Pyramids

“ And there before us, on a rocky platform a hundred feet higher than the meadows, are the pyramids, cutting the stainless blue of the sky with their sharp lines. They master the eye when we are an hour away, and as we approach they seem to recede, neither growing larger nor smaller, but simply withdrawing with a grand reserve. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ From the far distance you see the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were regularly crystalized mountains, which the ever-creating nature has called forth from the mother soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue vault of heaven. ”

“ To each pyramid there is a guardian, that keeps watch over it and guards it, to all eternity, against the ravages of time and the vicissitudes of events; and indeed the marvels of these pyramids astound all who have eyes and wit. Many are the poems that describe them, thou shalt profit no great matter thereby, and among the rest, quoth one of them:
The high resolves of kings, if they would have them to abide In
memory, after them, are in the tongues of monuments.
Dost thou not see the Pyramids? They, of a truth, endure And
change not for the shifts of time or chances of events. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You can easily imagine the pyramids holding serious debate as to the advisability of ruining themselves as objects of interest by tumbling over and crushing out these new-fangled contrivances. We are going up the Nile, so we steal a hasty glance at the pyramids, nod to the Sphinx as though we had been on speaking terms for three or four thousand years, visit the citadel at sunset, get bewildered at the strange sights, do and see everything in the orthodox style, and are off. ”

“ A peculiarity of these pyramids is, that the sides are not straight but curved lines, of different degrees of convexity, and the breadth of the courses of stone is adjusted with the utmost nicety, so as to produce this form. They are small, compared with the enormous piles of Gizeh and Dashoor, but singularly graceful and elegant in appearance. Not one of the group is more than seventy feet in hight, nor when complete could have exceeded one hundred. ”

“ Thus viewing the considerations which should guide us in dealing with the pyramids, we proceed to the inquiry, hoping that our solution may not only answer such questions as the antiquarian, the architect, the astronomer, might ask, but may tell us also something of the history and character of the princes and people who built these marvelous structures.
The first and most striking peculiarity in the pyramids, and especially in that one with which we are chiefly to deal, deservedly called the Great Pyramid, is the enormous amount of labor bestowed on their construction. ”

“ By our wits we can lift blocks weighing six hundred men, and set them as the capstones of our pyramids. But to uprear the stones of that great circle would be beyond all our art, and much more would it be impossible to-day, to transport them from their distant quarries across the rugged mountains. ”

“ Although so many have written of the pyramids, and a new description cannot fail to have something of the character of an often repeated tale, I find much that I must say respecting these stupendous monuments, the greatest, perhaps, of the Wonders of the World, which have been objects of our curiosity and astonishment even in the age of childhood, and the sight of which forms an era in one’s life. ”

“ The pyramids therefore were tombs of the kings who built them while they were alive to be monuments to themselves when they were dead. In fact a king was much more interested in building a home for his dead body than he was in a home for his live body. So, instead of palaces, kings built pyramids. There are many of these pyramids built along the bank of the Nile, and most of them were built, we think, just after 3000 B.C.
When a building is being put up nowadays, men use derricks and cranes and engines to haul and raise heavy stones and beams. ”

“ 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. ”

“ As the wonders of ancient days, the pyramids 9 attracted the curiosity of the ancients: a hundred generations, the leaves of autumn, have dropped 10 into the grave; and after the fall of the Pharaohs and Ptolemies, the Cæsars and caliphs, the same pyramids stand erect and unshaken above the floods of the Nile. ”

“ And now we descended to its level, and rode westward along the base of Olympus, grandest of Asian mountains. This after-storm view, although his head was shrouded, was sublime. His base is a vast sloping terrace, leagues in length, resembling the nights of steps by which the ancient temples were approached. From this foundation rise four mighty pyramids, two thousand feet in height, and completely mantled with forests. ”

“ The road, as we traversed it on our camels that morning, curved sharply past the wooden police quarters, post office, drug store and shops on the left, and plunged south and east in a complete bend that scaled the rock plateau and brought us face to face with the desert under the lee of the Great Pyramid. Past Cyclopean masonry we rode, rounding the eastern face and looking down ahead into a valley of minor pyramids beyond which the eternal Nile glistened to the east, and the eternal desert shimmered to the west. ”

“ Only the pyramids of Egypt, in at least the familiar regions of the earth, can compare with this gigantic monument to the strength and perseverance of puny man, and the pyramids are built down on the floor of the earth instead of being borne aloft to the tiptop of a mountain. ”

“ The great pyramids of Egypt are among the wonders of the world. They are the tombs of some of the Pharaohs. They are great masses of stone, and we can hardly imagine how in those days it was possible to build them. ”

“ The utmost uncertainty exists in all that concerns these gigantic, unwieldy, and mysterious buildings. Their builders, origin, date, and purposes, are entirely lost in the night of ages. As the sides of all the pyramids face the cardinal points, and of course give the true meridian of the places where they are situated, it would seem that their builders had made some progress in scientific knowledge; and the buildings themselves, under all circumstances, notwithstanding their plain exterior, clearly show the advanced state of art in those very early times. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ Verily, nothing but the Egyptian pyramids compare in magnitude with these shrines of Ceylon, while no modern engineering enterprise excels in immensity the artificial lakes which were created upon her surface. ”

“ The pyramids which met their gaze, as soon as they had reached the apex of the Delta, must have far surpassed their ideas of them, no matter how frequently they may have been told about them, and they must have been at a loss to know why such a number of stones should have been brought together to cover a single corpse. ”

“ So wonderful in themselves are the principal pyramids, and so impressive by reason of their remote antiquity, that all other existing works of man must, I think, in comparison with them, sink into insignificance. I could hardly believe that monuments of such stupendous magnitude, and such admirable construction, were erected several centuries before the period of the Exodus, were it not for the fact that the Tower of Babel, probably an equally wonderful edifice, was raised in an age yet earlier. ”

“ It is recorded that the two kings whose names were held in execration by posterity on account of the cruel labours they exacted from their people, were not builders of temples—but of pyramids.
A mound of earth, one foot in height, satisfies that feeling of our nature which impels us to preserve from disturbance [Pg 150] the recent remains of the dead; but a pyramid five hundred feet in height was not too tall a tomb for an Egyptian king! ”

“ For centuries men have ventilated various notions as to the precise meaning and significance of these pyramids. It is now, however, assured beyond dispute that they are nothing more or less than the enclosures of the graves of kings or sacred animals, such as the Apis, the Cat, or the Ibis. In this way we have before our eyes in the pyramids the simple prototype of symbolical art. ”

“ The name is not a distinguishing one in every sense, since mankind, the world over, have been mound and pyramid builders. The pyramids of Egypt and the mound-dotted surface of Europe and Asia bear testimony to this saying, yet nowhere else in the world are they more plainly divided into classes, or marked with design than here. In some places fortified hills and eminences suggest the citadel of a tribe or people. Again, embankments of earth, mostly circular or square, separate and in combination, generally inclosing one or more mounds, excite our curiosity, but fail to satisfy it. ”

“ There are three other pyramids, the sides of which are two plethra in length; in workmanship they entirely resemble the others, except in magnitude. These pyramids, it is said, were built by the three before-mentioned kings in honour of their own wives. These works by universal consent are the most remarkable in Egypt, not only in their ponderous construction, but also in the art displayed. ”

“ 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. ”