88 THE WISDOM OF OLD EGYPT 



These pyramids show the power and wisdom of 

 Egypt in their construction. The largest of them 

 is estimated to have contained no less than 2,300,000 

 blocks of stone, of an average weight of two and 

 a-half tons. Modern scholars scout the idea that 

 some lost art of engineering must be supposed to 

 account for the work. The blocks must have been 

 pushed and pulled up inclined planes of earth, and 

 it is calculated that it would take 100,000 men 

 twenty years to build the largest pyramid, In 

 this, as well as in the remarkable skill of con- 

 struction, we have undoubted proof of the existence, 

 five thousand years ago, of a powerful and advanced 

 civilization. 



But the great pyramid is no less a monument of 

 folly — of vanity in kings and of a feudal condition of 

 the people. That the people could not help their 

 condition it is unnecessary to say. I mean that such 

 monuments show the weakness as well as the strength 

 of the old civilization. They were feudal monarchies 

 of the most despotic type, in which the last thing to 

 be considered was the advancement of the people. 

 Near one of the pyramids was found a wooden statue 

 of a man with a staff in his hand, and Egyptologists 

 are agreed that it goes back to the pyramid age, 

 about five thousand years ago. It represents a strong 

 man of a vulgar, bullying type; and the experts 

 agree that it is probably a portrait- statue of the 

 11 boss " of one of the gangs of men who were com- 

 pelled to labour on the pyramid. The amusing — or 

 pathetic — feature is that the statue so closely resembled 

 a village " boss " of the nineteenth century in that 

 very district that the native workers at once hailed it 

 as a portrait of him ! So little had workers and 



