Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 140.pdf/486

Rh * Psammetichus I., Saïte supremacy (xxvi., part) 665.
 * Final Persian conquest, 340 (?).

The Great Pyramid stands almost at the beginning of the first monumental age. Its date would be before at least 2350 by the length of the second and third chasms; in other words the length of these two unknown periods must be added to at least  2350 if we would obtain the date of the pyramid. We must, therefore, surrender Napoleon's forty centuries. How much we must add to them is yet to be discovered.

The age of the pyramids is doubtful. The object for which they were built is certain. There is no need here to examine curious speculations to which their measures have, like the numbers of Manetho's list, seemed to offer themselves with a strange facility, like false lights that lead a traveller into the quicksands. They were royal tombs and nothing more. We need not draw any idea of astronomical use from their facing the cardinal points, whereas the Chaldean pyramids pointed to them, nor, in the case of the Great Pyramid, from the curious circumstance that at the time of its building its entrance passage pointed to the then pole-star, a Draconis, nor from the excellent platform for astronomical observation on its summit, nor from its chief measures being in exact Egyptian cubits without fractions. There may have been a religious reason for the orientation of this and the other Egyptian pyramids, but it is quite obvious that a deviation of direction would have produced a disagreeable discord in the placing of these geometrically-shaped buildings. It was no use to point a passage to the pole-star, as it had to be closed at the completion of the structure after the king's sepulture. The platform did not exist when the casing of the monument was complete to its apex. The most famous buildings of antiquity were constructed of full measures without fractions in all their chief dimensions. What perhaps originated in the difficulty of observing due proportion when fractions were allowed, became a matter of religion.

The pyramids then were tombs of kings. Each had its name. The Great Pyramid was called "the Splendid;" the second pyramid, strangely enough, "the Great;" the third pyramid, "the Superior." Each must have been the chief object of a king's reign. Begun, at or perhaps in some cases before, his accession, it was built on a plan which allowed constant addition and speedy completion. Thus the pyramids are the measures of the reigns of those who built them, and happily in many cases we know from the tombs around who these royal builders were.

The main principles of an Egyptian tomb of this age are the same in the pyramids and in the smaller built tombs, though the mode in which the principles are carried out is different. These smaller tombs consist of a quadrangular mass of masonry like an oblong truncated pyramid, having a pit entered from above descending to a sepulchral chamber cut in the rock beneath; and within is also a chapel entered from an external door, and a secret chamber to contain statues of the deceased. The pyramids represent the purely sepulchral part of these structures. In front of the entrance of each was a chapel, to which was probably attached a secret chamber.

The form of the pyramids is probably traceable to the natural shapes of the desert mountains. All Egyptian architecture is characterized by the same sloping lines as these mountains, varying like them from the sharp inclination of the pyramids to the very slight slope of the built tombs, and, it may be added, of all the great massive gateways of the later temples. Whether these forms were thus derived or not, their adoption must have been due to their extreme strength.

The manner in which the pyramids were constructed was first shown in Professor Lepsius's "Letters from Egypt." The objects of the royal builders were strength of position, a secure place of sepulture, and a method by which the monument could be gradually increased from year to year and finished with little delay when the king's death made this necessary. A site was chosen on the low table-land of the Libyan desert, and a slight elevation was selected as a peg on which the structure should as it were be pivoted. In this core of rock a sloping descending passage, usually entered from the north, was cut, of sufficient size for the conveyance of a sarcophagus, leading to a sepulchral chamber. Above and around the rock a solid structure of masonry was raised, of cubical form but with slightly sloping sides. In the case of the king's death at this stage of the work, the pyramid was at once completed by the addition of sloping lateral masses and a pyramidal cap. Roughly this additional work did not exceed in quantity the first construction, excluding the excavation. If the king lived on, the first construction was enlarged on each of its four sides, so as to form a great 