Egypt Pyramid: The Great Pyramids

Everyone 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 he 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 Roman 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 taverns made about it. In his official report, he says, " Travelers have not entertained their readers about 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."

For 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 Esnd, 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. R6nan 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, Fostat, 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 Marietta 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 be our colony in the north, as the Cape in the south. 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 waters-
Gathering 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, provided for the workmen. But both stories are susceptible of another interpretation. The granite, doubtless, comes from Elephantine and Syene on the Upper Nile ; as the alabaster from the Khalil mountains, towards the Red Sea. The Libyan hill on which the building stands is of that stone.