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But now, what say the Pyramids themselves? First, They affirm themselves to be tombs, not temples. Sepulchral vaults have

book." Africanus adds, that he himself ob- world to cover them with mats. All this tained a copy of this book when in Egypt, as was unknown to credulous old Herodotus, a valuable prize. The Second Pyramid Man- and shows the value of critical and scientific etho does not mention at all. Of Mycerinus, investigation. whom he writes Mencheres, he had nothing to record, but that he was the successor of Suphis. The Third Pyramid he assigns to Nitocris, the last sovereign of the Sixth Dy-been discovered under each, but there is no nasty; the most beautiful of women, having rosy cheeks and fair hair, who succeeded to the throne on the murder of her husband, and destroyed his assassins by letting the Nile into the apartment where she had invited them to a banquet.

Herodotus had heard of Nitocris and her tragical revenge. She was the only female in a list of three hundred sovereigns, read to him by the priests from a book; but they said nothing of her building a pyramid, nothing of her beauty or foreign complexion; on the contrary, they called her the sole native queen, and represented the king whom she avenged as her brother.

In regard to the Third Pyramid, then, Manetho is distinctly at variance with the older priests; as for the First, the difference of name is more apparent than real, since Cheops and Suphis may be only two ways of spelling the same hieroglyphical name.*

Here ends the Egyptian information; it would be to little purpose to interrogate the many learned travellers who have since tried to unravel our tangle. It has been tugged and twisted and bit at, in every imaginable way. The Pyramids are Joseph's granaries; or his sepulchre, opened at the Exodus to carry his mummy up to the Land of Promise; or the Pharaoh's tomb who was drowned in the Red Sea; or temples for the mystical rites of Osiris; or water temples; or temples to Venus; or observatories; or emblems of the sacred sphere, proving the Egyptians to have been acquainted with the quadrature of the circle. They were built by Nimrod, or by the Israelites, or by Queen Daluka; or (if you listen to the Arabs) by Surid, a king of Egypt before the Flood. They were the tombs of Seth, of Enoch, of Adam. They were covered with inscriptions" containing every charm and wonder of physic in the Mosannad character." The founder clothed them in rich brocade, and challenged all the

The ch in Egyptian seems to have been both soft and hard, as in English, and p is always interchangable with ph or f.

trace of any religious uses whatever.* The vaults, however, have no communications— and never could have had any-with the Nile, being all considerably above its level. Hence, the story of Cheops and his insulated tomb only proves that the priests were not acquainted with the interior of the pyramids. At what time they were first opened we know not, apparently not till after Herodotus`s visit; perhaps before Strabo's, who mentions the entrance into the larger one covered by a movable stone. They were probably violated by the Persians, and certainly by the Arabian caliphs of the seventh century. Hence the absence of a body, or any traces of one, in the larger pyramids, does not amount to a corroboration of the legend, that the founders were never buried there.† Though the vault is empty, the Great Pyramid contains what neither Herodotus nor Diodorus ever expected, a chamber-indeed two-in the heart of the superstructure; and in one of these, called the King's Chamber, a plain granite sarcophagus still remains. It must be noted that all the chambers and vaults are secured by portcullises of stone, with every precaution against disturbance or subsequent entry.

Another point to be noted is, that the vaults are entered by sloping passages opening high in the northern face of each pyramid,, and running at about the same angle straight into the bowels of the earth. In the Great Pyramid the passage is upwards of three hun-dred feet long, and so exactly straight, that the sky is visible from the lower end.. Its angle with the horizon is 26 degs. 41 mins., which, according to a calculation made by Sir John Herschel, would have pointed four thousand years ago to the star a in the constellation of Draco, which was then the north

It is the pleasure of some travellers to call the ruins on their eastern sides temples, but there is not a shadow of evidence to sustain the hypothesis.

+ On the contrary, if Cheops was succeeded by a brother (or a son) who reigned fifty-six years, there was clearly power to protect his grave, and the precautions taken to close the tombs indicate an actual interment.

star.

This fact has been called in to assist kind of garret over it, only two or three feet

in determining the date of the structure; at all events, when coupled with the exact emplacement of the sides, it proves that some astronomical considerations were in view, though the pyramids are hardly suited for observatories. †

The most remarkable testimony, however, derived from the pyramids themselves, is of the kind immortalized by our noble Foreign Secretary, as conspicuous for its absence." Their vast surfaces are without any kind of inscription or sculpture; while every other Egyptian monument is profusely embellished with figures and hieroglyphics. The casing still remains on the upper part of the Second Pyramid, and the stones which are fallen at the foot of each have been examined; search has been made also at Fostat and Cairo, where the casing stones were made use of, but no trace of an inscription has been heard of, beyond the two observed by Herodotus and Diodorus. The inscriptions talked of by the Arabs are about as reliable as their hangings of silk brocade. The interior of the pyramids, too, with a couple of exceptions to be noticed directly, are as dumb as the exterior. The passages, vaults, chambers, sarcophagi, all witnessing to a bold and skilful use of the graving-tool, are without any figures or characters whatsoever. So marked a contrast to all other Egyptian tombs and temples, certainly suggests a different race or age; and Colonel Vyse, on this account, accepts the tradition of a Shepherd origin.

To this intelligent explorer are owing the latest and most important discoveries, constituting the two exceptions just referred to. 'The first is in the Great Pyramid, where the king's chamber was long known to have a *The calculation is given in the Appendix to Col. Howard Vyse's comprehensive work. Some of the popular epitomes of Astronomy substitute the star y for a Draconis, fixed upon by Herschel.

high, which was entered by Mr. Davison in 1765, and called by his name. Colonel Vyse, in 1837, discovered four similar chambers over Mr. Davison's, one above another, and clearly designed (like his) to take off the weight from the flat roof of the king's chamber. The walls of these apartments, never entered, and never meant to be entered, since the completion of the structure, were found abundantly marked with hieroglyphics. They were only rude, unintelligible scrawls, made, in all probability, at the quarries from which the stones were brought; but among them appeared a royal name, which had been previously found in the tombs adjacent to the pyramids, and read, Chufu. This was held to be the same which Herodotus wrote Cheops, and Manetho Suphis; but as the tombs are certainly posterior to the pyramids,

and no one can say how long,-the identification was incomplete till the discovery of the same characters in the pyramid itself.

If the discovery had ended here, it would have been better for the solution; we all know the inconvenience of proving too much. These same quarry marks, however, contain another royal ring, enclosing three of the four characters read Chufu, preceded by two others supposed to be symbols of Kneph, the most ancient name in Egypt for the divinity. Now of this Nef-chufu there are more theories than we care to recount. The general notion makes him another king of the same family; and as Manetho actually has a second Suphis succeeding the first, let it be agreed that here are their names.

We proceed to the Second Pyramid. Wanted, a monumental identification for Cephrenes or Chabryis. Nothing easier, says the Egyptologist. One of the adjacent tombs hides the dust of an architect whose epitaph attaches him to "Shafra, the great one of the The objections to their being actually designed Pyramids." Shafra is the name you are in as observatories are, the limited view from the in-search of, so hand over the reward. But stay terior, and the unnecessary height and difficulty of access, if a platform be imagined on the top. Still, a little; an advertisement of this sort often it is certain that the transit of the heavenly bodies across the mouth of these inclined passages might be noted at the bottom, just as they are reflected at this day in a vessel of quicksilver at the bottom of the well in the Royal Observatory at Greenwich. The passages would act, indeed, as telescopes (before lenses were known); and the same may be said of the singular narrow tubes in the King's Chamber. which are called ventilators. On the exterior it is

possible that observations were made before the present heights were attained; moreover, Diodorus mentions a way of ascent outside.

brings in many candidates, and it is not every one taken up on suspicion that proves to be" wanted." Shafra is found about the place, it is true, though not actually on the premises; but we have yet to find that he was there at the time.

The most vulnerable point in Egyptology is the facility with which it "identifies" a hieroglyphic name, found anywhere, with

any historical personage unprovided with a | cient divinities, Amun and Nef, who, in later monument. Hieroglyphics afford a delight- days, were written Amun-ra and Nef-ra. ful latitude for these experiments: they are To this later period Shafra must unquestionread backward or forward, upward or down-ably belong. ward, from centre to flank, or from flank to Baron Bunsen insists on idolatry being eocentre, at the pleasure of the artist, or the in- eval with the language and nationality of terpreter. Many of the phonetic characters Egypt, and will allow of no changes in the stand for more letters than one, and all the religion or monarchy through all his romansymbolical ones may be variously interpreted; tic periods. But inquirers of a lower flight so that it may be truly said of this study that will find in the Pyramids themselves the the vowels go for nothing, and any consonant clearest evidence of at least one entire revomay be changed into another. It would be lution. Not only are they manifestly differhard if, with such advantages, monumental ent in character from all other monuments, evidence could not be found. In point of but the very tradition of their origin was fact, a large proportion of modern "identifi- lost. The idol priests knew nothing about cations" consists of such mere resemblances, them. Their founders were impious accursed arbitrarily brought together, and as arbitra- men, who closed the temples,-Philition the rily removed when a different hypothesis re- Shepherd,-and so forth. What does this quires a new arrangement. We have names mean, but that they were men of another reslipped a thousand years up or down the chro-ligion, who lived before the temples were nological scale at pleasure; and it is quite common with Baron Bunsen to assign as a proof of identity that no other place fits so well. He might as well take his readers into Moses' shop and asseverate that the best fit was made to their own measure.

A tomb which is certainly later than the Pyramid, and in a place which continued a necropolis for centuries, will not of itself attest the identity of Shafra and Cephrenes. It is no more than a similarity of sound; even that is not certain! Maga's old eyes are hardly keen enough to discern at this distance whether the first sign is a circle with a dot, denoting the sun, or a circle with two strokes, denoting a sieve: if the former, it is the sign of the God Ra, and to be read at the end of the name; but if the latter, it is the initial letter ch as in Chufu. Again the anvil, or diadem, which forms the second sign, is oftener read m than sh; so that if we were in quest of an identity it would not be hard to change Shafra into Chemef, and compare it with the Chembes of Diodorus.

If Shafra be the right reading, it is a name of quite a different character from Chufu, its alleged predecessor. The strongest argument for the high antiquity of the Pyramids is the abscence of the idolatrous sculptures which cover the other monuments. Chufu and Nefchufu are names agreeing with this peculiarity, since neither exhibits the sun, whose disc was invariably placed in the shield of the idolatrous Pharaohs. Menes and Athothes are of the same class; so, too, are the most an

built? The Pyramids were like Stonehenge ; relicts of a former state of society, which had no succession among those who talked so ignorantly.

It might be possible to trace a similar indication in the founder's name which Eratosthenes writes Saophis, and translates кouaorne, the hairy one, or “lord of hair.” This was an appellation given to the prophet Elijah,* and it is certainly more intelligible of a Phoenician or Arab, than of the shorn and shaven Egyptian. On the other hand, the shepherd kings do not come in till the Fifteenth Dynasty of Manetho; while Suphis is a native Pharaoh of the Fourth. The Pyramid, too, is so essentially an indigenous structure, that the hieroglyphic name of Memphis is the "City of Pyramids." And finally, the discovery of hieroglyphics in the Great Pyramid proves the language (though not the religion) of Chufu.

On the whole, the most probable hypothesis might be that Chufu was one of the ancient rulers of Memphis before the Shepherd invasion, when the Copts were confined to Upper Egypt, and Thebes, the mother of idols, had not extended her arms or her arts into the Delta. Such a ruler was the Pharaoh who entertained Abraham, and who was sufficiently acquainted with his God to be the bearer of the Divine rebuke to the patriarch himself. The Sacred history mentions no idolatry at this time either in Canaan or in Egypt. Abraham had been called out * 2 Kings, i. 8.

of Chaldea to escape its pollution; he rears the name of an idol; but no idolatrous emhis altars in Canaan undisturbed. The kings blems are found in the Pyramid,-nothing of the country accompany him to the sanctu- but the waterpot and the ram, the primative ary of the "priest of the most High God; "instruments of purification and sacrifice. If he enters Egypt as an honored guest. All this reasoning may be trusted, the Great Pyrathis indicates that the sons of Ham, though mid may be placed in the age of Abraham, undoubtedly stained by gross immorality, had while Shafra cannot be admitted till that of not yet abandoned the primitive faith. On Moses. this very account it seems the promise was delayed, and the Canaanite continued in possession, "For the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full."*

It was a very different state of things when Moses refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, and Joshua, on crossing over Jordan, found altars, and pillars, and idols, on the mountains and hills, and under every green tree.

Now, the best scriptural chronology places Abraham's visit into Egypt about the year B.c. 2081, and this is very nearly the period assigned to Suphis by the more rational Egyptologists. Mr. Poole puts his reign in the 23d century B.C., Sir J. G. Wilkinson and Colonel Vyse in 2123. The latter is the date assumed by Sir John Herschel in his calculations of the polar star.

To the circumscribed vision of men in general, it is no considerable stretch into antiquity to be able to look upon a structure which was built before Moses, perhaps before Abraham; say a thousand years before the siege of Troy. This is nothing, however, to the glance of the Prussian Eagle. Baron Bunsen demands another thousand, and his friend Lepsius two. The latter will not abate a year of B.C. 4000, and he is such a master of the art that he tells us he could write a Court and State Directory of the time of King Cheops or Cephrenes.

If we suppose Chufu, then, to be a primitive monotheistic Pharaoh, we may be able to explain what has so perplexed the crities; the extraordinary statement of Manetho, that "he was a despiser of the gods," and yet "the author of a sacred book." Some have thought the translation erroneous, and that we ought to read "a speculator on the gods; others suppose the animal gods to be meant but it is not unprecedented for a philosopher to despise idolatry, and yet be an authority among idolaters. This is exactly the character of the Hindu Brahmana at the present day. They assert the purity and spirituality of the godhead in the strongest terms; yet these writings are bound up in the Vedas with the earlier hymns to the elements, and revered as the scriptures of a later and utterly idolatrous system. A mono-still, there are some wide gulfs between Leptheistic philosophy, losing sight of the Divine Person, passes naturally into pantheism, and that into material idolatry.

If we may suppose "the wisdom of the Egyptians" to be such a philosophy at the date of Abraham's visit, its best antidote would be found in the revelation just made to the patriarch of the Personal God. This may have been the subject of those discussions which, according to Josephus, he held with the priests. The classical writers are unanimous that the ancient Egyptians worshipped the Eternal Spirit, whom they called Kneph. This is the very name which we find subjoined with Chufu's in the Great Pyramid; was he, like Melchisedec, "a priest of the most High God?" It is true that Kneph was afterwards

* Gen. xv. 16.

Now we willingly avow our admiration for the splendid plates of Lepsius's "Denkmäler." They are a treasure of Egyptology-only too copious, in fact, for minds that must think a little for the living as well as the dead. There is not a doubt of their fidelity and value:

sius and the Pyramids. In the first place, his drawings are from the adjacent graves, not from the Pyramids: the connection between them depends on the date assigned to each respectively, and this is altogether a matter of hypothesis. Lepsius, for example, gives us, from a grave of the Fourth Dynasty, an accurate representation of the god Thoth, and as this is the Dynasty of Cheops and Cephrenes, here is proof positive against a pre-idolatrous era. But how does he know that this grave is of the time of the Fourth Dynasty? or, what that time was? He does not know at all. There is no evidence on either point; it is all matter of arrangement. It suits his system to ascribe it to the Fourth Dynasty; to other eyes, the drawing manifestly indicates a much later style of art.

All Egyptian chronology, in fact, starts from ered a grave, which he assigns to "Prince the year B.C. 971, when Shishak, captured Merhet, priest, and probably son of Chufu, the Jerusalem. This prince is clearly identified high court architect of Memphis, and perhaps with Sheshonk, whom Manetho places at the employed on the pyramid itself." If this exhead of the Twenty-second Dynasty; all tract from the Egyptian "Court Guide" before him depends on the method by which might be depended upon, it would change work you your way backward through the the state of the question in a trice. Instead previous reigns. Manetho's figures have to of a pre-idolatrous ruler, or even a Shepherd be corrected somehow his totals often do king, Chufu drops at once into a deified Phanot agree with the true summation; the raoh, with a priesthood to his honor like monuments disprove the length of the reign; those of the New monarchy. Then what bereigns, or even whole dynasties, added to- comes of the Cheops of accursed memory? Why are gether as successive, are shown to be contem- Why all the uncertainty among the priests Are the quarry poraneous; hundreds of years are assigned to concerning the true founder? kings, of whose very names he was ignorant. there no hieroglyphics? Every fault, in a word which can possibly marks really meant for the founder's name? vitiate a chronology is to be found in Mane- In short the gulf is so wide and deep between tho's lists; and when you compare them the impious Cheops of history, and Chufu with the monuments it is like propping up honored with an apotheosis and a family one baseless system by another. The monu- hierarchy, that every vestige of identity disments often bear the year of the king's reign appears at the bottom, and the Pyramid is left in which they were erected; occasionally absolutely without a who or a when. they give a succession of kings, more or less extensive; but the Egyptians had no common era, and consequently no monument exhibits a real chronological date. Everything depends on the order in which you choose to arrange them; and arrange them how you will, you can never get to a genuine date (without extrinsic aid), because Egypt has no history to support it.

It is true that Chufu's name is often found " but those tombs are in the tombs in connection with a title rendered "royal priests; copiously inscribed with the ordinary idolatrous hieroglyphics. The presumption, therefore, is strong against their being contemporaneous with the Pyramids. Again it is not certain whether these inscriptions speak of a priesthood in honor of Chufu, or of his being himself a priest; and, to conclude, we are not sure they refer to king Chufu at all. It may be the name of a private individual, called after the old Pharaoh (of which there are numerous examples); and in favor of this hypothesis it is observable that none of the usual royal titles are subjoined.

Professor Lepsius is so satisfed, however, with his own chronology, that he has actually had it inscribed on the Great Pyramid, in hieroglyphic characters! If Cheops left his monument undated, the omission has been supplied in a complimentary effusion bearing date" in the year 3164 from the commenceIt is time to pass to the other hieroglyphic ment of the Sothis period, under King Menephthes." The idolatrous appellation, "Son inscription discovered by Colonel Vyse. It of the Sun," is now to be seen on his walls; was found in the Third Pyramid, which, -given however, not to Cheops, but to like the Second, contains no chamber above "The Son and Rock of Prussia, Frederick ground, but covers two subterranean vaults, William the Fourth," in honor of whose birth- suggesting the idea of a double interment. day this reprehensible piece of conceit was In the lower vault was found a sarcophagus, perpetrated. People really ought to recol- finely panelled in stone, but still without inlect that fictions carved in stone, whether by scription. Part of the coffin once enclosed in heathen priests or rationalistic scholars, are it, and of the human remains which it had not a bit more authentic than the legends of contained, is now in the British Museum; the cloister and the traditions of the church. and on the coffin lid is a full hieroglyphic King MenIn reality, the Prussian system, instead of inscription, in two perpendicular columns, increasing the antiquity of the Pyramids, in- addressed to the deceased as " sists on the strongest possible ground for sus-cheres," and invoking his rest in the usual pecting it, when it connects the oldest of them language of the Osirian superstition. This with idolatry. Lepsius, it seems, has discov-discovery seemed to set two questions at rest:

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