22 The Great Pyramid of Egypt. [January, 



4. The Egyptologists versus the Ordinary Arguments of 

 Progressive Development. 



In fact, the priority of date (whether it should eventually 

 be proved absolute and entire, or just short thereof by a very 

 few years, a mere nothing at this distance of time, and 

 equally opposed to progressive development) is the beginning 

 of the new theory of the Great Pyramid, the very key-note 

 of that grand and solemn story which its component stones 

 have, and are able, to tell. For even thereby that building 

 stands unique upon earth; there is not anything architec- 

 tural so old elsewhere, and yet by modern architects, upon 

 mere ordinary, superficial, but sound, architectural grounds, 

 it is pronounced to be the best built monument ever yet 

 erected, even down to these times in which we live. 



What conclusions, then, are we thence to draw ? 



What, indeed ! For precisely at this point begin the 

 utter antagonisms between the advocates of the new theory 

 and the older Egyptologists. 



They, the Egyptologers, say (see Bunsen, see Fergusson, 

 see Renan) " because the Great Pyramid is so big and so 

 admirably built, therefore infinitely long ages of slowly 

 growing, improving, developing, architecture must have pre- 

 ceded it." 



Yet why therefore, and why must ? Those phrases depend 

 merely on the human hypothesis of progressive develop- 

 ment, combined with the gratuitous assumption of its 

 having been the only nursing-mother or foster-father of the 

 human race during all that . primeval period of unknown 

 length, which preceded the first of our veritable historical 

 records, and for, or of, which we have no mundane "material 

 data. 



The new theorists, on the other hand, following out the 

 ideas of the late John Taylor, of London, feel compelled to 

 assert that, " if such long-continued ages of progressive 

 architecture had preceded the Great Pyramid, the remains 

 thereof, especially in such a monument-preserving climate as 

 that of Egypt has already been proved to be, ought to, and 

 would, have been found most extensively and abundantly, 

 even to far outnumbering all the builded monuments that 

 have been erected since. Yet the actual and admitted fact 

 by every able man who has searched Egypt and the adjacent 

 countries is, — after the Great Pyramid comes the date of 

 everything of the architectural known; before it there is 

 nothing." 



The Egyptologers are perfectly aware of this profound 



