Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/330

 240 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. the pyramids, with their poHshed slopes ^ and their long shadows turning with the sun, that gave the scene a peculiar solemnity and a character of its own. Morning and evening this shadow passed over hundreds of tombs, and thus, in a fashion, symbolized the royal dignity and the almost superhuman majesty of the kingly office. Of all this harmonious conception but a few fragments remain. The necropolis is almost as empty and deserted as the desert which it adjoins. The silence is only broken by the cry of the jackal, by the footsteps of a few casual visitors hurrying along its deserted avenues, and by the harsh voices of the Bedouins who have taken possession of the Pyramid of Cheojos, and, in their own fashion, do its honours to the curious visitor. But despoiled though they be of their ornaments and of their proper surroun- dings, the pyramids are yet among those monuments of the world which are sure to impress all who possess sensibility or powers of reflection. In a remarkable passage in the Descinptio7i g^nh'ale de Memphis et des Pyramides, Jomard has well defined the effect which they produce upon the traveller and the impressions which they leave behind : " The general effect produced by the pyramids is very curious. Their summits, when seen from a distance, look like those of higrh mountains standing out aeainst the sky. As we approach them this effect diminishes ; but when we arrive within a very short distance of their sides a totally different impression succeeds ; we begin to be amazed, to be oppressed, almost to be stupefied by their size. When quite close to them their summits and ansrles can no longer be seen. 7'he wonder which they cause is not like that caused by a great work of art. It is the sense of their simple grandeur of form and of the disproportion between the individual power and stature of man and these colossal creations of his hands. The eye can hardly embrace them, nor the imagination grasp their mass. We then begin to form some idea of the prodigious quantity of dressed stone which goes to make up their height. We see hundreds of stones each containino- two hundred cubic feet and weighing some thirty tons, and thousands of others which are but little less. We touch them with our hands and endeavour ' Jomard remarks that the upper part of the second pyramid still reflects the rays of the sun. " It still possesses," he says, "a portion of its polished casing, which relects the rays of the sun and declares its identity to people at a vast distance."