THE PYRAMIDS. 255 
which impUes the violation of a sepulchre, and chap. 
the actual removal of an embalmed body from . / . 
the Soros in which it is said to have been de- 
posited. The locality, too, of this sepulchre 
seems to coincide with that of the particular 
coemetery where tliis pyramid has for so many 
ages unaccountably borne the marks of a similar 
violation ; its secret entrance being disclosed 
to view; and its Soros always empty \ It is by 
no means here presumed that this circumstance 
will account for its violated state; but it fur- 
nishes a curious coincidence between the present 
appearance of the pyramid, and a fact recorded 
in antient history which may possibly be urged to 
that effect. No other pyramid has been thus 
opened; neither is it probable that any such 
violation of a sepulchre would ever have been 
formerly tolerated ; so sacrilegious was the 
attempt held to be among all the nations of 
antiquity, Egyptians, Jews, Greeks, and Romans \ 
(4) " Locus quoque, in quo conditae sunt Pyramides, ab Israelitarum 
habitatione minime fuit alienus." PerizoniiOriginesjEgyptiaco!, c.21. 
p. 390. L. Bat. 1711. 
(5)SeeCliap. vni. p.384, and Notes, of the preced i ng; Volume of these 
Travels. Thfocrit, Idyll. «£'• 207. ; also the denunciations contained in 
Inscriptions agjainst those who presumed to violate a sepulchre. iMuratori 
has preserved an in--criptii)n found upon a tomb \n Athens; and the fol- 
lowing extract from the Latin version of it in his work, will shew what 
the feelings of the Antients were in this respect : " Si quis spoliaverit 
lioc 
