Pyramid

“ It is only in approaching them, and observing how they grow with every foot of the road, that one begins to feel they are not so familiar after all.
But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform gained, and the great pyramid in all its unexpected bulk and majesty towers close above one’s head, the effect is as sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and the horizon. It shuts out all the other pyramids. It shuts out everything but the sense of awe and wonder. ”

“ But if he stands at the base of the great pyramid, and casts his eye along the steps of its enormous side and up the dizzy height where the summit seems to pierce the solid blue, he will not complain of want of size. And if he walks around one, and walks from one to another wading in the loose sand and under a midday sun, his respect for the pyramids will increase every moment. ”

“ On the desert platform above, clear, though faint, the pyramids of Abusîr and Sakkârah, and Dahshûr. Every stage of the Pyramid of Ouenephes,{445} banded in light and shade, is plain to see. So is the dome-like summit of the great pyramid of Dahshûr. Even the brick ruin beside it which we took for a black rock as we went up the river, and which looks like a black rock still, is perfectly visible. Farthest of them all, showing pale and sharp amid the palpitating blaze of noon, stands, like an unfinished tower of Babel, the pyramid of Meydûm. ”

“ 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 travelers 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How well they realized their dream is shown us in the Pyramids, of all monuments of mankind the oldest, the most technically perfect, the largest, and the most mysterious. Ages come and go, empires rise and fall, philosophies flourish and fail, and man seeks him out many inventions, but they stand silent under the bright Egyptian night, as fascinating as they are baffling. An obelisk is simply a pyramid, albeit the base has become a shaft, holding aloft the oldest emblems of solar faith—a Triangle mounted on a Square. ”

“ We now regard the pyramids as the work of men’s hands, aided probably by machinery of which no record remains. We picture to ourselves the swarming workers toiling at these vast erections, lifting the inert stones, and, guided by the volition, the skill, and possibly at times by the whip, of the architect, placing them in their proper positions. The blocks in this case were moved and posited by a power external to themselves, and the final form of the pyramid expresses the thought of its human builder. ”

“ The loftiest pyramid that throws its shadow over the desert to-day, and that dwarfs at its foot the beholder into the most incomparable insignificance, incapable of being removed in fragments not larger than a pea, from its present site to the other side of the globe; and the grandest structure ever erected by human hands, has been built up from almost imperceptible beginnings, into the imposing dimensions which so overshadow the admirer and excite in his bosom feelings of almost superstitious awe. ”

“ We know that the pyramidion of an obelisk was frequently gilded, and it is probable enough that similar means were sometimes taken, in the case of the more magnificent and carefully finished pyramids, to draw the eye to their topmost stone and thus to add to the impression made by their height. No more fitting adornment could be imagined for the sharp peak of a pyramid rising nearly five hundred feet into the pure blue of an Egyptian sky. ”

“ They do not greatly impress the beholder at first sight, for a pyramid, by the very law of its formation, never looks as large as it is—it slopes away from the eye in every direction, and eludes rather than courts observation. ”

“ When we reach the desert we are in the presence of death—perhaps the most mournful sight on this earth is a necropolis in the desert, savage, sand-drifted, plundered, all its mounds dug over and over. We ride along at the bases of the pyramids. I stop at one, climb over the débris at its base, and break off a fragment of stone. The pyramid is of crumbling limestone, and, built in stages or degrees, like that of Maydoom; it is slowly becoming an unsightly heap. And it is time. This is believed to be the oldest structure in the world, except the Tower of Babel. ”

“ The "closing" of one pyramid over another in bringing any of their many lines into true order, must even now be very perfect;—but now we can only imagine the beauties of these great instrumental wonders of the world when the casing stones were on them. We can picture the rosy lights of one, and the bright white lights of others ”

“ In like manner, by immediate divine revelation, the builders of the pyramid were instructed as to the exact shape and density of the earth, the sun's distance, the precession of the equinoxes, etc., so that their figures on all these subjects were more accurate than any that modern science has obtained, and these figures they built into the pyramid. They also built into it the divinely revealed and everlasting standards of "length, area, capacity, weight, density, heat, [Pg 429] time, and money," and finally they wrought into its structure the precise date at which the millennium is to begin. ”

“ If we examine the relations actually presented by the great pyramid—its geographical position, dimensions, shape, and internal structure—without hampering ourselves with the tenets of the new faith on the one hand, or on the other with any serious anxiety to disprove them, we shall find much to suggest that the builders of the pyramid were ingenious mathematicians, who had made some progress in astronomy, though not so much as they had made in the mastery of mechanical and scientific difficulties. ”

“ The great pyramid occupied a hundred thousand men for twenty years in its erection, without counting the workmen who were employed in hewing the stones and conveying them to the spot where the pyramid was built. ”

“ Trees have grown up all over the pyramid and on the top of the building. This illustration, taken from Mr. Stephens’s work, can not fail to impress on us the luxuriant growth of tropical vegetation, and we can also see how such a growth must accelerate the ruin. The stone steps leading up the sides of the pyramid have been thrown down, and such must be in time the fate of the building itself. The building on the summit platform does not cover all the area. It is seventy-six feet front by twenty-five feet deep and about thirty-five feet high. ”

“ There is no granite at the entrance of the pyramid; all the blocks are of limestone. Before the traveller enters the pyramid, he should divest himself of some of his clothes (for the heat of the interior is oppressive) and resume them immediately on coming out, to prevent any check of perspiration. The passage by which we enter the Great Pyramid is only four feet high, and three feet six inches (almost exactly two ancient Egyptian cubits) in width, and we are consequently obliged to descend in a crouching position. ”

“ The pyramidal form has ever possessed peculiar fascinations for men, and, from its simplicity, grandeur, and power, has been used in all ages with innumerable modifications in those structures whose object was to impress and overawe,—as in the pyramids of Egypt, the temples of India and Mexico, and in all the earliest funereal monuments. It involved a rude symbolism, which recommended itself to the barbarous childhood of nations. But it was not until the pyramid was sharpened and spiritualized into the spire that it gained its completest triumph over the secret emotions of men. ”

“ By continuing the system of evolution by which I defined the position of Cephren, and the little pyramid to the south-east of Cheops, after I had obtained Cheops and Mycerinus, may be rebuilt, at one and the same time, a skeleton of the trigonometrical tables of a forgotten civilization, and the plan of those pyramids which are its only link with the present age. ”

“ This pyramid will serve as an example of numerous other pyramids scattered over the summit of the hill. They are made of stone. The largest one, whose dimensions are given, is fifty feet square, and the same in height. In front of the pyramid, and in the center of the square, are the remains of an altar. In view of the altar and pyramid, within the inclosed square, we may suppose this to have been dedicated to their religion. As if to confirm this belief, is the statement that on the hill to the back of the pyramid are numerous tiers of seats, either broken in the rock or built of rough stone. ”

“ Notwithstanding this, Arabs often ascend to its summit; and many European travellers have done the same. In its general construction, this pyramid is inferior to the first; and its interior is less remarkable. By a sloping passage, similar to the first in the Great Pyramid, but cased with granite, and then by a long horizontal passage hewn through the rock, broken by two perpendicular descents, and sloping ascents, we reach the Great Chamber. ”

“ When the pyramid is completed, we shall store it with great quantities of grain and fuel and textiles to last for years; and as the waters rise, if they shall cover the eminence on which we shall built it, which seems impossible, we shall ascend from the lower to the upper chambers. ”

“ I also discovered a case-pyramid that evening, enlarged according to the principle of the Egyptian pyramids by a later mantle of stone. According to the inscriptions and representations in the antechambers, these pyramids are chiefly built for kings, and a few perhaps for their wives and children. The great number of them argues for a long series of kings, and a well-grounded empire that probably lasted for a number of centuries. ”

“ 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. ”

“ There are no excavations in any direction for many miles around the great pyramid, from whence the vast amount of material for building it could have been taken, and the finely cultivated fields which, cut by regular streets, radiate from the pyramid in all directions, indicate that the soil and surface of the ground in the vicinity, have never been disturbed. ”

“ The supporting mound, or pyramid, in this case, from a base of one hundred and fifty-five by two hundred and thirty-five feet, rounded at the corners so as to form an oval rather than a rectangular figure, [V-49] rises with very steep sides to a height of eighty-eight feet, forming at the summit a platform twenty-two by eighty-two feet. The surface of this pyramid is faced with blocks of hewn stone laid in mortar. The interior is presumably of rough stones in mortar, although little or nothing is said on this point. ”

“ The other pyramid, or house of the Moon is smaller, and like its neighbor is composed of rock, stones, pottery and cement,—covered with the debris of obsidian and terra catta images which lie scattered from the top to the base amid the tangled aloes and creepers that have struck their roots deeply into the crevices. ”

“ So far we possess an instrument equal to the modern circumferenter, and yet we have only brought one pyramid into work.
If I have shown that such an operation as the above is practically feasible, if I have shown that angles can be taken with moderate accuracy by observing one pyramid of 420 cubits base, how much more accurate will the observation be when the surveyor's plane table [Pg 54] bears a group of pyramids which occupy a representative space of about 1400 cubits when viewed from the south or north, and about 1760 cubits when viewed from the east or west. ”

“ It is built of polished stone, and is covered with carvings of animals. To make it took ten years, as I said—or rather to make the causeway, the works on the mound where the pyramid stands, and the underground chambers, which Cheops intended as vaults for his own use; these last were built on a sort of island, surrounded by water introduced from the Nile by a canal. The pyramid itself was twenty years in building. It is a square, eight hundred feet each way, and the height the game, built entirely of polished stone, fitted together with the utmost care. ”

“ He bent further forward. “The Pyramid of Méydûm is the home of a powerful Efreet, Kernaby Pasha! But I who was the last to leave it, know what is concealed there. In a certain place, low down in the corner of the King’s Chamber, is a ring of gold, bearing a cartouche. It is the royal ring of the Pharaoh who built the pyramid.” ”