CHAPTER VI

Sincethe dawn of history the Pyramids have been considered one of the wonders of the earth. They are unique. There is nothing to compare with them in any other land. Strangers have gazed upon them in amazement, and pondered what they were and how and why they were built.

Myths that they were the work of the gods became numerous, for the structures were so gigantic that it seemed impossible that puny man could have built them. About their human origin there was no doubt to discerning travellers, but the object in building them was not always so plain.

Long and learned books have been written to show that the Pyramids bore some special astronomical significance; that one of the main passages in the Great Pyramid was built at a certain angle to enable the astronomers of earlier days to watch a certain star pass in its course across the opening in the face of the Pyramid; that the height of the Great Pyramid bore a definite relation to the distance of the earth from the sun; that the base of thePyramid meant something else. In fact, the Pyramid has been measured in all directions, in all sorts of manners, and these measurements have been made to fit in with pet theories which have been the basis of many books.

There is not the slightest mystery as to what the Pyramids actually are. They are merely tombs. But people have not been content to accept this explanation, perhaps because it is too simple, so they have endowed the Pyramids with all sorts of wonderful meanings which would astound the builders were they to come back from the Fields of the Blessed. Astrologers who puzzled on the meanings of the stars in the heavens claimed the Great Pyramid as peculiarly their own, and pointed out certain coincidences in measurements to support their claim; the astronomers adduced their own reasons for claiming that the Pyramid had some astronomical meaning; Biblical students, on the other hand, who sought the hidden meanings of the Bible, concluded that the Pyramid was definite proof of certain of their own theories.

The Pyramids have indeed been so enwrapped in mystery, by the writings and theories of successive generations, that thousands of people to-day regard them with a sort of religious belief.

Notwithstanding all that has been written on the subject, and the undoubted cleverness with which these theories have been propounded, the Pyramidsare only tombs. But they are the most wonderful tombs in the world. They are simple and grand, with the desert sands surging round their bases, while a short distance away the Nile flows along to the blue sea. There is one other tomb without peer, the Taj Mahal, in India, that beautiful dream in marble which Shah Jehan erected in Delhi to the memory of the lady he loved so well. But the Taj is very different—graceful, glorious. Yet the Pyramids, in their simple grandeur, are not without a beauty of their own.

Kings have come and gone, civilizations have bloomed and vanished, the very earth itself has altered since the Pyramids were first built. Whirlwinds have caught up the sands of the desert and used them as a giant sandblast in their attempts to wear away the stone, earthquakes have shattered temples, but on the monuments the forces of Nature have had little effect. The hand of man has wrought more destruction in a few centuries than Nature herself wrought in two or three thousands of years. What man built, man has partly destroyed; yet man, with all his ingenuity for destruction, has done little but touch the outer surface of the Great Pyramid.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH, ONE OF THE WONDERS OF THE WORLD, WITH THE GREAT SPHINX IN THE FOREGROUND, LAPPED BY THE ETERNAL SANDS OF THE DESERT

There are nearly eighty Pyramids of different sizes scattered throughout the Nile valley. The greatest and most renowned is that of King Khufu or Cheops, at Gizeh, which originally measured355 feet 8 inches at the base, and 481 feet 4 inches in height. The base of the Great Pyramid covers well over 12 acres, and an idea of the size of the monument may be gained when it is known that to walk round it means trudging through the sands for more than half a mile.

Over nineteen centuries ago, Julius Cæsar sent from Egypt one of the most famous letters ever written. It was short, but three words: “Veni, Vedi, Veci.” These three words carried a wealth of meaning. They told of a safe journey, of an emperor gazing on the land he was going to conquer, of a successful invasion. “I came, I saw, I conquered,” wrote Cæsar, who in turn was conquered by the beauty of Cleopatra.

Who can say what were the thoughts of the Roman emperor as he stood within the shadow of the age-old Pyramids? He was a powerful potentate, but the same thoughts must have flitted through his mind as have surged through the brains of countless unknown men when they first caught sight of the Wonders of the Desert. He must have meditated on their origin, and how they were built.

In modern times Napoleon, the greatest soldier the world has ever seen, paced in the shadow of these same Pyramids, and reflected on the eternal questions regarding them. Lord Kitchener, before he attained to fame, gazed on them hundreds oftimes. The great ones go to their eternal rest, but the Pyramids remain.

They were built to endure for all time. The Egyptians looked upon the tomb as their permanent home, which was to last for all eternity. This is the reason for the erection of these mountains of stone, for their solidity of construction, for their gigantic size. They have grown out of Egypt’s religious beliefs. They were built solid and big and strong, so that nothing should overturn them, so that they should defy the hand of Time and Man, and forever provide a resting-place, a home for the shadow-self of the King.

Directly a Pharaoh came to the throne, he began preparing for his last long sleep. His lifework was to prepare a tomb for himself befitting his rank and power, and he spared no pains nor means to accomplish his desire. He called his chief architects and his high priests around him, and demanded that plans be made and a site selected. Then he saw the foundation stone laid, and year by year watched the pile of masonry grow.

Judging by the number of Pyramids in existence and their size, it has been reckoned that the total man-power of Egypt was devoted for over a thousand years to building tombs for the rulers, that tomb-building, in fact, was the main industry of the country for centuries.

To build another pyramid the size of the GreatPyramid of Khufu or Cheops would be a brilliant engineering feat even in our time, with all the engineering means we have at our disposal. The more we consider the Great Pyramid, the more amazing it seems that the Egyptians should have succeeded in erecting such an enormous monument some six thousand years ago. To this day it is not fully understood how it was done, but gradually evidence is accumulating which serves to indicate the principal methods that were adopted.

A few miles away, on the other side of the Nile, the limestone was quarried from the hillside at Turah. Thousands of men laboured at cutting out the mighty blocks. These were probably squared up roughly in the quarries, and then either transported to the barges on rollers made from the trunks of palm trees, or else mounted on wooden sledges that were dragged over the ground by the united efforts of hundreds of slaves. Great skill must have been required to get them safely aboard, and to unload them from the barges when they arrived on the other side of the river. There is little doubt that the site of the Pyramid was chosen close to the river and to the Turah quarries to make transport as simple as possible.

The Pyramid is built in a series of steps, the lower courses of blocks being 4 feet 11 inches high, the size diminishing as the Pyramid gets higher.Before a stone was cut or laid the Pyramid must have been carefully planned on papyri; for aught we know models may have been built to ensure its accuracy. It is plain that the builder must have calculated the sizes of all the stones course by course and the number required, for their regularity in size is not only amazing, but is also proof that the building of the Pyramid was most carefully worked out.

So extraordinary was the degree of accuracy attained by the ancient architects, that it is doubtful if a single building in all London is so correctly and accurately built as was the Great Pyramid sixty centuries ago. The Egyptians were clever enough to fix their site so that the sides of the Pyramid faced exactly north, south, east and west, without any deviation whatsoever. They had some means of measuring whereby they were able to build the lengths of the sides so truly, that there was not half an inch of difference in any one of them. The builder who is able to build four such walls over 750 feet long, without varying them half an inch in all that length, is a king of his profession. Probably there is not a house put up to-day that does not vary considerably more in the length of its small walls. For sheer accuracy in its measurements, the Great Pyramid is one of the most marvellous structures on earth, and the Egyptians were apparently able to do sixthousand years ago what we find it difficult to accomplish to-day.

The Great Wall of China was built at the sacrifice of hundreds of thousands of lives, and probably thousands of men perished in the building of the Pyramids. Accidents must have been happening all day long. The huge blocks were handled by men who dragged and pushed them to their positions. The labourers were kept hard at it by their taskmasters, whose one thought was to keep up the supply of stone. Mighty blocks weighing many tons must have often slipped and crushed the workers to death. Many of the labourers must have been maimed for life; legs were broken, arms smashed, heads and bodies crushed, as the blocks rolled and swerved in their progress.

From inferences from papyri, the great Pyramids were looked upon by the Egyptians as one of their plagues, as a scourge to the land. Men were pressed into the work, were compelled to go on with it. What mattered it to Khufu if his subjects and slaves died, so long as he built a home that would last his shadow-self for ever? We are wont to marvel at the building of the Pyramids, but under it all there must have been great cruelty as well as an incredible skill. Those monuments which to-day are the glory of Egypt, were in the past one of the afflictions of the land.

The building of the Great Pyramid entailed thecreation of a mighty sloping road, which Herodotus says took 100,000 men ten years to construct. Men swarmed over the desert like ants over a disturbed anthill, making this enormous slope up which to drag and push these gigantic blocks. The centre of the slope was paved with polished stone, so that the blocks would slide easily along, but in spite of this attempt to ease the burden, the moving of the stones must have been a heart-breaking task. As the Pyramid rose, so the road grew higher.

The blocks would be heaved out of the barges by dozens of men. Great wooden levers would be inserted under the stones to prise them up to allow the rollers to be slipped under; then hundreds of men would take hold of the long ropes, harnessing themselves like beasts of burden, and drag the stones along. Men with levers would help by thrusting behind; others would walk at the sides to attend to the rollers, and run to the front with new ones directly the last had passed underneath the stone at the back. We can imagine ropes breaking, and mighty stones plunging down the causeway, sweeping scores of poor victims to destruction. Blood and tears as well as labour went to the building of the Pyramids.

From first to last, so far as we are able to gather, about 100,000 men slaved for thirty years to build the tomb of Khufu. The site chosen was not exactlylevel. A little hillock of rock rose on one part of it, and this was cleverly squared off and incorporated into the Pyramid, saving the transport of so many hundreds of tons of rock.

The great aim of Khufu, or Cheops, as that of all the other Pharaohs, was to protect his mummy, and prevent thieves getting into his burial chamber. To this end were devised numerous secret passages, all of which show an extraordinary ingenuity in planning, and great engineering skill in execution. The entrance to the Great Pyramid is about 45 feet up on the north face. One of the blocks of stone was made to swing inward on a pivot, and when closed it was quite impossible to locate the entrance. The Pyramid looked quite solid, without a single breach in any one of its sides. So cleverly was the entrance contrived that it baffled men for thousands of years, although countless thieves went over the Pyramid seeking eagerly for a way in. Only a lucky accident could have led the discoverer to touch that particular stone in the right way to make it swing back and disclose the opening.

Even when he found the opening, he was not much nearer the burial chamber. An underground passage was driven for over 350 feet through the solid rock at an angle below the foundations of the Pyramid, until it opened out in a chamber immediately beneath the point of the Pyramid. The chamber is really a fine hall about 46 feet long by27 feet wide, with a roof 11½ feet above the level of the floor. On the other side of the chamber the underground passage continues for over 50 feet, but we are quite at a loss to divine the reason for this extension. Maybe the engineers drove this gallery with the definite intention of misleading any one who should eventually break a way into this underground retreat. At any rate, it is, like the rest of the passage, driven through the solid rock, and finishes up against the rock wall. No other outlet from this passage has ever been discovered, so its object is a mystery. Perhaps the engineers’ plans were altered, or perhaps it was designed to baffle thieves, and compel them to waste time by searching for an opening where none exists.

Khufu did not underrate the skill of the plunderers of the tombs. He realized to the full their patience and cleverness, and did all in his power to outwit them. The passage is lined throughout with blocks of stone, and we can imagine the robbers searching anxiously up and down the dark passage, casting back and fore, tapping the stones to try to find the outlet leading to the King’s Chamber. All the blocks look exactly alike, and they may have sought for months before they found that block in the roof which pivoted in a similar manner to the stone covering the entrance. This passage branched upward to the Queen’s Chamber, and opened out to the Grand Gallery, which is very narrow andhigh, at the end of which comes another passage leading to the Chamber of King Khufu.

Before the robbers were able to reach these chambers, they had many difficulties to surmount and problems to solve. At various intervals the passage was sealed by four mighty blocks of very hard granite. These blocks must have been supported until after the funeral ceremonies were completed; then the priests withdrew, the supports were knocked away, and the blocks crashed down into position in the deep grooves that were cut for them in the passage.

When the intruders surmounted one block, they were confronted by another. Their labours on the second brought them to a full stop against the face of the third. No one knows how long it took for the thieves to break into the Pyramid, but it must have taken years from the time the first secret opening was discovered. So hard was the granite with which the passage leading to the King’s and Queen’s Chambers was closed, that in one case the thieves despaired of ever getting through it, so they laboriously cut a way through the roof of the passage and clambered over the top of the granite block. They must have reaped a very rich booty, of which every trace has long since vanished.

All that remains to-day is the red granite sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber. It is an enormous stone coffin, so big that its removal is an impossibility.It is too big to be taken through the passages. The size of it indicates that it must have been placed in position when the Pyramid was being built. It shows how carefully everything was planned.

The King’s Chamber is 34 feet 3 inches long, by 17 feet 1 inch wide, with a height of 19 feet 1 inch. It is one of the wonders of the Pyramid, lined with enormous slabs of highly polished granite which reach from floor to ceiling, slabs 19 feet 1 inch high. The ceiling itself is composed of the same granite, in giant slabs nearly 4 feet wide and 17 feet 1 inch long. There are nine of these mighty slabs of polished stone, reaching from wall to wall. Their weight must be enormous, and the difficulty of getting them into position must have been prodigious. So skilfully and accurately fitted were many of the stones in the passages, that even now the point of a needle cannot be inserted between the slabs where they join.

It seems incomprehensible at first sight why this King’s Chamber has not been crushed out of existence thousands of years ago by the weight of the masonry over it. It must be remembered that what amounts to a mountain of stone rears its peak 200 feet or more above. Investigation reveals that the builders were fully alive to this danger, and the steps they took to avoid it were not only very clever, but they have worked perfectly for thousands of years. Earthquakes have occurredfrom time to time and displaced some of the stones, but the King’s Chamber is still intact and uncrushed.

The methods adopted by these clever old builders to preserve the Chamber are very simple, yet anything more brilliantly successful it would be difficult to devise. Above the King’s Chamber four other chambers were built to take the weight off the roof, and over these chambers two mighty slabs of hard stone were placed astride, leaning together at the top edges, which were so accurately cut that they could not possibly become displaced. These two stones, with their tops resting against each other, just as children lean two cards together on a table, take the weight of all the masonry above them, and deflect the thrust of the weight outwards instead of downwards, so that the King’s Chamber is amply protected.

The Pyramid of Khafra or Chephren, slightly smaller than the Great Pyramid, is still a mighty monument of the past, and although the Egyptians were free from foreign wars when it was built, they groaned under the necessity of doing this work for the king at home. The building of the Pyramids was one of the hardships of the Egyptian nation.

When the Great Pyramid was finished, a pinnacle of hard limestone was set on the top, and all the steps were filled in from the peak downwards with the same stone, to make the surface of the Pyramid quite smooth from apex to foundation. But thefacing blocks of stone have now all disappeared. Many of them have been carried off to put into new buildings, others lie shattered all about the base, where the debris rises for 40 feet or so. The point of the Great Pyramid has also gone, and there is now a platform about 36 feet square, on which visitors may stand and gaze on the wonders of the desert.

Only 500 yards away the head of the Great Sphinx emerges from the sands. Nobody knows what the Sphinx represents. The most learned investigators are uncertain of its origin and age. Some think it may have been carved by the sculptors of one of the great pyramid builders, but others regard it as very much older. Probably it represents the sun god Ra, but for centuries the Arabs have known it as the Father of Terrors.

From the tip of its paws to the end of its back it measures 190 feet. It is 65 feet high, and its neck is 69 feet round, while the tallest man could roll in between the lips, were they open, for they are 7 feet wide. The Sphinx is still joined to the mother rock which forms the floor of the desert hereabouts. It was carved out of the outcropping stone, which the sculptors chipped and fashioned with infinite labour into the shape of the Father of Terrors. The astounding thing is that in spite of the gigantic size of the figure, the proportions are faultless.

THE COLOSSI OF MEMNON, SET UP BY AMENHOTEP III., IN FRONT OF HIS TEMPLE AT THEBES. THE TEMPLE HAS DISAPPEARED, BUT THESE GIGANTIC FIGURES, WHICH ARE ABOUT 50 FEET HIGH, ARE AMONG THE MARVELS OF THE NILE

Between its paws was a temple, that gave up astatue of Khafra, the builder of the Second Pyramid, but temple and paws are now covered with sand. Indeed the Sphinx has spent the greater part of its existence under the sands of the desert. One of the first things Thothmes IV did when he came to the throne over three thousand years ago, was to set men to uncover the Sphinx, and dig the sand away from its 140-foot-long body. From time to time others have removed the sand, but always the sand comes back and quickly steals over the body and covers it, leaving the head emerging like some monster of the desert.

In the past the Sphinx has been badly treated by the ignorant Arabs, who have smashed its face about and given it that strange expression which is a half-wry smile. Probably thousands of years hence, when our present civilization has disappeared and been forgotten, the Sphinx will still be regarding the Nile and the world with the same half-sad, half-mocking expression.

The Sphinx is as lasting as the mountains, as eternal as the rock out of which it is carved. The riddle of the origin of this masterpiece of an ancient civilization may yet be solved by a man digging with a spade in the desert sands.

The famous Colossi of Memnon, set up by AmenhotepIIIin front of his chapel on the bank of the Nile at Thebes, almost rival the Sphinx in their gigantic stature. The great figures, 50 feethigh, are carved out of solid blocks of limestone, and there they sit on guard as they have sat for thousands of years. The floods of the Nile swirl about them, laving their injured feet, but the temple they guarded has long since vanished from the face of the earth.

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