1 8 The Great Pyramid of Egypt. [January, 



who erected innumerable temples — marvels no doubt of 

 colossal art, but teeming over all their surfaces with 

 engravings and pictures of every kind of abominable animal- 

 headed idol-god ; and by another class it is equally, but 

 erroneously, attributed to early ages of the world, when, 

 according to the doctrine of progressive development rather 

 strongly applied, it is believed that man could then nowhere 

 have been in possession of any clear ideas of his soul's life, 

 of an eternal and all-wise Creator, and future bliss or pain 

 transcending everything in this present world of trial. 



Wherefore, whoever the builders of the Great Pyramid 

 were, and whenever they lived, — and it will be our business 

 presently to endeavour to find out, — let no one fancy that 

 with them he is in the presence of none but necessarily either 

 rampant idolaters or miserable men entirely atheistic. 



2. The Great Pyramid the Oldest Monument in Egypt. 

 Visiting in the present day the land of Egypt, that country 

 so inimitably prepared by nature, with the mildest of climates 

 and driest of atmospheres, to be both the perpetual store- 

 house of human monuments and faithful keeper of historical 

 records, — all travellers and all writers declaim on the almost 

 perfect preservation of every document, even down to the 

 seals impressed by many centuries of kings on sun-dried 

 bricks of Nile mud. Indeed there, with ease, backward you 

 may step across the ages that are gone, and read on the 

 later monuments records of the first wild rush of Moham- 

 medan conquerors, issuing, 1200 years ago, locust-like from 

 their Arabian home to purge out the idolatries of the Greek 

 Christian Church degraded ; then beyond that you may 

 arrive at proofs of the Roman rule ; beyond that, at Mace- 

 donian Ptolemies, enervated and debauched in a southern 

 climate ; then the cruelties of Persian despots; then Egyptian 

 kings, who fought over Jerusalem with Nebuchadnezzar and 

 monarchs of Mesopotamian line ; then the Theban kings, 

 who revelled through long ages in idolatry carried to its 

 worst culminations ; then to Sesostris and his supposed 

 wars, but really oppression of Israelites in Egypt ; then to 

 Memphian kings who ruled the Delia-land mildly in the times 

 of Joseph ; then to older Dynasties among whose tombs 

 some Pyramids are found ; then up through many Pyramid- 

 building kings to him at last, King Cheops, Suphis or Shofo, 

 who built, or rather during whose reign was built, that 

 Pyramid which all the world still calls the Great Pyramid. 

 The greatest, too, it is of all the series of Egyptian pyramids ; 

 and, most passing strange to say, when with that quality, 



