Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/52

 28 Outlines of Europe an History The progress of the Egyp- tians before they built stone masonry From the earliest stone masonry to the Great Pyramid — a century and a half same life-giving power which furnished him his food in this world would care for him also in the next, when his body lay out yonder in the great cemetery which we are approaching. But this vast cemetery of Gizeh tells us of many other things besides the religion of the Egyptians. As we look up at the colossal pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) we can hardly grasp the fact of the enormous stride forward which the Egyptians have taken since the days when they used to be buried with their flint knives in a pit scooped out on the margin of the desert (Fig. 1 1). It is the use of metal which has since then carried them so far. That Egyptian in Sinai who noticed the first bit of metal (p. 24) lived over a thousand years before these pyramids were built. He was buried in a pit like that of the earliest Egyptian peasant (Fig. 11). It was a long time before his discovery of metal resulted in copper tools which made possible great architecture in stone. Not more than a hundred and fifty years before the Great Pyra- mid of Gizeh, the Egyptians were still building the tombs of their kings of sun-baked brick. Such a royal tomb was merely a chamber in the ground, roofed with wood (Fig. 13, i). Then some skillful workman among them found out that he could use his copper tools to cut square blocks of limesione and line the chamber with these blocks in place of the soft bricks. This was the first piece of sto?ie masonry ever put together in so far as we know (Fig. 13, 2). It was built not long before 3000 B.C., and less than a century and a half later, that is, by 2900 B.C., the king's architect was building the Great Pyramid of Gizeh (Fig. 13, 6). What a contrast between the sun- baked brick chamber and the Great Pyramid of Gizeh only a century and a half later ! Most of this progress was made during the thirtieth century B.C. ; that is, between 3000 and 2900 B.C. (Fig. 13). Such rapid progress in control of mechani- cal power can be found in no other period of the world's history until the nineteenth century, which closed not long before many of the readers of this book were born.