TEE MYSTERY OF TEE PYRAMIDS. 



271 



ligion implies that some higher cause influenced 

 him. But a ruler who could inflict such griev- 

 ous burdens on his people in carrying out his 

 purpose, that for ages afterward his name was 

 held in utter detestation, cannot have been sole- 

 ly or even chiefly influenced by religious mo- 

 tives. It affords an ample explanation of the 

 behavior of Cheops in closing the temples and 

 forsaking the religion of his country, to suppose 

 that the advantages which he hoped to secure by 

 building the pyramid depended in some way on 

 his adopting this course. The visitors from the 

 East may have refused to give their assistance 

 on any other terms, or may have assured him 

 that the expected benefit could not be obtained 

 if the pyramid were erected by idolaters. It is 

 certain, in any case, that they were opposed to 

 idolatry ; and we have thus some means of in- 

 ferring who they were and whence they came. 

 We know that one particular branch of one par- 

 ticular race in the East was characterized by a 

 most marked hatred of idolatry in all its forms. 

 Terah and his family, or probably a sect or divis- 

 ion of the Chaldean people, went forth from Ur 

 of the Chaldees, to go into the land of Canaan — 

 and the reason why they went forth we learn 

 from a book of considerable historical interest 

 (the book of Judith) to have been because 

 " they would not worship the gods of their fa- 

 thers who were in the land of the Chaldeans." 

 And the Bible record shows that members of this 

 branch of the Chaldean people visited Eg\pt 

 from time to time. They were shepherds, too, 

 which accords well with the account of Herod- 

 otus above quoted. We can well understand 

 that persons of this family would have resisted 

 all endeavors to secure their acquiescence in any 

 scheme associated with idolatrous rites. Neither 

 promises nor threats would have had much influ- 

 ence on them. It was a distinguished member 

 of the family, the patriarch Abraham, who said, 

 " I have lift up mine hand unto the Lord, the 

 most high God, the possessor of heaven and 

 earth, that I will not take from a thread even to 

 a shoe-latchet, and that I will not take anything 

 that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have 

 made Abram rich." Vain would all the prom- 

 ises and all the threats of Cheops have been to 

 men of this spirit. Such men might help him in 

 his plans, suggested, as the history shows, by 

 teachings of their own, but it must be on their 

 own conditions, and those conditions would most 

 certainly include the utter rejection of idolatrous 

 worship by the king in whose behalf they worked, 

 as well as by all who shared in their labors. It 



seems probable that they convinced both Cheops 

 and Chephren that, unless these kings gave up 

 idolatry, the purpose, whatever it was, which the 

 pyramid was erected to promote, would not be 

 fulfilled. The mere fact that the Great Pyramid 

 was built either directly at the suggestion of 

 these visitors, or because they had persuaded 

 Cheops of the truth of some important doctrine, 

 shows that they must have gained great influence 

 over his mind. Rather, we may say, that he 

 must have been so convinced of their knowledge 

 and power as to have accepted with unquestion- 

 ing confidence all that they told him respecting 

 the particular subject over which they seemed to 

 possess so perfect a mastery. 



But having formed the opinion, on grounds 

 sufficiently assured, that the strangers who visit- 

 ed Egypt and superintended the building of the 

 Great Pyramid were kinsmen of the patriarch 

 Abraham, it is not very difficult to decide what 

 was the subject respecting which they had such 

 exact information. They or their parents had 

 come from the land of the Chaldeans, and they 

 were doubtless learned in all the wisdom of their 

 Chaldean kinsmen. They were masters, in fact, 

 of the astronomy of their day, a science for 

 which the Chaldeans had shown from the earli- 

 est ages the most remarkable aptitude. What 

 the actual extent of their astronomical knowl- 

 edge may have been it would be difficult to say. 

 But it is certain, from the exact knowledge which 

 later Chaldeans possessed respecting long as- 

 tronomical cycles, that astronomical observations 

 must have been carried on continuously by that 

 people for many hundreds of years. It is highly 

 probable that the astronomical knowledge of the 

 Chaldeans in the days of Terah and Abraham 

 was much more accurate than that possessed by 

 the Greeks even after the time of Hipparchus. 1 

 We see, indeed, in the accurate astronomical ad- 

 justment of the Great Pyramid that the archi- 

 tects must have been skillful astronomers and 

 mathematicians ; and I may note here, in pass- 

 ing, how strongly this circumstance confirms the 

 opinion that the visitors were kinsmen of Terah 



1 It has been remarked that, though Hipparehus had 

 the enormous advantage of being able to compare his own 

 observations with those recorded by the Chaldeans, he 

 estimated the length of the year less correctly than the 

 Chaldeans. It has been thought by some that the Chal- 

 deans were acquainted with the true system of the uni- 

 verse, but I do not know that there are sufficient grounds 

 for this supposition. Diodorus Siculus and Apollonius 

 Mvnidius mention, however, that they were able to pre- 

 dict the return oft comets, and this implies that their ob- 

 servations had been continued for many centuries with 

 great care and exactness. 



