Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/495

 THE GREAT PYRAMIDS. 408 foundations, raised to a height of over 500 feet, and adjusted with the greatest curt', was no less than 90,000,000 cubic feet, a quantity sufficient to build a wall seven feet high and twenty inches thick across the whole of Western Europe from Lisbon to Warsaw. The basilica of St. Peter's would disappear altogether, with its colonnades and cupola, in the interior of this prodigious polyhedron in stone. According to Herodotus, an inscription on the Great Pyramid estimated at 1,600 silver talents, or £400,000, the sum expended on the purchase of the garlic, onions, and parsley retjuired to supply the workmen with these articles of food ; and for tho implements, machinery, quurrj'ing, transport of materials, and so forth, who will estimate tho enormous outlays that must have been incurred ! But, above all, how many human lives must have been sacrificed on the works! According to a Greek tradition — which, however, according to Maspero, rests on no historic evidence — tho people held in horror these monuments of their bondage and oppression. They were even said to have avoided uttering the very names of the kings in whose honour these mountains of stone had been raised. While exceeding all other structures in bulk, the pyramids are surpassed in height by some of the minsters in tho west of Europe. Tho Pyramid of Cheops, diminished by some forty feet through the loss of its stone facing and tho subsidence of its foundations, has a present height of 456 feet ; • that of Khephren, or Khef ra, about six feet less ; while tho third, of ^fycerinus, or Menkera, falls below one-half of these elevations. The other pvTamids of tho plateau, " mere embryos," so to say, can scarcely be distinguished from the heaps of refuse scattered at the base of the two larger piles. The last, proceeding northwards, is that of Abu-Roash. Notwithstanding the statements often made to the contrary, the two great pyramids are easily scaled, even ^'ithout the assistance of tho Bedouins, who under- take for bakshish to look after the safety of travellers. In any case the labour expended on the ascent is amply compensated by the marvellous view commanded from the summit. From this altitude tho eye sweeps over a boundless and varied prospect, where the red and yellow sands of tho desert roll away in one direction like ocean billows, while in another the verdant plains with their dark groups of hamlets and silver lakelets left by the last overflow of the Nile and its canals stretch beyond the horizon. Travellers often ascend the Pyramid of Cheops before dawn in order to contemplate the morning sun suddenly lighting up these limitless spaces. The great pyramids face tho cardinal points so exactly that the Bedouins of the district perfectly understand how to use these monuments not only in discriminat- ing the seasons, but also in calculating the time of day. At the equinox the rising sun seen in a line with tho northern or southern face of the structure presents exactly half of its disc to the view. At tho time of the French expedition, Cou- telle, measuring the Pyramid of Cheops with the compass, calculated that its orientation was perfect. But this was not confirmed by the subsequent and more precise measurements of Nouet ; while the minute observations of Flinders Petrie, continued for a period of several months, have placed it beyond doubt that the two parallel east and west sides, instead of pointing due north, are inclined 3' 40" to the
 * Exact htright txom p^dimeat to apex, according to Flindon Pe rio, 1467 metres.