Page:Outlines of European History.djvu/53

 The Story of Egypt 29 It helps us to grasp the extent of the Egyptian's progress The vast size when we know that the Great Pyramid covers thirteen acres, pyramid'^^^* It is a solid mass of masonry containing 2,300,000 blocks of limestone, each weighing on an average two and a half tons ; that is, each block is as heavy as an ordinary wagon load of coal. The sides of the pyramid at the base are 755 feet long ; that is, about a block and three quarters (counting twelve city blocks to a mile), and the building was nearly five hundred feet high. An ancient story tells us that a hundred thousand men were working on this royal tomb for twenty years, and we can well believe it (see Plate I). We can also learn much about the progress of the Egyptian Government in government from this cemetery of Gizeh. We perceive at UJid Age^"^^" once that it must have required a very skillful ruler and a great body of officials to manage and to feed a hundred thousand workmen around this great building. The king who controlled such vast undertakings was no longer a local chieftain (p. 20), but he now ruled all Egypt. He was so reverenced that the people did not mention the king by name, but instead they spoke of the palace in which he lived ; that is, the " Great House," or, in Egyptian, " Pharaoh." ^ He had his local officials collecting taxes all over Egypt. They were also trying cases at law wherever they arose, and every jiidge had before him the written law which bade him judge justly. A large office with its corps of officials was also keeping the irrigation canals (Fig. i o) in order. The king's huge central offices occupying low sun-baked brick The treasury buildings sheltered an army of clerks with their reed pens and cky ^ ^ their rolls of papyrus (p. 22), keeping the king's records and accounts. The tax payments received from the people here were not in money, for coined money did not yet exist. Such payments were made in produce : grain, livestock, wine, honey, linen, and the like. With the exception of the cattle, these had to be stored in granaries and storehouses, a vast group of which 1 This word is a title, not the name of any particular king.