Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/280

 190 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. and left hardly a trace behind. We are therefore obliged to make use of the private tomb in our restoration of that which was peculiar to the king. Philologists have attempted to trace back the etymology of the word Trvpa/xls to the ancient language of Egypt. The term was first employed by the Greeks, and from their language it has been adopted into that of every civilized nation, with a meaning which is scientifically exact. Its origin has been sought for in the Coptic term pi-rama, height, and in the term pir-aa, which occurs continually in Exodus, and was used by Moses to signify the reigning Pharaoh. But egyptologists now seem to be unanimous in rejecting both these derivations. They are, we are told, refuted by the fact that the terms which are supposed to have meant a pyramid are never used in that sense in any of the texts. ' The words which mean a royal tomb or a tomb of any kind, have not the remotest likeness,' says Herr Brugsch,^ ' to the term TTvpafits. Each royal pyramid had its own name, a composite epithet which was peculiar to itself.' Thus the largest of them all was called "the brilliant dwelling of Choufou ;" the second, "the great;" the third, "that which is on high." The word pyra^uin^ appears therefore to be a purely Greek term, derived from wvp, fire, and suggested by the similarity between its shape and that of a tong^ue of flame. We shall not waste our time in noticing and refuting those fantastic explanations of the pyramids which have been given in modern times. We shall not trouble ourselves to prove that they were not observatories. Those sloping tunnels, at the bottom of which some modern writers would set unlucky astronomers to watch the passage of stars across the meridian, were her- metically sealed, and minute precautions were taken with the sole object of obstructing and concealing their entrance. The four slopes of the pyramid faced to the cardinal points, simply because the orientation of the tomb was habitual with the Egyptians ; we have already explained its meaning. Still less need we occupy ourselves with the theory, which made, however, some stir in its time, that the pyramids were bulwarks by which the ancient Egyptians attempted to keep back the sand from the fertile valley of the Nile. The science of M, de Persigny was well worthy of his policy. There was in both, the same turn for ^ History of Egypt (English version, Murray, 1879), vol. i. pp. 72, 73.