764 feet. These marble blocks were of exquisite workmanship and truth of outline.

The angle of inclination in these two casing stones was first given at 51° 50'. Prof. Piazzi Smyth, assuming it 51° 51' 14-3", and the base line 763*81, obtained as the result for the perpendicular height 486*2567.

The orientation, or eastward aspect, is nearly perfect; offering a great contrast to the edifices of Thebes, &c, where the face is any way. In fact Mr. Fergusson goes so far as to say that the builders of Thebes had " no notion of orientation." It is not 5' out of the line; Mr. Piazzi Smyth makes the error but 4' 35". An earthquake, it has been conjectured, may have even caused this slight error. The angles of the sockets of the great pyramid have been given at 0, for south-east, + *1 for north-east, + 1 for south-west, and + 0*636 for north-west

The Top of phyramid

It is a glorious view from the upper platform over the level but continuous garden of the Nile. One looks down upon the plain where Bonaparte's squares repelled the charge of the Mameluke horsemen, and which glorious feat was witnessed, not by forty centuries, but by sixty. The mysterious desert and the Libyan hills stretch northward, southward, and westward. The site of Memphis and the marvellous old pyramids of Saqqarah are before one. There lie the tombs of the sacred bulls; and around the pyramid are the graves of kings, nobles, priests, and ladies of the Ancient Empire, 5000, 6000, or more, years ago. Quiet thoughts on the pyramid are suggestive ones.

When Thevenot was there he counted " twelve lovely large stones." Greaves, the astronomer, wrote:—" The top of this pyramid is covered, not with one or three massy stones, as some have imagined, but nine, besides two which are wanting at the angles." Another describes it " surrounded with thirteen great stones, two of which do not now appear."

The top has been generally estimated at SO feet. Dr. Eichardson has this statement:—" Arrived at the summit we found it ample and spacious; a square, from 25 feet to 30 feet a side, consisting of long square blocks of stone, with the upper surface coarse and uneven, as are the usual surfaces of stones in the courses of a building. We perceived a thin cement of lime be. tween the different courses of stones, but there was no appearance of any cement having been placed upon the upper surface of the highest course." The conclusion was that it had never been higher. Mr. Agnew said :—" The platform was not intended to form part of the pyramidal portion of the monument." But Dufeu and others regard the platform as the real top, which was never covered, though it may have had a column or cippe to serve as an imaginary apex.

The Eev. T. Gabb, 1808, who had no doubt of its being originally pointed, as were all the other pyramids, was a little troubled to account for this being stripped of the top while others retained theirs in safety. "Nor do I doubt," quoth he, "but the apex was severed from it by the impetuosity of the waters (at the Flood) while in their unabated rapidity, and thus left the flat, which has furnished various conjectures." Others that retained their caps, when the Flood carried off the top of the great pyramid, were, thinks he, " erected nearer to the time of the Deluge, it may be even a thousand years after the great one."

Having now taken a survey of the exterior, the consultation of authorities concerning the interior will next engage attention. Although some reference elsewhere has been made to the name of the building, it may not be out of place to say something here upon

The opening of Phyramid

Whether absolutely cased or not, the pyramid was practically shut up, according to popular account, until about the year 830, when the Caliph Mamoun found an opening. For this story we are indebted to Arabian sources, which are slightly doubtful. The truth is generally somewhere, though nearly overwhelmed by imaginative details.

One of the well-known versions is about Al-Mamoun, Caliph of Babylon, gaining access to the interior. When he got to the king's chamber, we are informed that he saw there a hollow stone (the Sarcophagus), in which lay the statue of a man. But the statue inclosed a body, whose breastplate of gold was brilliantly set with jewels. A sword of inestimable value lay upon the corpse. At the head shone, with the light of day, a carbuncle as large as an egg. We have also a tale about one Melec-Alaziz-Othman-ben-Yousouf, who made so desperate an attempt to break into the third pyramid, that eight months were spent in the work of destruction. It would be difficult to determine if they succeeded in moving a single stone.

Then we are informed by one Arab that Caliph Abdal-la Mamoun, the opener of the great pyramid, was the son of Haroun-al Ea3chid, of the "Arabian Nights Entertainments," and the contemporary of Charlemagne.

That which appears probable is, that the Saracens began on the north side, as reported by tradition to have been that by which the Eomans had once entered ; but that, while the latter, and any other previous visitors, had been content with the descending passage to the subterranean chamber, the former were the first to penetrate by the gallery to the king's chamber. One of the Arab stories of the opening is thus related by Ibn Abd Al Hokm :—

" After that Al-Mamon the caliph entered Egypt, and saw the pyramids. He desired to know what was written within, and therefore would have them opened. They told him it could not possibly be done. He replied, ' I will have it certainly done.' And that hole was opened for him, which stands open to this day, with fire and vinegar. Two smiths prepared and sharpened the iron and engines which they forced in ; and there was a great expense in the opening of it. The thickness of thè wall was found to.be 20 cubits; and when they came to the end of the wall behind the place they ha dug, there was a pot of green emeralds. In It were a thousand dinars very weighty ; every dinar was an ounce of our ounces. They wondered at it, but knew not the meaning of it. Then Al-Mamon said, ' Cast up the accounts. How much has been spent in making the entrance Ì ' They cast it up, and lo ! it was the same sum -which they found; it neither exceeded, nor was defective"

On the other hand, Macrizi declares that the Caliph Mamouu was only forty-nine days in Egypt altogether ; a time utterly short of that required by the Arab stories. Denys, the old traveller of the twelfth century, would surely have mentioned some facts of the wonders of the interior, had they reached him at Cairo. He does narrate something ; for, said he, " We looked in at an opening which was made in one of the edifices, and which is 50 cubits deep." His idea of a cubit may be seen from his giving the height of the pyramid 250 cubits, and the base 500. De Sacy is justified in saying that "he could not have neglected to make mention of a discovery so important, and which would have refuted completely the fable of the granaries of Joseph;" an opinion cherished at that period. He concludes that" the opening of the Great Pyramid is more ancient than the journey of Mamoun in Egypt."

Whoever forced an entrance failed to strike the right spot, though a way to the Descending Passage was obtained by the removal of obstructing stones. The present entrance is 47J feet above the base, and by the fifteenth or sixteenth step. One may ride up to it on the vast mass of rubbish in front. It is there the visitor is met by the sheik and his tribe, when a treaty is made as to charges for attendants. The standing tariff is about four shillings for each man, and two men are the minimum for a person, while a larger douceur is expected by the venerable chief.

When Sandys was there, in 1610, the difficulties of an entrance were greater than at present. It is now as it then was, " full of rubbidge." But we have no stories in this day of men going in, and coming up again some thirty miles off.

His experience at the entrance is thus detailed :—" In this our Janizaries discharged their harquebuses, lest some shuld haue skulkt within to haue done us mischiefe, and guarded the mouth whilst we entred, for feare of the wilde Arabs."

THE QUEEN'S CHAMBER.

Mr. Greaves said, " Leaving the well, and going on straight upon a levell, the distance of fifteen feet, we entred another square passage. This leadeth into an arched vault, or little chamber; which, by reason it was of a grave-like smell, and halfe full of rubbage, occasioned my lesser stay. This chamber stands east and west, the length of it is lesse than twenty feet, the breadth about seventeen, and the height lesse than fifteen. The walls are entire, and plastered over with lime; the roofe is covered with large smooth stones, not lying flat, but shelving, and meeting above in a kind of Arch, or rather an Angle."

Norden, in 1737, saw it " half filled with stones." Maillet had before remarked the forcible entry, and that "stones broken, and drawn from that place, still fill now almost all the capacity of the chamber." He noticed the roof was " made like an ass's back." He refers to the niche on the east side, three feet in the wall, " and of the height of eight upon three feet," the space sufficient for the queen's coffin. Richardson, sixty years ago, spoke of it in the north-east corner, and like the queen's closet, or dressing-room. Both were empty, and not lined with granite. This niche is not in the middle of the wall. One describes it as 15 feet high, and two cubits broad, gradually contracted by short, offsets, from 65 inches wide at the bottom to 25-3 at the top.

Two channels there looked like the air-holes of the other Chamber, but were sealed up. "When broken through, the space was horizontal for 7 feet, and then turned north and south at the angle 32°. They might have been for acoustic purposes. Mr. Waynman Dixon tested them by smoke, which was not to be detected outside. A rounded granite ball, supposed a Mina •weight, being 8825 grains, was taken from the northern channel. Some speak of the Chamber as seven-sided. From the base of the pyramid to the floor of this room is 67 feet 4 inches. The area is 18| by 17 feet. The height is from 14 feet 9 inches to 20 feet 3 inches. The Queen's Chamber is more beneath the top of the Gallery than under the King's Apartment.

THE KING'S CHAMBER

The Gallery contracts suddenly at the upper end, and does not lead at once into the King's Chamber. There is first a small low passage, then the Ante-chamber, and another short passage. There is a low granite doorway, and one has to creep beneath the unfallen portcullis or " granite leaf;" another low doorway must be passed before the Chamber is gained. The portcullis, which was intended for closing purposes, is described as a flat stone " found sticking up," which " had never been let down." The distance, says Perring, to the King's Chamber, including the portcullis' space, is 22 feet 1 inch. The height of the passage part is 3 feet 8 inches; the two passages comprehend an extent together of about a dozen feet, five on one side and seven on the other. The sides of the Ante-chamber and passages are of granite.

The Ante-chamber, or Anti-closet of Mr. Greaves, is fitted on each side with four grooves for the reception of portculli or flat stones, to be let down to block up the way to the King's Room from the Gallery. Mr. Smyth made the size 115 pyramid laches. The height is about 14J feet. As he writes, "On either side are opposite sets of broad hollow grooves ; three being very broad ones, and one moderately broad, the latter, though a part of its height is occupied by a granite block or plate, which hangs suspended in it, and underneath which every one must pass."

Greaves wrote thus : " This inner Anti-closet is separated from the former by a stone of red speckled marble, which hangs into two mortices (like the leaf of a sluice) between two walls, more than three feet above the pavement, and wanting two of the roof. Out of this closet we enter another square hole, over which are five lines, cut parallel and perpendicular." A boss has been noticed upon this leaf or portcullis. Each groove has a semi-circular top. A French authority makes, the whole side to be 9 feet 10 inches long; the width of the groove filled by the portcullis is about 20 inches. Three portculli were thus provided for. M. Jomard, nearly eighty years since, thought these three singular travées had no analogy with anything he knew. The height of the portcullis, according to Perring, is 12 feet 5 inches. Mr. Waynman Dixon found a bronze hook near there; it may have belonged to some treasure-seeker of old.

Looking at the Ante-chamber, M. Maillet thought of the first invaders, and exclaimed, " How many difficulties would they not have had to surmount in order to conquer the King's Chamber ! It was," he added, "the last refuge of the architect." In his day the relics of the struggle were to be seen. He observed the fragments of the stones broken by the workmen, now removed to make the way smooth for the bakshish bestowing Englishmen. One great stone, 6 feet by 4, lay before him. His further remarks are noticed in the " Blocking " article.

In Aristotle we read : " Now, as with admiration we behold the tops of the pyramids, but that which is as much more underground opposite to it we are ignorant of ; I speak what I have received from the priests." Yet Strabo had heard of a cell being there.

The King's Chamber is, in spite of the spoliations, a beautiful granite-walled apartment. Noble slabs of granite, 20 feet high, and admirably joined, line the sides. The roof is flat. There is no furniture but the ever-mysterious Coffer or Sarcophagus. Pietro della Valle, in 1615, said, "The pyramid was, perhaps, constructed for several persons; but I have found no tomb in one or the other (chambers)." Sandys wrote admiringly of it, saying, " A goodly chamber twenty foote wide and forty in length; the rooffe of a maruelous height; and the stones so great, that eight floores it, eight rooffes it, eight flagge the ends, and sixteene the sides, all of well wrought Theban marble" (granite).

The story by Mr. Greaves, the Oxford Professor, is too important to omit. He passed through the Anti-closet, crept through "another square hole, over which are five lines cut parallel and perpendicular," and stood " at the north end of a very sumptuous and well-proportioned room." The rest of his account is as follows :—" This rich and spacious chamber, in which art may seem to have contended with nature, the curious work being not inferiour to the rich materials, stands as it were in the heart and centre of the pyramid, equidistant from all the sides, and almost in the midst between the basis and the top. The floor, the sides, the roof of it, are all made of vast but exquisite tables of Theban marble (granite). From the top of it descending to the bottome, there are six changes of stone. Of these, there are nine which cover the roofe ; two of them are lesse by halfe in breadth then the rest, the one at the east end, the other at the west."

Again he writes: " From the top to the bottom of this chamber are six ranges of stone, all of which being respectively sized to an equal height, very gracefully, in one and the same altitude all round the room. The stones which cover this place are of a strange and stupendous length, like so many huge beams lying flat and traversing the room, and withal supporting that infinite mass and weight of the Pyramid above." He truly calls it " a glorious room.

He gives the length of the chamber 34 feet; the breadth, 17TO8O°-J J the height, 19J feet. Perring reckoned it 34 feet 3 inches long, 17 feet 1 inch broad, and 19 feet 1 inch high. From the base of the pyramid to the floor of the chamber it is 138 feet 9 inches. It is beyond the centre, from the entrance side, by 16 feet 3 inches. While the temperature of the pit or well was found by Coutelle to be 25°, that of the chamber was 22°. He noticed, in 1799, a thick bed of dung on the floor. He speaks of an echo in the opening repeating six times. Dr. Eichardson supposed that by removing one of the granite slabs at the side an access might be gained to other chambers.

The Air-Chambers of the chamber are two rectangular holes at the side; which, says Mariette Bey, "may be like the rectangular hole in the partition of the principal chapel of the tomb, or mastaba, which communicated to the deposit of images (of the departed), and before which, it is believed, prayers were said, and incense burnt." But though the very outlet has been found outside, the hole being closed showed that no air could reach the chamber. Sir E. Beckett thought they were " for the benefit of the mummy of the king, or the breathing of the undertakers and masons."

Norden said : " They appear to me vent holes to give air to the chamber." Greaves thought them "receptacles for the burning of lamps." The north channel is 233 feet long, with an angle of 33°. One is 9 inches by 6, and the other 9 by 9. One passes to the north or right side of the pyramid, and the other to the south. Perring notes that they are 3 feet from the floor. One, 8 inches by 6, runs to the north 233 feet; the other southward, 174J feet long, 8£ inches broad, and 9^- inches high. The north channel bears the angle of 33° 42', and the south 45°

INSCRIPTIONS OF THE PYRAMID.

Herodotus was told a tale which he told again, about an account being written on the pyramid of the cost of provisions to the workmen. For radishes, garlic, and onions, the expenditure had been 1600 talents of silver. There is a double meaning undeT these words and the numbers. Somebody has suggested that degrees, minutes, and seconds may have been intended. The Greek, if he understood, shed no light upon the subject, though he added, " If this were really the case, how much more was probably spent in iron tools, and in bread, and in clothing for the workmen !"

Vausleb, in 1673, wrote about the pyramids, "I saw upon some of them some hieroglyphic characters, but I had not time to write them out." Norden, the Dane, sixty years after him, failed to see anything of the sort, and was surprised. " If I conjecture," said he, " that the pyramids, even the latest, have been raised before they had the use of hieroglyphics, I do Dot assert it without foundation. "Who can persuade himself that the Egyptians would have left such superb monuments without the least hieroglyphical inscription? they who were profuse of hieroglyphics upon all the edifices of any consideration."

This remark was followed up by Dr. Templeman, 1792, thus: — " Why might not the same thing have happened to other hieroglyphics that were originally inscribed on the pyramids? And, therefore, the argument is not conclusive to prove that the pyramids were antecedents to hieroglyphics. Herodotus mentions several inscriptions that he saw on the pyramids, but they have vanished long since." The worthy doctor might have known that the climate of Egypt is favourable to the preservation of monuments, and that the inscriptions are usually so deeply engraved upon almost ever-enduring stone, that little or no change can be detected after being in use for at least four or five thousand years.

Then this question seems to rest upon the casing question. Had the pyramid been covered with granite or marble, such inscriptions mentioned by Herodotus would have been upon it, and disappeared with the casing itself.

But why do we see no writing upon the pyramids which retain the casing 1 Bichardson would not interpret the Greek historian literally. " The small part of the coating," he observes, " which remains on the second pyramid has no hieroglyphics. The larger pyramids at Aboukir, Sakkarah, and Dakschour, are all coated, but have no hieroglyphics; and I am humbly of opinion that the Pyramid of Cheops, or that of Mycerinus, had none either."

As the pyramid was to be but a tomb, the ancient Egyptians treated it, ag they did the Sepulchral Chamber of the ordinary burial; tbey left it silent. It was in tbe upper chamber, open to friends, that the hieroglyphics and pictures abounded, as it was there religious service for the dead was often performed. The temples which once, as it seems, stood in front of the pyramids, and were used for the worship of the heroes of the edifices, had, doubtless, their usual inscriptions and adornments. The pyramid was closed, securely closed, and had no tale to tell to passers-by.

At the same time, Herodotus is not alone in his story. It must be allowed that no Eoman and Greek historian mentions the letters. But our Maundeville has something to say about the supposed Granary of Joseph. He wrote thus in 1330:— " and aboven the Gerneres withouten, ben (are) many Scriptures of dyverse languages."

Others about that time have similar narratives. In 1336, Baldensel said he saw a number of inscriptions. There was one in Latin, six lines in extent. Ludolf, the pilgrim, 550 years ago, gave the world a copy of a Latin discourse on one of the two larger pyramids. He distinctly relates the finding of Greek, Latin, and "unknown character" inscriptions, and that upon all the four sides. The Arab authors, who enter more into particulars, speak after the same fashion; so much so, that Lord Lindsay exclaims, " All the early Arab writers bear witness to the existence of these inscriptions." Abd'allatif, in the thirteenth century, added to this information. " These stones," said he, " are covered with writing in that ancient character, of which no one now knows the value. These inscriptions are so numerous that if one could copy upon paper those only which may be seen upon the surface of these two pyramids one would fill more than 6000 pages."

This is plain testimony from personal observation, and goes a long way in support of the theory of the casing. Still, Orientals have a vision far more acute than Europeans, and listen with less critical ears than ours.

At one time it was boldly avowed that no writing was to be seen within or without. But Colonel Howard Vyse, in 1837, found quite a number of hieroglyphics in the Chambers of Construction over the King's Chamber. These rooms were made simply to take the bearing off the roof of the royal apartment, and were not held too sacred for pollution. Perring, in his magnificent work, gives several plates of these inscriptions. He found them on the east and west ends of "Wellington Chamber; the west of Nelson's, the south, west, and north sides of Arbuthnot's; and the east, west, north, and south sides of Campbell's. They are in red paint.

Among these were the quarry marks of King Khufu, or Cheops, such as we recognise in tombs. Two royal names are thus distinguished. One name is phonetic. The Baroness Minutoli, in her charming letters, relates that her husband, in 1826, saw over several doorways, in the Great Pyramid of Saqqarah, decided hieroglyphics; " not hitherto remarked," she truly said, " in the other pyramids." Dr. Lepsius saw the hieroglyphics over the doorways, and detected their extreme antiquity, older than the quarry marks of the Great Pyramid; for, says he, " The encircling line for the king's name is put after the letters expressing it, instead of round them; and a square, instead of oval, banner, or title, is employed." He was a German savant, not a Vandal, yet he cut off this precious writing and carried it away to Europe.

WHEN WAS THE PYRAMID BUILT ?

THIS is not an easy question to solve. "We now discover history to be so full of myths that the difficulties of investigation into the past become sensibly increased. The early chronicles of nations are regarded with suspicion. Though we cease to laugh at them, as formerly was done, we are puzzled to interpret what appears on the surface a collection of absurd fables. Egyptian history is not free from false constructions

Our system of dates did not prevail in olden times. The " year of our Lord " is but some 1200 years old. The Egyptians reckoned events according to the reign of the sovereign. This ancient system is maintained still iu England with official documents, as in proclamations and acts of parliament. So long as we keep the list of rulers correctly, time can be fairly estimated. But when, as with Egyptian dynasties, disputes as to authenticity arise, dates are in utter confusion. Elsewhere reference will be made to this philosophical inquiry.

Of course there is one safe mode of reckoning — by astronomical observation. The heliacal rise of the star Sirius, the dog-star, gave the Egyptians the cycle of 1460 years. Any mention of this in the chronicles of a king will give a startingpoint in the order of time, though failing to show which cycle of 1460 years is indicated. The year 1322 B.C. was one of these epochs. In 1876 M. Chabas discovered the mention of the heliacal rising of Sirius in the ninth reign of King Menkeres, builder of the third pyramid of Gizeh. Was this 1460 years, or twice that number, before 1322 B.C. 1 Was he living 2782 B.C, or 4242 B.CJ No one supposes the Great Pyramid the oldest structure of its kind in Egypt. Sir Edmund Beckett, the German Dr. Lepsius, Mr. H. C. Agnew, and others, are persuaded that the second pyramid is older than the first. While the latter was built by a king of the fourth dynasty, Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, the best English Egyptologist, states that the pyramid of Meydoum was erected: by one: of. the second dynasty. This false pyramid, as it is called, at ElrWasta, is esteemed much older than the Gizeh structures. Tombs of the second dynasty are recognised by Dr. Birch, of the British Museum. The painted statues of the third' dynasty were found by Mariette Bey in the Necropolis about the false pyramid of El-"Wasta. The present inquiry is limited to the date of the Great Pyramid.

Whatever the age, one thing is clear, that the people were then highly civilised. As Hekekyan Bey remarks, "Had they been merely an agricultural people they could not have disposed of superfluous wealth and labour in prosecuting with such constancy undertakings which were unremunerative." It is equally certain that, as the Bev. Mr. Zincke says, "they had already had a long existence." Some writers thought that, because the Great Pyramid had been raised in the fourth dynasty, only a little time had elapsed since the beginning of the race. The queen's chaplain judiciously observes on this : " Men could not pass in 200 years from the first essays in cutting stone to the grandest stone structure, and in nicety of workmanship one of the most perfect instances of stone joinery that has ever been erected. Some of the pyramids themselves, and many of the tombs, are older than the pyramids of Gizeh. A pyramid has been built in the Faioum as far back as the first dynasty of all." Mr. Kenrick speaks thus of the tombs one sees at the foot of the Great Pyramid: " Their walls are covered with paintings and hieroglyphical inscriptions, which give us as clear an insight into the manners and opinions of the Egyptians under the fourth dynasty as those of Thebes under the eighteenth and nineteenth." We must be prepared, then, to run back a long way, not only for the date of the pyramid, but for the rise of civilisation in Egypt. Schliemann's exploration of the site of Troy illustrates the question. He passed through 52 feet of debris to the rock, tracing the separate existence of four cities. He shows that the most recent was founded 700 years before our era, and has been destroyed above a thousand years. For historical Troy he claims a date far higher than previously acknowledged. Yet, beneath that he found the remains of a people wholly different from the Homeric Trojans, and yet so long in being that, while the debris of the Greek city fills up six feet, the nameless town relics are scattered through nineteen feet of depth.

An attempt to gauge the age of the pyramid has been made by means of the supposed chronology of the Bible. But as that has not been settled by tbeologians tbemselves, within thousands of years, the laity have little help from clerical labours. Mr. Gliddon tried to make a comparison with the era of the Deluge; but he gave up in utter despair when he ascertained that Jewish and Christian writers gave no less than 300 different dates for that event. Yet many object to Her Majesty's chaplain asserting that the early Scriptures were "to teach to the Israelites religion, and not to teach history to us."

It is not surprising, therefore, that authorities differ about the age of the pyramid. Sayuti, the Arabian historian, was driven beyond the Deluge for its origin, because he could get no reliable information for it this side of the Flood. To show the disagreement, a few dates may be given. While Norden, the old Danish traveller, put it before Memphis was founded, Volney is content to make it 160 years younger than Solomon's temple, or 860 B.C. Because Homer is silent about it, Goguet declares it was raised since the Trojan war. While M. Jomard attributes it to King Venephes, the fourth of the first dynasty, John Greaves, the Oxford professor, in the time of Charles I., supposes it built about the twentieth dynasty. Kenrick proves that " some of the adjacent tombs contain the shields of kings of the third dynasty.', Sir Gardener Wilkinson writes: " The age of the pyramids themselves is acknowledged by Memphis being already called' the land of the pyramid' in the reigns of Suphis, Papi, and Osirtasen, of the fourth, fifth, and twelfth dynasties." M. Eenan finds the monuments of Thebes "more modern by 3000 years."

Among precise dates others may be cited; as that of Osburn, 2300 B.C.; Nolan, 2123 to 2171 B.C; Wilkinson, 2200 to 2500 B.C.; Fergusson, 2600 to 3900 B.C; Lesueur, 4000 to 5400 B.C ; Bunsen, 3892 B.C. Among those who have further studied history, Dufeu has dates from 4833 to 4923 B.C. Mr. Zincke writes : " We know with equal certainty that they (the pyramids) were built between five and six thousand years ago." Prof. Owen, no mean scientific authority, and no impetuous assertor, assigns " the period of 6109 years from the present date (1875) to the second monarch of the fourth dynasty." Mariette Bey, the founder of the Cairo Museum, and one of the most fortunate of explorers among ruins, puts the fourth dynasty, the era of the pyramids of Gizeh, between 3951 and 4235 B.C. One thing is entirely clear, that the pyramids had ceased to be fashionable at the time of the Hycsos.

In another work, the Lists of Dynasties as given by Manetho, the Egyptian historian, will be fully discussed. It is sufficient here to state, amidst the disputations, that the Lists are not quite decided. Gliddon is severe, if just, when he says, " Josephus, Eusebius, and Julius Africanus differ so much from each other in the several portions of Manetho's history, of which they present the extracts, that, in their time, either great errors had crept into the then existing copies of Manetho, or one or more of them were corrupted by design; especially in the instance of Eusebius, who evidently suppressed some parts, and mutilated others, to make Manetho, by a pious fraud, conform to his own peculiar and contracted system of cosmogony." Many now can endorse these strictures upon the wily Greek Eishop of Caesarea, who lived in an age of pious frauds, opposing sects, and mutual persecutions.

M. Rouge, sensible of chronological difficulties, endeavours to lead our minds up to an approximate date, in a review of what took place in Egypt before the Christain era. " If we come to remember," says he, " that the generations which constructed them are separated from our vulgar era, at first, by the eighteen ages of the second Egyptian empire, then by the time of the Asiatic invasion, and afterwards by several numerous and powerful dynasties, which have left us monuments of their passage, the old age of the pyramids, although not able to be calculated exactly, will lose nothing of its majesty in the eyes of the historian."

It is now generally conceded that we have a certain date for the end of the twentieth dynasty; viz. 1300 B.C. Most Egyptologists agree that there are astronomical data for assuming the eighteenth century before Christ as the time of the kings of the eighteenth dynasty. Rouge believes he has full authority for putting the twelfth dynasty at 3000 B.C. It is a long and uncertain clamber thence to Menes of the first dynasty. He was assumed by Josephus, on no recognised data, to live 1300 years before Solomon. Auguste Mariette Bey places him 5000 B.C. Hekekyan Bey says, "The three largest pyramids of Gizeh being geographical monuments, these retrospective measures on the column of Sothic periods were dated to the close of the sixtieth year of the Sothic period this gave 839. M. Dufeu finds the first pyramid date " 789 Nile years after Menes began to reign." Mr. Gladstone, in his Inventus Mundi, is satisfied with the high numbers, saying, " Modern Egyptology adopts in general the chronological computations of the priest Manetho, as sufficiently corroborated by the deciphered records of the country."

It is easy to pooh-pooh the first eighteen dynasties for which we have to find a place. But we have monuments belonging to kings of most of them, and can read the hieroglyphics they bear. M. Deveria tells his readers that " the first five names of the fourth dynasty are certain." Thus, the era of the Great Pyramid is brought more palpably before us. Without, however, any positive declaration, it may be assumed that English an I Fr:nch Egyptologists are pretty well agreed that the Greit Pyramid was erected about 6000 years ago.

Prof. Piazzi Smyth, of Edinburgh, has, however, come forward with certain highly interesting religious speculations respecting the pyramid, which have intensified the popularity of the subject; and, though the great majority of literary and scientific authorities, here and on the continent, are opposed to his theories, he has put forth astronomical arguments for a date of ereution which demand thoughtful attention.

He assumes that the Great Pyramid was built 2170 years befon Christ. He finds the passage at such an angle, that an observer looking through it 2170 B.C. would observe the Polar star (not our present one, but a Draconis) below the Pole on the mandian at the equinox. Taking that as a remarkable fact, he assumes that the passage was finished at that period. He cites the authority of Sir John Herschel to substantiate his position.

As it U now known that the pyramid was closed absolutely immediately upon completion, Prof. Wackerbarth, of Upsal, takes up his fellow-professor thus :—" This hypothesis is liable to the objection that, the mouth of the passage being walled up, it is not easy to conceive how a star could be observed through it." But this is a fallacious argument; for it may be equally said that, as the coffer or sarcophagus and the King's Chamber were to be for ever shut off from gaze, they had no special meaning in their wonderful measurements. To the question, " "What was the use of the passages 1" one replies, " The answer is, no use at all, but there they are as a matter of fact; and it is no more improbable that the principal passage was designed with a view to recording its date by the Pole star than that an external shape should have been selected because it satisfied certain mathematical conditions, in themselves of still less use than the recording of a date."

Mr. Smyth has a perfect right to assume a date, and then establish arguments to support it. It was natural that he, as an astronomer, should seek an astronomical origin. But is his discovery of a Polar star then looking down that passage, and in conjunction with the movement of the Pleiades in the opposite side of the Pole on the meridian, any more than a happy coincidence1? Because a Draconis was so situated in relation to the passage 2170 B.C, does it necessarily follow that that was the era of construction? Is there anything to prevent Mr. Smyth, or any other man, from selecting another date, earlier or later, which should suit the passing of another Polar star on the meridian t Could we not obtain as many ages as we could discover such astronomical coincidences

As to the weight of Sir John Herschel's authority, it now appears that the worthy man is not responsible for the theory. The Rev. Dr. Nolan naively informs us that, "at the request of Colonel Vyse, Sir J. Herschel calculated the place of the star which was Polar at the time when, according to the reduced chronology, the pyramids were erected." That is, the date was assumed when an interesting heavenly coincidence fitted it. But against the assumed 2170 B.C. there is the weight of Egyptologists' arguments for a more extended period. As Mr. Smyth is an advocate for supposed Biblical chronology, he must surely find it difficult to account for so vast a progress in government, the arts, and material prosperity, during 178 years, the interval between the Deluge and the erection of the pyramid.

As Noah is stated to have lived 350 years after the Flood, he must have died 172 years after the building of the Great Pyramid, according to the professor and his school of thought. If it be said that men who lived so long added largely to the population, and that, in 180 years, millions could have proceeded from the loins of Noah, it is somewhat remarkable that Holy Scripture shall make Adam 130 at the birth of Seth, Methuselah 187 at the birth of Lamech, and give Noah but three sons in 500 years. Surely the disciples of Mr. Smyth have more reverence for Bible dates than to content themselves with so remote an age as 2170 B.C. While the Hebrew Text gives 352 years from the Deluge to Terah, the Vatican LXX. makes the time 1172 years. They who do not pledge themselves to Usher's chronology, for the Deluge or the Creation,, find no difficulty in realising for the era of the Great Pyramid an additional two thousand years.

WHO BUILT THE GREAT PYRAMID?

THE Greeks, who were the talebearers of antiquity, are not always to be relied upon. Not content with telling what they were told, or giving an enlarged version of the same, they too often constructed a pretty story from their own fertile imaginations. The Arabs, as an oriental people, are too fanciful in their narratives. Sober-minded, matter-of-fact Englishmen are quite modern travellers and historians. The question of authorities, therefore, as to the authorship of the pyramid is a puzzling one.

When men looked up at the stupendous building, so dwarfing the structures of their own age, it was quite natural that they should attribute its origin to the giants that lived before the Flood; or, at any rate, to the intellectual giants of that remote period.

An Arab tradition states that Gian ben Gian, the distinguished pre-Adamite Monarch of the World, reared it. Firouzabadi was assured that the Adamites very early procured its erection. The Rev. T. Gabb, in 1806, declared it "the production of those immediate descendants of Seth and the Faithful who adhered to them." He meets one supposed difficulty thus :—" Surely," says he, " the immediate descendants of Seth and Enos were of larger stature than we are." In that way he saw how they could lift stones which other men must needs lift " by jacks." The very sands at its base made the good man exclaim, " This pyramid must have been erected by the Antediluvians; and the universal Deluge, called Noah's Flood, and the description of it in Holy Writ, will account, in a satisfactory manner, for the lodgment of sands on the surface of .the extensive rock." He adds, " These sands, on the subsiding of the waters, were probably very near the summit of the pyramid."

Josephus rehearses the tradition of the Shemites going to Siriad, or Egypt, and erecting there two monuments, one of brick and one of stone, on which they inscribed astronomical discoveries; and one of these must, it is said, be the pyramid. Mr. John Taylor, the celebrated writer on " The Great Pyramid, Who built it 1 and Why was it built 1" says, " To Noah we must ascribe the original idea, the presiding mind, and the benevolent purpose. He who built the ark was of all men the most competent to direct the building of the Great Pyramid."

But honest John Greaves, who visited Egypt in 1637, gathering fable and fact in his travels, gives this excellent story from an Arabic book, which he translated :—

"The writer of the book, entitled Morat Alzeman, writes: ' They differ concerning him that built the pyramids. Some say Joseph, some say Nimrod, some Dalukah the queen, and some that the Egyptians built them before the Floud, for they foresaw that it would be, and they carried thither their treasures, but it profited them nothing. In another place he tels us from the Coptites (or ^Egyptians) that these two greater pyramids, and the lesser, lohich is coloured, are Sepulcher s. In the East pyramid is King Saurid, in the West pyramid his brother Hougib, and in the coloured pyramid Fazfarinoun, the sonne of Hougib. The Sabceans relate that one of them is the sepulcher of Shiit (that is, Seth), and the second sepulcher of Sab, the sonne of Hermes, from whom they are called Sabasans. They goe in pilQnmage thither, and sacrifice at them a cocke and a black calfe, and offer up incense.'" Ibn Abd Alkokm, another Arabian, discoursing of this Argument, confesses that he could not find amongst the learned men in iEgypt, any certaine relation concerning them. Wherefore what is more reasonable (saith he) then that the pyramids were built before the Floud ? For if they had been built after, there would have been some memory of them amongst men ; at last he concludes, The greatest part of chronologers affirmed that he which built the pyramids was Saurid ibn Salhouk, the King of Egypt, who was before the Floud 300 yeares. And this opinion he continues out of the books of the ^Egyptians; To which he addes, The Ooptites mention in their books, that upon them is an inscription ingraven; the exposition of it in Arabicke is this; ' I Saurid, the king, built the Pyramids in such and such a time, and finished them in six yeares; he that comes after me, and sayes he is equall to me, let him destroy them in six hundred yeares ; and yet it is knowne that it is easier to plucke down then to build ; and when I had finished them, I covered them with Szttin, and let him cover them with slats' The same relation I found in severall others of them."

Josephus, full of the glorification of his people, and having the average oriental disregard of strict veracity, and nearly the average oriental power of constructive invention, inclines to the erection by his forefathers. " The Egyptians," he says," inhumanly treated the Israelites, and wore them down in various labours, for they ordered them to divert the course of the river (Nile) into many ditches, and to build walls, and raise mounds, by which to confine the inundations of the river; and, moreover, vexed our nation in constructing foolish pyramids." Mr. Yeates suspects they had nothing to do at Gizeh, but may have made brick ones elsewhere. Norden, the Danish traveller, in 1737, has similar doubts, since the Bible spoke of bricks, and not of stone structures there. " As to what concerns the works on which the Israelites were employed in Egypt," he writes, " I admit that I have not been able to find any remains of bricks burnt in the fire." Calmet supposed Moses and Aaron were foremen of the works. Melchizedek is another of the reported builders.

It appears from Herodotus, whose tales are often mystifying enough, that, though Cheops and his brother erected the pyramids, " no Egyptian will mention their names; but they always attribute their pyramids to one Philition (Philitis), a shepherd, who kept his cattle in those parts." We are further told that this man left Egypt with a following of 240,000 men, and proceeded to the foundation of Jerusalem. Upon this, it is concluded by some that the monuments were erected by the shepherd race. Lord Lindsay says, " There is much reason to believe that they were built by the royal shepherds of Egypt, who afterwards became the Philistines." Mr. Sharpe, the Egyptologist, observes, " The curious remark of Herodotus, that they were called by the name of the shepherd Philitis, is not of sufficient weight against the foregoing reasons to lead us to the conclusion that they were built by the above-mentioned Philistine shepherds." But others have discovered, by arguments convincing to themselves, that this Philitis was none other than the Biblical Melchizedek, seeing that he was King of Salem, that is, of Jerusalem, founded by Philitis.

The shepherd story brings to mind the Hindoo narrative of some early race of India, the Pali, who were a shepherd people, ancestors of the present aboriginal Bheels, succeeding once 111 conquering Egypt. Their stronghold, Abaris, is, in Sanscrit, a shepherd ; Goshena, in Sanscrit, is the land of shepherds. We read in the Hindoo Puranas of a Avar between the gods and the earthborn Yoingees. The latter were vanquished, and retreated to Egypt. Mr. Wilson, the learned writer on the astronomy of the ancients, asks, "Were the Yoingees, the pyramidal builders, instructed in all useful arts, and spread overall the earth in the earliest ages, the same as the powerful hierarchy, the pyramidal builders, the constructors of canals for commerce and irrigation, and instructors in the useful arts, that have been traced by their monuments and standards erected in remote ages round the entire world ? " The Rev. E. B. Zincke is satisfied that these builders "must have been mainly Aryan; that is, of the same race a3 ourselves." Mr. Gliddon, the American Egyptologist, for many years resident on the Nile, writes, " The builders of our pyramids were Mizraimites, children of Ham, of the Caucasian race ;" that is, white men.

Murtadi, the Arab historian, attributes the erection to Bardesi, of Noah's family, who "made the great laws, built the pyramids, and set up for idols the figures of the stars."

Murtadi, the Arab historian, attributes the erection to Bardesi, of Noah's family, who "made the great laws, built the pyramids, and set up for idols the figures of the stars."

Herodotus, the father of history, sometimes appears to know more than he thinks judicious to tell in plain vernacular, and has an esoteric meaning beneath the words. He distinctly gives Cheops the merit of the erection, and the writer found the donkey-boys of Cairo do so still. But M. Chabas is quite wroth at "the ridiculous accounts" of Herodotus; especially at his story of the failure of funds, and the renewal of the same by the self-sacrifice of the king's daughter, who exacted the reward of a stone from each of her lovers.

But who was Cheops, or Xeopos ? According to one story of the Greek historian, he was an infidel tyrant, who closed the temples of the gods, and was an object of horror to his people. According to the monuments themselves, whose hieroglyphics we are now able to read, he was a pious king, who planned a temple to Hathor, the virgin mother of the gods, offered images of gold and ivory to the gods, and wrote "the Sacred Book." "Well may Mr. Birch of the British Museum say, " The religion of the country was already reduced to a system." This Cheops, corrupted by the Greeks to Xeopos, for convenience of sound, was Shoofo. Murtadi, the Arab authority of the sixteenth century, declares that in his day tradition ascribed the building to Soyoof. Memphis is said to have once had a palace called " the abode of Shoopho." Mr. Gliddon alludes to the discovery of the tomb of " Eimei, chief priest of the habitations of King Shoopho," near the Great Pyramid; and adds, " This is probably that of the architect, according to whose plans and directions the mighty edifice,—near the foot of which he once reposed,—the largest, best-constructed, most ancient, and most durable of mausolea in the world, was built." "We have the name of this king in tablets of the old copper mine of Mount Sinai, whereon he is described as "pure king and sacred priest." The same name occurs on a building in the Thebaid. Eratosthenes speaks of King Saopbis, the many-haired; and, in Coptic, shoo is many, and pho is hair.

As Khufu or Khoofoo he is also recognised. He is the Suphis of Manetho, the Egyptian historian in the time of the Ptolemies. " Shafra," says Baron Bunsen, " built the upper part of the pyramid, and Khufu the other." Mr. Perring, to whom we are so much indebted for accurate measurements, speaks of two kings —Khufu and his brother Khnemu-Khufu, the latter being the Cheops of Herodotus, though the first erected the Second Pyramid, so called, before the great one was begun. Shafra, or Chephren, further confuses the story. He is styled on the monuments " the Great of the Pyramid," and is called co-regent by Perring. Cheops, Xuf u, Souphis, or Suphis, was the successor, though not, apparently, the son, of Snefru, the conqueror of the Sinai peninsula, and whose wife, Mer-t-tefs, allied herself afterwards to Cheops. " A crowd of functionaries of all orders attest to the riches and power of his government," says the French Archaeological Review.

Mr. Piazzi Smyth whitewashes the character of Cheops from the charges of Herodotus concerning cruelty, impiety, &c. The Professor holds that the Hycsos branch of the Biblical patriarchs were led by Divine influence to invade and subdue Egypt; though, it would appear, only to erect the pyramid, and be off again to Palestine. The quarry marks of the Construction Chambers indicated Cheops and Cephren as the builders. "We must, according to his theory, make them Hycsos, and true worshippers of the One God. Here is his defence against the Egyptian calumny :—

" This is what they (the Egyptians) did not forgive; viz., that King Shofo (Cheops or Suphis) ' overthrew their temples, and was the first to put a stop to the sacrifices.' King Nou-Shofo (Chephren) afterwards continuing, or at the time assisting in the same regime; and this the Egyptians term ' inflicting on them every kind of evil.' Some very good men among the moderns, without weighing well from whom this testimony comes, and without considering the reverse teaching of that sacred warning, ' Woe unto you when all men shall speak well of you ! for so did their fathers to the false prophets,' describe these two kings as ' given over to every kind of profligacy and wickedness ;' but had such been their characteristics they could not have methodised and steadily employed the industry of a primeval nation through a long period of years so successfully as to have produced at last, in the Great Pyramid, the largest and best built monument which the earth has even yet to show." He then concludes that the hatred of the people " proves that they, the said two kings, must have been thoroughly Hycsos in heart, if they were not also in birth and descent."

Pyramid Facts, in this instance, as in so many others, present another story to that of the Fancies. These two kings were Egyptian. Hieroglyphics in Egypt, in the pyramid, and at the peninsula of Sinai, prove them to be ordinary Egyptian kings of a regular dynasty; that they were builders, but not destroyers of temples; that they adored the heathen deities of the land; and that they were altogether un-Hycsos, in the Professor's sense of that term, in heart as well as birth and descent

Let us turn aside a moment to get light, if possible, from the other historian, Diodorus. This is his story :—" With regard to the pyramids, there is no agreement either among the native authorities or the Greek historians. Some say they were built by Chemmis, Cephren, and Mycerinus. Some assign them to other names; as the Great Pyramid to Armaeus, the second to Amosis, and the third to Inaros. Some, again, say that the third pyramid is the tomb of Ehodopis, the courtesan, which was built by a contribution of several of the monarchs, her former lovers." Pliny has less to say, declaring that the names of the builders have been obliterated by time. There is a wonderful Cinderella tale told about the Ehodopis of ISTaucratis, whose fairylike slipper, being carried off by an eagle, was dropped in the lap of the king in Memphis, who could not rest satisfied till he got the owner of the pretty shoe. But we are bothered further to learn that Nitocris was the fair builder of the Third Pyramid. As her name, like that of Ehodopis, means rosy-cheeked, Lepsius safely concludes they were both wives of the same Pharaoh. But an ancient writer has a romantic narrative of a Ehodopis, who was a fellow-slave to iEsop, and the sister-in-law of Sappho, the ill-fated poetess; the beauty got decoyed from Greece to Egypt.

M. Dufeu, a modern and most learned writer upon the pyramids, regards Snefru as Cephrenus, the last of the third dynasty of kings, who, upon the completion of the passage of the Great Pyramid, assumed the name of Soris, the first of the fourth dynasty, the Saurid of the Arab historians. As this sovereign was certainly worshipped up to the very time of the Ptolemies, toward the era of Christianity, Dufeu exclaims, " Why this deification and this persistent worship if Cephrenus had not given to Egypt a monument of an importance thus complete for his country ?" He is, however, reputed the constructor of the Second Pyramid, yet he is associated with Khufu in the quarry marks of the Great Pyramid. A story is told of his daughter being buried in the figure of a cow. We have his statue in diorite in the museum at Cairo. A bas-relief, at Sinai, describes him as " the King of High and Low Egypt, the lord of diadems, lord of truth, hawk of gold, Snefrou," &c. Elsewhere he is called " the great god :" a title given thus early to Egyptian kings. A great authority remarked, " This bas-relief is, at present, the most ancient of the known historical monuments, at least among those which are dated by Cartouches." The tombs of the family of this monarch have been found at Gizeh, near the pyramid

The discovery, in the very pyramid itself, of quarry marks with the cartouche or oval of the royal builders has settled the question. The hieroglyphics give the name of Shofo. This is the Cheops of Herodotus, the Suphis of Manetho ; which " two names," says M. Chabas, " are the regular transcription of the Egyptian Khoufou." This distinguished French Egyptologist thus refers to the question : "The Great Pyramid of Gizeh has been constructed by King Khoufou, whose legend has been discovered, written a la sanguine upon the interior blocks of the chambers of discharge, which the architect has placed upon the ceiling of the great funeral salle, to replace the arches. These inscriptions, which have been traced to the moment of construction, decide by themselves alone, in the most incontestable manner, the question of the destination of the pyramid." At the same time, as Chephren is named with him in the pyramid, he was probably a helper in the undertaking.

As some of one particular school of religious thought—Prof. Piazzi Smyth, &c,—believe Melchisedek, as Philitis, to have been the constructor of the. Great Pyramid, others, like Capt. Tracey, R. N., advance in the theory, and proclaim the very Saviour Himself the builder.

These are the Captain's words in a recent work : " We may from Scripture show that our Lord, as Melchisedek, had to do with the Great Pyramid, as the Great Architect thereof; for God, speaking to Job oat of the whirlwind, demands of him (Job xxxviii. 18), ' Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth ? Declare if thou knowest it all.' This implies that none but God Himself could know it, consequently, none could have been the architect of the Great Pyramid but one who knew the counsels of the Almighty ; and who could this be but our Lord. Jesus Christ ? " He further affirms :—" The first appearance of our Lord as Melchisedek, King of Salem, leads me to believe that all His appearances from Babel to Abraham were as Melchisedek." Elsewhere he writes, " Melchisedek was really our Lord."

SMALLER PYEAMIDS OF GIZEH.

THOUGH the Great Pyramid has been the main object of enquiry, some reference to its neighbours will not be out of place.

The plateau of Gizeh, high above the region inundated by the Nile, was selected for a burial-ground in the earliest times of Egyptian history. The pyramids there are but lofty, royal tombs amidst a vast number of sepulchres. But that which excites astonishment is that we should have such noble architectural monuments remaining, appropriated as memorials to deceased princes, priests, and women, with nothing left to mark even the site of towns inhabited by them when living.

The pyramids there are surrounded by graves, not a few of which are older than the oldest of these pyramids. The Great is called the First, because the chief in size and interest. The second is not much its inferior. The third is considerably less, though the most perfect and beautiful. Then come six other structures, of far less extent. Norden, 150 years ago, wrote : " There are four of them that deserve the greatest attention of the curious, though we see seven or eight others in the neighbourhood."

Most of the smaller ones are eastward of the Great Pyramid. Thevenot said, " Before each of the pyramids are the marks of certain buildings, which to some seem to have been so many temples." They were, however, but small pyramids. Doubtless some pyramids have totally disappeared. Before each, as is believed, a temple formerly stood, in which religious rites were performed for the deceased king.

The Ninth Pyramid is supposed to have once stood 101 feet in height, though now but 80. The length is 160. It possesses a subterranean chamber 12\ feet long, 9| wide, and 8£ high.

The Eighth Pyramid, to the east of the great one, which it resembles in its work, has been thought the tomb of Cheops' daughter. Its height, once 111, is now 55 feet. The original length was 172| feet. The funeral chamber is 12| by 10J feet.

The Seventh Pyramid, according to Mr. P. S. Perring, C. E., had the area of the eighth. It is now but a mound of sand 45 feet high. The chamber is declared llf by 9f, with an anteroom, 13 feet 10 inches, by 5 feet 10.

The Sixth is south of the third. It had formerly a base of 102|feet, and height of 69 J. There is a passage 47| feet long, leading to a chamber 26 feet long by 11 feet 4 inches broad.

The Fifth is cased with Mokattam marble. It was opened in 1837, •when it was described by Col. Yyse and Mr. PerringThe base is 138 feet, but had been 145£. The height was 93J, of which 83 feet 4 inches remain; the top is 14 feet. The passage of entry was found 56£ feet in length, with a horizontal passage, 13 feet 7 inches long, 3 feet 5 inches wide, and 4 feet 1 inch high. The chamber of the dead is 25 feet 6 inches long, 25 feet 2 inches broad, and 8 feet 9 inches high. There was a sarcophagus 6 feet 2 inches long, 1 foot 9J inches broad, and 2 feet 1 inch deep. Its only contents were some red pottery, burnt reeds, and charcoal. There was no hieroglyphical writing.

The Fourth Pyramid is of deeper interest, though small in size. Herodotus referred to it. It is the middle one of the southern group. Norden charges Greaves with applying to the third what should have been said of the fourth. " Its summit," says the Dane, "is of a yellow stone, of the quality of that of Portland." The top is called a cube. The height is put at 69£ feet, but was once 82. The base is called 153 by Bunsen, though Perring found it 102^. An inclined passage, at the angle of 27°, is 27 feet long, 3J wide, and Z\ high. It leads to a chamber 19 feet 2 inches long, 8 feet 9 wide, and 10 feet 4 high. The granite sarcophagus was 5 feet 10 inches long, 1 foot 6 wide, and 1 foot 11J deep. There were no hieroglyphics about it; and the contents were bones, earth, and wood-ashes. According to Chevalier Bunsen, it was the tomb of Mycerinus II. The Fourth and Sixth Pyramids differ from the rest in being Pyramids of Degrees, not of ordinary steps.

THE THIRD PYRAMID. Belon, in 1548, said, "it is yet entire, having no touch of ruin." Villamont saw it in 1589, and reported that it was "built entirely of marble." As the lower half of the casing is of granite, and the upper of marble, the French traveller failed in his observation, or was in fault with mineralogy. He mentioned that it was "entirely preserved." That it was well covered appears from his surprise that no steps were left to mount by. But.a determined effort was made toward the end of the eighteenth century to break into it, and a number of stones were withdrawn. The height of the granite is 36 feet 9 inches on the western side, and 25 feet 10 inches on the northern.

This is usually called the Pyramid of Mycerinus, or Menkeres, and was built not very long after the first. Some say that the rosy-cheeked Mtocris was buried there. The granite casing has given it the appellation of the Red Pyramid. The twelve lower courses of the casing are of red granite. Much was removed before Mehemet Ali carried off the fine slabs. After the failure of others, Col. Vyse succeeded in effecting an entrance on the north, in 1837. Though a passage partly lined with granite ran 104 feet, at an angle of 26° 2', all other parts were solid, and the chambers had to be hewn out of the mass. The Mamelukes had attempted a breaking in at 71 feet from the base. The lower excavation is 35 feet from the base.

The entrance was most carefully hidden. The passages and the chambers were closed by the fall of the portcullis, or filled with blocks of stone, the same as with the Great Pyramid. The base is 354J feet. The height, now but 203, was formerly 261. The square top is about 16 feet; the angle of the side is 51°. The anteroom—at the bottom of the incline—found filled with stones—is 12 feet long, 10 feet 5 inches wide, and 7 feet high. There is a large room with the dimensions of 46 feet 3 inches by 12 feet 7 inches, and from 12 feet 11 inches to 13 feet 4 inches in height. The Sepulchral Chamber beneath the east end of the large apartment is 21 feet 8 inches long, 8 feet 7 wide, 11 feet 3 inches high. The pentroof was of two huge blocks of stone. The chamber was lined with 2| feet thick granite slabs, fastened by iron cramps. The passages were lofty, being 4 feet 9 inches high.

The sarcophagus was the great object of interest. Mr. Yyse, before reaching this spot, guessed from appearances that some one had been before him. The ramps had been inserted after the coffer had been placed. The outside measurement of the basaltic tomb was 8 feet long, 3 feet 1 inch wide, 2 feet 11 high; the inside, 6 feet 5 inches, by 2 feet 0£ inches, and 2 feet 0| inches deep. If a passage had been forced, the body had been removed before the enclosure. Bunsen thinks it was removed by the ancient Egyptians. There is a tradition mentioned by Edrisi, 1245, of a corpse having been seen there, and that beside it were golden tablets inscribed with unknown characters.

The interesting, but lidless, sarcophagus, weighing three tons, was despatched to London in 1838. Unfortunately the vessel sank with its burden near Gibraltar. The Mummy Board, however, came safely to the British Museum. On this is a prayer to Osiris. Though the tomb was partially opened by Count Caviglia, it was first explored by Col. Vyse in 1837.

THE SECOND PYRAMID. Upon the observation of Herodotus that this was 40 feet lower than the Great Pyramid, Mr. Agnew writes, "He could neither mean the perpendiculars of the pyramid nor the line bisecting the face." It needs interpretation, like the Arab tradition, that there once stood upon the top an image of gold 40 cubits high.

According to Arabian authority, the coating was entire at the beginning of the twelfth century. Mr. Agnew remarks that " the darkish colour which the surface has acquired seems to have led some travellers into the error of supposing that the Second Pyramid was cased with granite." Belon, in the sixteenth century, speaks of it being cemented outside; and adds that " the part which looks to the north is consumed with humidity." Thevenot wrote, " The Second Pyramid is shut up, and has no steps without." Though covered in 1638, the marble now comes but from 130 to 150 feet from the top. The lower tiers, says Herodotus, were faced with granite. The casing is 130 feet on one side, and 150 on the other. The top, broken somewhat, is 8 feet in extent.

A curious report is believed by some, that a Cufic inscription has been seen upon the top. It has not been copied, and the toeing of the crevices in the marble casing is not safe for even the agile Arab, who will now, for a franc, run from your side on the platform of the Great Pyramid down to the sands, and up to the casing of the second, in a marvellously short time. There is a pavement below, some 36 feet broad. The building contains 65,928,000 cubic feet, with a weight of 4,883,000 tons.

The base, once 707f feet, is now 690f, according to Perring; 684, by Belzoni; and 695, by Wilkinson. The height, says Sir Gardner, was 466, and is 439 feet; but, by Perring's measure, 454J once, and 447J now. Belzoni made 456 feet above the pavement; which, deducting 15 for the pedestal, leaves 441. Three feet have been lost from the top. It stands upon 11 acres, or two less than its neighbour. The rock was levelled for its construction. Mr. Agnew noticed that "the diagonals of the two Great Pyramids which join the south-west and north-east corners are in thè same direction, but not quite in the same line." The angle is placed by him at 52° 25' 17". The second has nearly the same orientation as the first, from which it is only 500 feet removed.

This pyramid is generally attributed to Khenun Khufu, or Shafra, brother of Cheops, the builder of the first pyramid. By the Greeks the builder is named Chephrenes, Chephren, or Cephren. His statue, cut out of diorite, and found in the pit of the Sphinx temple, is a magnificent piece of art, and exhibits quite a Caucasian style of face. Mr. Agnew considers that the second was commenced before the first was finished, and the third was begun before the completion of the second. The pro portion of the second to the first is as 7 is to 8.

Belzoni, in 1818, had the good fortune to open this pyramid. The Arabs usually call it after him now. He found the port cullis difficulty in the passages. Chambers are made in the solid masonry ; some are above the base, and others in the rock. Two entrances lead to the interior; the upper, 50 feet from the base ; the lower, beneath the pavement. The Upper Passage has an angle of 26° 41', according to Bunsen ; but Perring makes it 25° 55'. It is 3 feet 5£ inches wide, and 5 feet 10 inches high. The length to Belzoni's chamber is 128 feet 4 inches; but 104 feet 10 inches to the Horizontal Passage. The latter is 27 feet loDg, 5f wide, and 3 high. Both passages are lined with granite. The lower inclined passage is 96—4 x 3—5J x 3—11 high. The angle is 22° 15'. It is 100 feet from the portcullis to the mouth of the lower entrance. The portcullis was 15 inches thick. It guarded the passage to the sepulchral chamber. Excepting a portion of the upper passage, all the excavations are below the level of the base.

The chamber called Belzoni's, having a painted roof, is 46 feet long, 16 wide, and 22|- high. There is another 11x6 feet. The lower sepulchral chamber, whose roof is 90 feet below the base of the pyramid, is said by Perring to be 34 feet 1 inch long, 10 feet 2 inches wide, and 6 feet to 8 feet 5 inches high. The sarcophagus, found buried level with the floor, measured on the outside 8 feet 7 inches by 3 feet 6| inches, and 3 feet high; on the inside, 7 feet by 2 feet 2^ inches, and a depth of 2 feet 5 inches. It was of granite, and had no hieroglyphics.

No body was discovered, though bones of the Sacred Bull were lying near. Diodorus heard that the priests, who cordially hated the monarch, forbade his corpse being conveyed thither. As the floor exhibited marks of disturbance, Mr. Perring dug down 36 feet; but without finding anything.

Some hieroglyphics have been discovered near the north-west angle. A tradition exists that one Mohammed Ahmed opened the pyramid a thousand years ago. Chevalier Bunsen says, " This pyramid, as well as those of earlier date, to which it assimilates in every respect, has no chambers in the inside, but that it merely covered with its artificial giant top the sepulchral chamber hewn out of the rock under its centre." Several writers imagine from the rudeness of its structure, and inferiority of it3 workmanship, that it preceded the Great Pyramid by many years.

WHY WAS THE PYRAMID BUILT

SIR Walter Scott, commonly supposed a man of taste and cultured imagination, spoke of the pyramid as " disagreeable in form, and senseless in utility." A certain writer once remarked of these monuments, " They are nothing at all but heaps of stones." A prosaic Yankee thus recorded his sentiments : " A pyramid is nothing but dollars.—We have got the pyramids in our pockets, and can set them up any day we please."

On the other hand, we have Mr. Gliddon saying, " What monuments on earth have given rise to more fables, speculations, errors, and misconceptions 1" This, at any rate, proves the interest they have excited in the minds of men. It is only in our own day that literature and science, not less than poetry and religion, have been directed thither with perfect enthusiasm. To no one man are we so much indebted for the popular feeling in favour of the Great Pyramid, as to Prof. Piazzi Smyth. By making it truly holy ground, by demonstrating, to the satisfaction of many, the divine authorship of the institution, he has surrounded it with a halo it never wore before

The views entertained as to the object of the erection will now be mentioned.

1. BARRIERS AGAINST THE DESERT SANDS.

This opinion was expressed by M. Fialin de Persigny in 1845, who spoke of "the destination and permanent utility of the pyramids of Egypt and Nubia against the sandy irruptions of the desert."

2. SATAN'S SEAT

Sir Thomas Browne, who flourished in the Elizabethan age, declares that " these dark caves and mummy repositories are Satan's abodes."

3. IMITATION OP NOAH'S ARK OR TOWER OP BABEL.

Mr. Thomas Yeates, in 1833, wrote, "The Great Pyramid soon followed the Tower of Babel, and had the same common origin." Again, " Whether it was not a copy of the original Tower of Babel? And, moreover, whether the dimensions of these structures were not originally taken from the Ark of Noah 1" Elsewhere he has it: " The measures of the Great Pyramid at the base do so approximate to the measures of the Ark of Noah in ancient cubit measure, that I cannot scruple, however novel the idea, to draw a comparison. The form of the Ark was quadrangular, and consisted of equal sides or parallelograms, of which the measures of one is given in three numbers, 300, 50, and 30 cubits." He assures us that it was made for floating only; and. that its four sides were each of three stories to accommodate the large number of persons required to look after so many animals for a whole year.

4. FILTERING RESERVOIRS.

A Swedish philosopher gave it as his opinion that pyramids were simply contrivances for purifying the water of the muddy Nile, which would pass through their passages.

5. TO PLEASE THE WOMEN

Mr. Gable informs his. readers that, as pyramids have no access, " it appears not that the founders of them had any such laudable design of transmitting to posterity scientific specimens," as some had supposed; " hence they appear to have been erected for no geometrical purpose." Having, however, ascertained (how, he says not) that they were raised by those, " who, after their intermarriages with the daughters of men, became, not only degenerate despisers of useful knowledge, but altogether abandoned to luxury,"—it is uot surprising that he should have found out that it was to please these women, who requested the sons of God to employ their leisure after that fashion.

6. THE QUEEN OF SHEBA'S GIFTS.

Orientals may be excused telling romantic tales of this romantic lady traveller; but Mr. "Wathen, in 1842, said that " the offerings of the Queen of Sheba are now beheld in the indestructible masses of the pyramids."

7. JOSEPH'S GRANARIES.

Benjamin of Toledo, the travelled Jew of the Middle Ages, advanced this opinion, which he had gathered in the East. Vossius heard somehow that the Pharaoh had " magazined" a great quantity of wheat there. The Monk Fidelis says the same. An American writer, in 1876, must have astonished and shocked some folks, by his bold assertion, learnt somewhere or somehow, that " according to the hypothesis of Prof. Piazza Smyth, the object of the Great Pyramid was to convert it into a granary in time of famine " (!).

Maundeville, about 1330, got the complete story. "The Gernares of Joseph," says he, "that he lete make, for to kepe the greynes for the peril of the dere zeres. Thei ben (are) made of ston, full welle made of masonnes craft, of the whiche two ben merveyllouse grete and hye, and to these ne ben not so gret; and every Gerner hath a zate (gate) for to entre withinne, a lytille highe fro the Erthe, for the lond is wasted and fallen sithe the Gerners were made. And within ne thei ben alle fulle of serpentes. And aboven the Gerners withouten ben many Scriptures of dyvcrse languages. And sum men seyn (say) that thei ben sepultures of grete lordes that weren sometyme; but that is not trewe ; for alle the comoun rymour and speche is of alle the ppple there, both fer and nere, that thei ben the Gerners of Joseph. And so fynden thei in here Scriptures and in here cronycles. On that other partie, zif thei weren sepultures thei sholden not ben voyd withinne. For yee may well knowe that tombes and sepultures ne ben not made of such gretnesse, ne of such highnesse."

THE EQUINOXES.

It is an old classical notion that the pyramid, at certain times, never throws a shadow. There was a pretty general impression that it was erected as a true chronometer by marking solar changes. Plato, in this sense, called it the dial. Other contrivances were known that indicated these astronomical effects. The well at Syene reflected in its waters the image of the sun at the summer solstice. The equinoctial and solstitial points were in the very early times correctly observed.

The pyramid on the north side was in shadow from the autumnal to the vernal equinox, but light from the vernal to the autumnal at midday. It, therefore, followed that those who stood at the centre of the north base, at the equinox, would see the sun resting on the apex of the pyramid.

The orientation of the pyramid being so nearly perfect, having for its error, says Sir Edmund Beckett, but 5', or one foot in its base line of 761, enables the structure to act as a gnomon. I may have been more exact once, there being some evidence of a twist, as from an earthquake. M. Defvignoles remarks that this orientation " could have served for the Egyptians to determine the time of the equinoxes, when the sun begins to enlighten the northern face, or when he ceased to shine there." This would only occur when the years of equinoxes suited the sun's rising. Mr. Stewart, of America, has some observations :—" It follows from these dimensions, and the latitude under which this pyramid is erected, that fourteen days before the spring equinox, the precise period at which the Persians celebrated the revival of nature, the sun would cease to cast a shade at midday, and could not again cast it until fourteen days after the autumnal equinox. Then the day, or the sun, would he found in the parallel or circle of southern declension, which answers to 5° 15'; this would happen twice a year—once before the spring, and once after the fall, equinox. The sun would then appear exactly at midday upon the summit of this pyramid."