454 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



therefore have been a fine pole-star in its day, both because of its near- 

 ness to the pole and because of its own intrinsic brilliancy. 



Of interest as this is from an academic standpoint, it becomes im- 

 pressive when we learn that this prophecy about the past was contem- 

 poraneously verified and witnessed, as unconsciously as it was con- 

 clusively. 



Not only was a Draconis once the pole-star, but it was actually so 

 seen of men who have left us record of the fact. And this, too, without 

 the slightest idea that they were dating history, and in the most dra- 

 matic manner possible. Not by carved or written inscription, not by 

 oral tradition handed down by word of mouth, was this accomplished, 

 but in a way at once more silent yet more sure — mutely embodied in the 

 very core and being of a building the grandest ever erected by man. 

 The Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Cheops, tells us this in stones that 

 bear no character at all and only astronomy can read. 



Herodotus, the " Father of History " — known also as the father of 

 lies in what may be called the Ananias Club sense, for we are now 

 learning that what he narrated, though seemingly unbelievable, usually 

 turns out to be true — informs us that when he was in Egypt he was 

 told by the priests that a long time before certain peoples had come 

 down from the north, possessed themselves of the Egyptian power and 

 so far afEected the mind of the then King Cheops or Suphis that he 

 forsook the Egyptian religion, caused all the temples to be closed and set 

 to work under the stranger's direction to Imild a huge pyramid of stone. 



The same veracious if also voracious historian goes on to say " tliat 

 100,000 men were employed for twenty 3^ears in building it; that 

 Cheops was succeeded by his brother, Chephren who followed his pyra- 

 midal example ; and that by the space of one hundred and six years all 

 the temples of the kingdom were closed." In consequence the pious 

 Egyptians deprived of their natural religious vents " detested the 

 memory of these kings"; as they may well have done for other than 

 religious motives, seeing that they were employed at forced labor on 

 such a scale for such a length of time. 



Manetho, who confirms the royal apostasy mentioned by Herodotus, 

 gives us to suppose that we have here an invasion of the shepherd kings 

 about the time of Abraham. Their force seems to have been intellectual, 

 as they overturned the whole Egyptian system of things, he says, without 

 a battle. So that they were probably Chaldeans, and the pyramids 

 which they caused the king and his successors to construct were not 

 Egyptian monuments at all, but embodiments of a foreign cult peculiarly 

 distasteful to the followers of Isis and Osiris. Indeed, as we shall pres- 

 ently see, they were neither Egyptian nor monuments. 



What they were not is plain ; what they were has best been deciphered 

 by Proctor, who has shown well nigh conclusively that their purjDose was 



