1871.] The Great Pyramid in Egypt. 181 



That then, as the near approach to horizontally in all the 

 geological strata hereabouts shows, must have been the sort 

 of stuff which the Great Pyramid builders had to clear away 

 in vast quantities from the top of their hill also. Yet, truly 

 vast as must have been the amount of it then removed — 

 " excavated " Mr. Aiton would say — it was cleared away by 

 them so thoroughly that neither Strabo, Diodorus Siculus, 

 nor others among " the curious " of the classic ancients who 

 went prying, about precisely on such a quest, ever obtained 

 a glimpse of, or even suspected, the real state of the case. 

 They were, indeed, mightily troubled about certain other 

 rubbish which their theories taught them must have existed 

 once, viz., that arising from the chipping and squaring of the 

 innumerable stones used in building the Great Pyramid; and 

 they, viz., Strabo and his near contemporaries, have left us 

 this invaluable note of the state of things in their day, that 

 they walked all around and about the Great Pyramid, 

 actually looking for the said heaps of chips and mason's 

 rubbish, but could find none. The building seemed to them 

 " as if it had descended from heaven complete at once, and 

 without the agency of man," — certainly, we might add, 

 without the agency of the modern Egyptian man ; for, go 

 where you will now about Cairo, you see rubbish wholesale 

 wherever there is, or has been, any building. 



Each age of the world seems to have selected some special 

 feature of the Pyramid to wonder at, and in every case the 

 real full fact: has subsequently been found to be still more 

 wonderful than the portion that had first been recognised on 

 the surface. Thus with Strabos's little wonder ; so utterly 

 incomprehensible was the complete removing of all the 

 mere mason's rubbish at the Pyramid to him and other 

 archaeologists of 2000 years ago, that they invented the 

 most startling accounts of the water of the Nile having been 

 led uphill to wash away heaps supposed to be impossible to 

 man. 



Yet 2000 years more in the passage of time have revealed 

 not only where all that rubbish was neatly stowed away by 

 the hand of the builders, but the much larger amount also 

 which arose from their masterly preparation of the summit 

 of the hill for the honourable burden it was in future to 

 bear. For both supplies may now be seen — detected by the 

 differential effect of occasional rain through so many ages on 

 their loose heaps, as compared with the compact natural 

 rock — banked away against the northern cliff of the hill. 

 Banked up too, so firmly against it, and so nicely levelled 

 and smoothed on the top, as to have made for 2000 years at 



