They have served to rescue from oblivion the fact that the Pharaohs of Memphis had a title which was “King of Upper and Lower Egypt.” At the same time he was “Peras,” “of the great house” – written Pharaoh in the Bible. He was a god for his subjects, a lord par excellence, in whose sight there should be prostration and a rubbing of the ground with noses. They saluted him with the words “his holiness.” The royal court was composed of the nobility of the country and servants of inferior rank. The former added to dignity of origin the graces of wisdom, good manners, and virtue. Chiefs, or scribes carried on the affairs of the court.
The monuments clearly speak of Senoferu, of the third dynasty, B.C. 3766. A ravine in the Memphian Necropolis, where are many ancient caverns, contains a stone picture of Senoferu, who appears as a warrior striking an enemy to the ground with a mighty club. The rock inscriptions mention his name, with the title of “vanquisher of foreign peoples” who in his time inhabited the cavernous valleys in the mountains round Sinai.
The Pharaohs of the fourth dynasty were the builders of the hugest of the pyramids. The tables discovered at Abydos make Khufu the successor of Senoferu. Khufu is the Cheops of the historian Herodotus. His date was 3733 B.C.
No spirited traveler ever sets foot on the black soil of Egypt, without gazing on that wonder of antiquity, the threefold mass of the pyramids on the steep edge of the desert, an hour’s ride over the long causeway extending out from Ghiseh. The desert’s boundless sea of yellow sand, whose billows are piled up around the gigantic pyramids, deeply entombing the tomb, surges hot and dry far up the green meadows and mingles with the growing grass and corn. From the far distance you see the giant forms of the pyramids, as if they were regularly crystalized mountains, which the ever-creating nature has called forth from the mother soil of rock, to lift themselves up towards the blue vault of heaven. And yet they are but tombs, built by the hands of men, raised by King Khufu (Cheops) and two other Pharaohs of the same family and dynasty, to be the admiration and astonishment of the ancient and modern world.
We speak now of the three largest – there are six others in this group, and twenty-seven more throughout the Nile valley. They are perfectly adjusted to points of the compass – north, south, east and west. Modern investigators have found in the construction, proportions and position of the “Great Pyramid” especially, many things which point to a marvellous knowledge of science on the part of their builders. If the half they say is true of them, there are a vast number of lost arts to discredit modern genius. Some go so far as to trace in their measurements and construction, not only prophecy of the coming of Christ, but chart of the events which have signalized the world’s history and are yet to make it memorable. They base their reasoning on the fact that there was no architectural model for them and no books extant to teach the science requisite for their construction, that their height and bases bear certain proportions to each other, and to the diameter of a great circle, that they are on the line of a true meridian, that certain openings point to certain stars, and so on till ingenuity is exhausted.
The three large pyramids measure thus
As soon as a Pharaoh mounted the throne he gave orders to a nobleman, master of all the buildings, to plan the work and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edifice was raised on the limestone rock of the desert in the form of a small pyramid built in steps. Its well constructed and finished interior formed the king’s eternal dwelling, with his stone sarcophagus lying on the stone floor. Let us suppose this first building finished while the king still lived. A second covering was added on the outside of the first; then a third; then a fourth; and so the mass of the giant building grew greater the longer the king lived. Then at last, when it became almost impossible to extend the area of the pyramid further, a casing of hard stone, polished like glass, and fitted accurately into the angles of the steps, covered the vast mass of the king’s sepulchre, presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four faces. More than seventy of such pyramids once rose on the margin of the desert, each telling of a king, of whom it was at once the tomb and the monument.
At present the Great Pyramid is, externally, a rough, huge mass of limestone blocks, regularly worked and cemented. The top is flattened. The outside polished casing, as well as the top, has been removed by the builders of Cairo, for mosques and palaces, as have many of the finest ruins on the Nile.
The Sphinx was sculptured at some time not far removed from the building of the three great pyramids. Recent discoveries have increased the astonishment of mankind at the bulk of this monstrous figure and at the vast and unknown buildings that stood around it and, as it were, lay between its paws. It is within a few years that the sand has been blown away and revealed these incomprehensible structures. In a well near by was found a finely executed statue of Khafra, builder of the second pyramid.
There are other sphinxes, but this at the base of the Great Pyramid is the largest. It has a man’s head and a lion’s body, and is supposed to represent the kingly power of the sun god. Its length is 140 feet, and height 30 feet. Between its paws is an altar, to which you ascend by a long flight of steps. The Arabs call it “the fatherly terror.”
In the middle “chamber of the dead” of Menkara’s pyramid was found his stone sarcophagus and its wooden cover, both beautifully adorned in the style of a temple. They were taken out and shipped for England, but the vessel was wrecked, and the sarcophagus now lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean. The lid was saved and is now in the British Museum. On it is carved a text or prayer to Osiris, king of the gods: “O Osiris, who hast become king of Egypt, Menkara living eternally, child of heaven, son of the divine mother, heir of time, over thee may she stretch herself and cover thee, thy divine mother, in her name as mystery of heaven. May she grant that thou shouldst be like god, free from all evils, king Menkara, living eternally.”
The prayer is not uncommon, for parts of it have been found on other monuments. Its sense is, “Delivered from mortal matter, the soul of the dead king passes through the immense spaces of heaven to unite itself with god, after having overcome the evil which opposed it on its journey through earth.”
The entrance to the great pyramid was formerly quite concealed, only the priests knowing where to find the movable stone that would admit them. But now the opening is plain, and is about forty-five feet from the ground on the north side. Thence there is a descent through a narrow passage for 320 feet into the sepulchral chamber. The passage is much blocked and difficult. The great red granite sarcophagus is there, empty and broken, mute receptacle of departed greatness, for which the relic hunter has had quite too little respect.
With the end of the fifth dynasty pyramid building ceased. The glory of Memphis departed and went to Thebes, where kingly vanity seems to have sought outlet in the temple architecture whose ruins are the wonder of the world.
Above the old site of Memphis, is Toora, and out on its desert side are the pyramids of Sakkarah, eleven in number. The most remarkable is the Step Pyramid, believed to be more ancient than those of Ghiseh. But there is something even more wonderful here – the Temple of Serapis, which it took four years to disengage from the sands of the desert after its site was discovered. It seems to have been dedicated to Serapis, the sacred bull of Egypt. Beneath it is a great catacomb where once laid the remains of thousands of sacred bulls. Their stone coffins are still there, cut out of solid blocks of granite, and measuring fourteen feet long by eleven feet high.
Further up the Nile are the high limestone cliffs of Gebel-et-Teyr, on which perches the Coptic “Convent of the Pulley.” The monks who live here are great beggars. They let themselves down from the cliff and swim off to a passing boat to ask