Egypt Pyramid: When Were They Built

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 in 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 starting- point 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.C. t 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 Meydoumdoum was erected by one of the second dynasty. This false pyramid, as it is called, at El-'Wasta, 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 certivin that, as the Eev. 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 Btone 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." AVe 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 theologians themselves, 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 Nbrden, 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. Konrick proves that " some of the adjacent tomhs 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.O ; 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 Bishop of Caesarea, who lived in an age of pious frauds, opposing sects, and mutual persecutions.

M. Eougd, 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. Eouge 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 Mle years after Menes began to reign." Mr. 'Gladstone, in his Juventus 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 and French Egyptologists are pretty well agreed that the Great 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 erection which demand thoughtful attention.

He assumes that the Great Pyramid was built 2170 years before Christ. Hs finds tha 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 meridian 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 is 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 *! " 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 coincidence 1 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, eailier or later, which should suit the passing of another Polar star on the meridian ?

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 Eev. 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 chronoloyy, 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 Daluge 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 he 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.