Giza Pyramids

“ Our donkeys’ hoofs now sank deep in the Libyan sands, and we looked up to the great stone-piles of Cheops, Cephrenes and Mycerinus, not more than half a mile distant. Our sunrise view of the Pyramids on leaving Gizeh, was sufficient, had I gone no further, and I approached them, without the violent emotion which sentimental travellers experience, but with a quiet feeling of the most perfect satisfaction. The form of the pyramid is so simple and complete, that nothing is left to the imagination. ”

“ The hand of man has wrought more destruction in a few centuries than Nature herself wrought in two or three thousands of years. What man built, man has partly destroyed; yet man, with all his ingenuity for destruction, has done little but touch the outer surface of the Great Pyramid.
THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH, ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD, WITH THE GREAT SPHINX IN THE FOREGROUND, LAPPED BY THE ETERNAL SANDS OF THE DESERT
There are nearly eighty Pyramids of different sizes scattered throughout the Nile valley. ”

“ Hitherto they have attracted but little of that examination which discovers the most curious secrets, but their size and the beauty of their masonry will ever make the three great pyramids of Gizeh the most striking objects to the traveller and to the historian of art.
Considering their age, these three pyramids are wonderfully well preserved. In their presence, even in their actual state of partial ruin, the oriental hyperbolism of Abd-ul-Latif, an Arab writer of the thirteenth century, seems no more than natural. "All things fear Time," he cries, "but Time fears the Pyramids!" ”

“ The pyramid standing next the Great Pyramid, and nearly of equal size, is said by Herodotus to have been raised by the brother of Cheops. The other pyramids at Gizeh are usually regarded as later in date. But the exact era of the reign or reigns of their builders has not as yet been determined, in consequence of the [Pg 226] break made in Egyptian chronology by the invasion of the Shepherd Kings.
In their mode of building, the various pyramids of Gizeh, etc., are all similar, and the Great Pyramid does not specially differ from the others. ”

“ The visitor to the Egyptian Pyramids who gazes in wonder on those colossal structures which remain to attest the activity of races long since passed away, little dreams, perhaps, that in the dust which he treads beneath his feet, or which whirls in wind-tossed eddies round his head, there exist particles of so great antiquity, that the vast age of the Pyramids shrinks into littleness beside it. Such particles also may be found by the traveller in the snows which cover the higher slopes of Mont Blanc, and on other parts of the earth’s surface. ”

“ Thus it was supposed that the king would begin by hastily erecting a pyramid large enough to contain the essential parts of a tomb; and then, year by year, would add fresh layers around the first core, until the time when his death for ever arrested the growth of the monument. But the facts do not justify this hypothesis. The smallest of the pyramids of Sakkarah is that of Ûnas, who reigned thirty years; while the two imposing pyramids of Gizeh were raised by Khûfû and Khafra (Chephren) , who governed Egypt, the one for twenty-four, and the other for twenty-three years. ”

“ We cannot tear ourselves away from this fascinating window even for a moment; far in the distance across the green fields and waving palm trees we see glimpses of the desert, looking pinkish-yellow, and rising up in it, changing with every mile we travel, are many pyramids, not only those famous ones at Gizeh we visited yesterday, but others stretching farther and farther away. ”

“ Mighty blocks weighing many tons must have often slipped and crushed the workers to death. Many of the labourers must have been maimed for life; legs were broken, arms smashed, heads and bodies crushed, as the blocks rolled and swerved in their progress.
From inferences from papyri, the great Pyramids were looked upon by the Egyptians as one of their plagues, as a scourge to the land. Men were pressed into the work, were compelled to go on with it. What mattered it to Khufu if his subjects and slaves died, so long as he built a home that would last his shadow-self for ever? ”

“ Yonder stands the Spirit of the Pyramids, there on its very crest, clad all in white.”
“Nay,” answered another, “it is clad in black.”
“There must be two of them,” called a third, “one in white and one in black. Without doubt these are no spirits, but those we seek, the Prince Khian and the priest, who all this while have dwelt not in the pyramid but on its crest.”
“Fool,” cried a voice, “how can men live for weeks in such a place? These are ghosts, I say. Have we not heard that the pyramids are haunted. Look! The thing mocks us, making signs with its arms.” ”

“ The pyramids stand on a high rock plateau, this group forming next to the northernmost of the series of regal and aristocratic cemeteries built in the neighborhood of the extinct capital Memphis, which lay on the same side of the Nile, somewhat south of Gizeh, and which flourished between 3400 and 2000 B.C. The greatest pyramid, which lies nearest the modern road, was built by King Cheops or Khufu about 2800 B.C., and stands more than 450 feet in perpendicular height. ”

“ The monuments that remain are almost exclusively tombs and temples. The tombs are, generally speaking, all met with on the east or right bank of the Nile: among them must be classed those grandest and oldest monuments of Egyptian skill, the [16] Pyramids, which appear to have been all designed as royal burying-places. A large number of pyramids have been discovered, but those of Gizeh, near Cairo, are the largest and the best known, and also probably the oldest which can be authenticated. ”

“ Compared with the vast periods of time thus brought before our thoughts as among the demonstrated yet inconceivable truths of science, the life-time of such a structure as the great pyramid seems but as the duration of a breath. Yet, viewed as men must view the works of man, the pyramids of Egypt derive a profound interest from their antiquity. Young, compared with the works of nature, they are, of all men's works, the most ancient. ”

“ This undulating table-land of sand and rock, pitted with open graves and cumbered with mounds of shapeless masonry, is wholly unlike the desert of our dreams. The pyramids of Cheops and Chephren are bigger than we had expected; the pyramid of Mycerinus is smaller. Here, too, are nine pyramids, instead of three. They are all entered in the plans and mentioned in the guide-books; but, somehow, one is unprepared to find them there, and cannot help looking upon them as intruders. These six extra pyramids are small and greatly dilapidated. One, indeed, is little more than a big cairn. ”

“ Still, whatever gloomy associations attach to the pyramids in respect of the sufferings caused by their erection, as monuments they must always challenge a certain amount of admiration. A great authority declares: "No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great Pyramid without being struck with astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill displayed in its construction. The immense blocks of granite brought from Syene, a distance of five hundred miles, polished like glass, and so fitted that the joints can scarcely be detected! ”

“ One of the Pyramids at Sakkara is almost a rival for the full-grown monster at Ghizeh; others are scarcely more than vast heaps of brick and stone: these last suggested to me the idea that after all the Pyramid is nothing more nor less than a variety of the sepulchral mound so common in most countries (including, I believe, Hindustan, from whence the Egyptians are supposed to have come) . ”

“ The pyramid was never a family monument, but belonged—like all other Egyptian tombs—to one person, members of the royal family having sometimes lesser pyramids adjoining the king's (as at Khufu's) ; the essential idea of the sole use of a tomb was so strong that the hill of Gizeh is riddled with deep tomb-shafts for separate burials, often running side by side 60 or 80 ft. deep, with only a thin wall of rock between; and in one place a previous shaft has been partially blocked with masonry, so that a later shaft could be cut partly into it, macled with it like a twin-crystal. ”

“ If placed in the City Hall Park, the Pyramid of Cheops would have covered nearly all its surface; its top would have risen two hundred feet above the spire of Trinity Church; the first object seen by the voyager entering the Narrows would have been this immense and useless structure. The folly of man was never better shown than in the building of the Pyramids. The Egyptians were houseless, naked, starved, that the Pharaohs might rest in their indestructible tombs.
The Egyptians lived, in general, at ease. They were shut out from the world, and few strangers were suffered to pass up the Nile. ”

“ The Pyramids still stood four-square to the sandstorms of the desert as they had stood for ages, the Sphinx regarded the Nile with the same inscrutable gaze that had puzzled the ancients. Throughout Egypt were mighty ruins, but little was known about them.
People used to sit astride their asses and jog along into the stony places to see the relics. They saw merely heaps of stones, buildings grown so old that they had toppled to pieces. ”

“ Hence the peculiar aspect which the necropolis of Abydos must have presented when intact. Imagine a multitude of small pyramids five or six metres high, carelessly oriented or not at all, and uniformly built of crude brick. These pyramids always stand upon a plinth, they are hollow, and within they are formed into a clumsy cupola by means of roughly built off-sets. The pyramid stands directly over a chamber in its foundations which shelters the mummy. As soon as the latter was in place, the door of its chamber was closed by masonry. ”

“ These were removed by various builders and have served to erect mosques and temples. Had this covering remained intact it would be impossible to climb the pyramid of Cheops. From Cairo and the Nile, as well as from the desert, the pyramids are an impressive sight. Unique in shape and massive as the Libyan hills beyond them, they can never be forgotten, for they represent more perfectly than any other remains in Egypt the control by the early kings of unlimited labor and materials. ”

“ We rose in the morning fatigued, but the invigorating desert-air soon revived us; and we set out on our adventures with becoming energy.
The bed of rock on which the Great Pyramid is situated is about one hundred and fifty feet above the sandy plain which intervenes between it and the cultivated land. It is a soft testaceous limestone, abounding particularly with those little petrifactions described by Strabo as found in great quantities around the pyramids, and supposed to be petrified lentils, the leavings of the workmen who built the pyramids! ”

“ For our present purpose, however, Egyptian civilisation is the most important, because it presents us with the most definite proof of the attainment of a high degree of what is specially scientific attainment at the very dawn of historical knowledge. This is well exhibited by that most wonderful work of constructive art—the Great Pyramid of Gizeh—which, though not quite the earliest, is the largest and most remarkable of about seventy pyramids in various parts of Egypt, and has been more thoroughly explored and studied, both as to its proportions, construction and uses, than any of the others. ”