196 PYRAMIDS OF DJIZA. 
antient architecture. The pilaster is beUeved to 
be of modern date ; and marble, according to 
some writers, was not used by architects before 
the fifteenth Olympiad'. Presently we entered 
that ''glorious roome," as it is justly called by 
Greaves'^, Mdiere, " as within some consecrated 
oratory, Art may seem to have contended with 
Nature." It stands " in the very heart and 
centre of the pyramid, equidistant from all its 
sides, and almost in the midst between the 
basis and the top. The floor, the sides, the roof 
of it, are all made of vast and exquisite tables 
of Thehaick marble.' By Greaves s Thebaich 
marble is to be understood that most beautiful 
variety of granite called, by Italian lapidaries, 
Granito rosso\ which is composed essentially of 
feldspar, of quartz, and of mica. It is often called 
Oriental granite, and sometimes Egyptian granite, 
but it differs in no respect from European 
(1) Before Christ, 720. See a former Note ia this Chapter. It 
should be said, however, that Shaw, who makes this remark, {Trav. 
p. 368, JVote 5. Lond. 1T57,) applies it to the Grecian, and not to 
Egyptian artists. There are Doric pilasters, of the age of Augustus, 
in the remains of Altpceiias's Villa, near Rome ; and the immense capi- 
tals discovered among the ruins of a temple at GirgetUi evidently 
belonged to 2>ilasters of much earlier date. 
(2) Pyramidographia, p. J}5. 
(3) See Fwfrw's Travels, p. 226. LonJ. \''G. 
