46o THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



buried in its interior. What had been its astrologic platform on top was 

 continued on to an apex and then the whole structure sealed up, to re- 

 main, so it was fondly hoped, inviolate through time. 



One reflection well Avorth our thought the pyramids suggest: the 

 enduring character of the past beside the ephemeralness of our day. 

 We build for the moment; they built monumentally. True we have 

 printing which they had not. But libraries are not lasting. Fire acci- 

 dental or purposive has destroyed the greater part of the learning of 

 the far past and promises to do so with what we write now; and what 

 escapes the fire mold may claim. Only that idea which is materially 

 most effectively clothed can withstand for long the gnawing disinte- 

 gration of time. The astronomic thought of the pyramid-builders lives 

 on to-day; where will record of ours be, I wonder, five thousand years 

 hence. We may be quoted indeed with ever-increasing inaccuracy of 

 transcription, but the star-priests of a Draconis's time speak in their 

 own words still. 



To us Cheops is hardly more than a name ; long since his ashes were 

 scattered to the winds ; but the building those old Chaldean soothsayers 

 constructed for him remains, not only to-day the grandest monument 

 of man but the oldest and most significant astronomical observatory the 

 world has ever had. 



