Ruins of Ancient Cities Part 28

He carried with him not only conquest, but destruction. His warfare was not merely with the people, but with their palaces and temples.

At a subsequent period, Memphis was taken by Alexander. The account we give of that event is from the same author[359]. As soon as Alexander had ended the siege of Gaza, he left a garrison there, and turned the whole power of his army towards Egypt. In seven days' march he arrived before Pelusium, whither a great number of Egyptians had a.s.sembled, with all imaginable diligence, to recognize him for their sovereign. The hatred these people bore to the Persians was so great, that they valued very little who should be their king, provided they could but meet with a hero, to rescue them from the insolence and indignity with which themselves, and those who professed their religion, were treated. Ochus had caused their G.o.d Apis to be murdered, in a manner highly injurious to themselves and their religion; and the Persians, to whom he had left the government, continued to make the same mock of that deity. Thus several circ.u.mstances had rendered the Persians so odious, that upon Amyntas's coming a little before with a handful of men, he found them prepared to join, and a.s.sist him in expelling the Persians.

This Amyntas had deserted from Alexander, and entered into the service of Darius. He had commanded the Grecian forces at the battle of Issus; and having fled into Syria, by the country lying toward Tripoli, with four thousand men, he had there seized upon as many vessels as he wanted, burned the rest, and immediately set sail towards the island of Cyprus, and afterwards towards Pelusium, which he took by surprise. As soon as he found himself possessed of this important city, he threw off the mask, and made public pretensions to the crown of Egypt; declaring that the motive of his coming was to expel the Persians. Upon this, a mult.i.tude of Egyptians, who wished for nothing so earnestly as to free themselves from these insupportable tyrants, went over to him. He then marched directly to Memphis, when, coming to a battle, he defeated the Persians, and shut them up in the city. But, after he had gained the victory, having neglected to keep his soldiers together, they straggled up and down in search of plunder, which the enemy seeing, they sallied out upon such as remained, and cut them to pieces, with Amyntas their leader. This event, so far from lessening the aversion the Egyptians had for the Persians, increased it still more; so that the moment Alexander appeared upon the frontiers, the people, who were all disposed to receive that monarch, ran in crowds to submit to him. His arrival, at the head of a powerful army, presented them with a secure protection, which Amyntas could not afford them; and, from this consideration, they all declared openly in his favour. Mazaeus, who commanded in Memphis, finding it would be to no purpose for him to resist so triumphant an army, since Darius, his sovereign, was not in a condition to succour him, set open the gates of the city to the conqueror, and gave up eight hundred talents, (about 140,000,) and all the king's furniture. Thus Alexander possessed himself of all Egypt, without the least opposition.

On the founding of Alexandria by the Macedonian conqueror, Memphis lost the honour of being the metropolis of Egypt; and its history became so obscure, that little knowledge of it is preserved in history. We must, therefore, now content ourselves with stating to what a condition it is now reduced.

Of this celebrated city, which, according to Diodorus Siculus, was not less than seven leagues in circ.u.mference, and contained a mult.i.tude of beautiful temples, not one stone remains to tell the history; even the site on which it stood being disputed. "Is it not astonishing," says Savary, "that the site of the ancient metropolis of Egypt, a city containing magnificent temples and palaces, which art laboured to render eternal, should at present be a subject of dispute among the learned?

Pliny removes the difficulty of past doubts--the three grand pyramids, seen by the watermen from all parts, stand on a barren and rocky hill, between Memphis and Delta, one league from the Nile, two from Memphis, and near the village of Busiris." Rennell, however, says, that Memf is on the site of Memphis; since Abulfeda describes it as being a _short_ day's journey from Cairo: Memf being only fourteen road miles from that city. M. Maillet says, "The most probable opinion is, that this superb city was built at the entrance of the town of mummies, at the north of which the pyramids are placed: the prodigious ruins which present themselves in this spot will serve for a long time as proofs of the greatness of that city, of which they are remains, and the incontestible evidences of its true position." Again, he says, that "out of so many superb monuments, &c., there remain only at present some shapeless ruins of broken columns of ruined obelisks, and some other buildings fallen to decay, which one still discovers at the bottom of the lake, when the increase of the Nile is too small to furnish it with its usual supply of water. This circ.u.mstance has twice happened during my seventeen years'

consulship, particularly in the year 1677, when the surface of the lake sank between eight and nine feet, and discovered at the bottom of this vast reservoir a kind of city, which excited the admiration of every one. This lake can never be dried up, or drawn off again as before; because they have neglected to keep up the ca.n.a.l which served to drain off the water. There are, also, some heaps of ruins in the plain of three leagues in width, that separates the northern from the southern pyramids, and in which this ancient city extended from the borders of the lake towards the Nile eastward. These are the faint traces of so much magnificence."

Dr. Shaw is of opinion that Djizeh, or Giseh, now occupies the site of Memphis; and that the city is entirely buried in soil. Other authorities, however, place it, and perhaps with greater probability, near the village of Menshee or Dashoo. Norden says: "If we give credit to some authors, the city of Memphis was situated in the place where at present stands the village of Gize, and I own that this opinion does not want probability. But if we attend to it carefully, we shall find it necessary to strike off a great deal of grandeur of that ancient capital of Egypt, or else raise extremely all the plains about it. In effect, Gize does not occupy half the s.p.a.ce of Old Cairo, and the plains that extend all round never fail to be deluged at the time of the overflowing of the waters of the Nile. It is incredible, that they should have built a city, so great and famous, in a place subject to be under water half of the year; still less can it be imagined that the ancient authors have forgotten so particular a place."

Mr. Browne says: "I visited the pleasant site of the ancient Memphis on the left bank of the Nile, about two hours to the south of Kahira, in a plain about three miles broad, between the river and the mountains. The land is now laid down in corn, with date-trees toward the mountains.

Nothing remains except heaps of rubbish, in which are found pieces of sculptured stone. The spot has been surrounded by a ca.n.a.l. Its extent might be marked by that of the ground where remains are dug up, and which is always overgrown with a kind of thistle, that seems to thrive among the ruins. None of the fine marbles, which are scattered so profusely at Alexandria, are discoverable here; whether it be that they were never used, or were carried away to adorn other cities."[360]

But though the site of the city is not absolutely known, certain it is, that many wonderful erections in its neighbourhood denote its former grandeur, power, and magnificence. These are the Catacombs, the Sphinx, the lake of Moeris, and the Pyramids.

"The entrances into the Catacombs," says the Earl of Sandwich, "where the inhabitants of the neighbouring city of Memphis entombed their embalmed bodies, are near the last Pyramid of Sakara. The greatest part of the plain of Sakara is hollowed into subterraneous cavities, all cut out of the solid rock; not of a hard nature, but yielding to the least violence. The entrances are many in number; and are in form a square of three feet, and about twenty feet deep. The vaults contain embalmed bodies, scattered in confusion, and many of them broken in pieces. These have been taken out of their chests or coffins; and after having been ransacked in search of any idol of value, which are frequently found within the bodies, thrown aside by persons, who would not be at the trouble of carrying them away. The farther the recesses are penetrated, however, the bodies are much more entire, and everything less disturbed. These subterraneous pa.s.sages are divided into many different chambers; in the sides of which are to be seen a mult.i.tude of perpendicular niches, of sufficient height to contain the bodies upright."

A little to the east of the second pyramid, is the SPHINX, cut out of the same rock upon which the pyramids are built. The length is about twenty-five feet; and its height, from the knees to the top of the hand, thirty-eight feet.

"The sphinx," says Mr. Wilkinson, "stands nearly opposite the south end of the pyramid Cephren: between its paws were discovered an altar and some tablets; but no entrance was visible. Pliny says, they suppose it the tomb of Amasis;--a tradition which arose, no doubt, from the resemblance of the name of the king, by whose order the rock was cut into this form. But one author has gone farther, and given to Amasis the pyramids themselves. The cap of the sphinx, probably the pshent, has long since been removed; but a cavity in the head, attests its former position, and explains the mode in which it was fixed. The mutilated state of the face, and the absence of the nose, have led many to the erroneous conclusion, that the features were African; but by taking an accurate sketch of the face, and restoring the Egyptian nose, any one may convince himself, that the lips, as well as the rest of the features, perfectly agree with the physiognomy of a Pharaoh; for the reader must be aware, that this, and all other sphinxes, are emblematic representations of Egyptian kings."

Between the paws of the sphinx, a perfect temple was discovered, a few years ago, by the intrepid traveller Belzoni, on clearing away the sand by which it had been choked up for ages.

This figure was[361], a few years ago, at an expense of 800 or 900_l._ (contributed by some European gentlemen,) cleared from the sand which had acc.u.mulated in front of it, under the superintendence of Captain Caviglia.

The n.o.blest and most wonderful of all the structures[362] or works of the kings of Egypt, was the lake of Moeris; accordingly, Herodotus considers it as vastly superior to the pyramids and labyrinth. As Egypt was more or less fruitful in proportion to the inundations of the Nile; and as, in these floods, the first general flow or ebb of the waters were equally fertile to the land; King Moeris, to prevent these two inconveniences, and correct, as far as lay in his power, the irregularities of the Nile, thought proper to call art to the a.s.sistance of nature; and so caused the lake to be dug, which afterwards went by his name. This lake was several thousand paces long, and very deep. Two pyramids, on each of which stood a colossal statue, seated on a throne, raised their heads to the height of three hundred feet, in the midst of the lake, whilst their foundations took up the same s.p.a.ce under the waters; a proof that they were erected before the cavity was filled; and a demonstration that a lake of such vast extent, was the work of man's hands, in one prince's reign. This is what several historians have related concerning the Lake Moeris, on the testimony of the inhabitants of the country. This lake had a communication with the Nile, by a great ca.n.a.l, four leagues long, and fifty feet broad. Great sluices either opened or shut the ca.n.a.l and lake, as there was occasion.

When it is considered, that the object of this work was the advantage and comfort of a numerous people, all must agree, with M. Savary, that Moeris, who constructed it, performed a far more glorious work than either the labyrinth or the pyramids.

At present, this lake is of a much smaller extent: but this by no means proves that Herodotus and other writers were deceived in their calculations; for, considering the revolutions to which Egypt has been subject for a series of two thousand years, it might have undergone still greater changes.

For the period of nearly one thousand two hundred years, since which Egypt has fallen into the hands of barbarous nations, they have either destroyed, or suffered to perish, the chief part of this lake, and the ca.n.a.l belonging to it. The Moereotis is dried up, the ca.n.a.l of Alexandria is no longer navigable, and the Moeris is only fifty leagues in circ.u.mference. "If," says an enlightened writer, "the Ca.n.a.l of Joseph was cleared out, where the mud is raised up to a vast height; if the ancient d.y.k.es were re-established; and the sluices of the ca.n.a.ls of Tamich and Bouch restored; Lake Moeris would still serve the same purposes. It would prevent the devastation of the too great swellings of the rivers, and supply the deficiency of those that are inadequate. We should see it, as on former occasions, extending itself from Nesle and Arsinoe, to the Lybian mountains, and offering to astonished travellers what is no where else to be seen;--a sea formed by the hand of man."

The annihilation of Memphian palaces and temples indeed is almost compensated by the existence of the pyramids, which alone are sufficient to engage the attention of mankind. The three largest are situated at Gees, or Ghesa, and named from their founders, CHEOPS, CHEPHREN, and MYCERINES; of these only we shall speak.

1. That of CHEOPS, the largest, is four hundred and forty-eight feet in height, and seven hundred and twenty-eight on each side of the base: that is, forty feet higher than St. Peter's, at Rome; and one hundred and thirty-three feet higher than St. Paul's, in London.

This pyramid, like the rest, was built on a rock, having a square base, cut on the outside as so many steps, and decreasing gradually quite to the summit. It was built with stones of a prodigious size, the least of which were thirty feet, wrought with wonderful art, and covered with hieroglyphics. According to several ancient authors, each side was eight hundred feet broad, and as many high. The summit of the pyramids, which, to those who viewed it from below, seemed a point, was a fine platform, composed of ten or twelve ma.s.sy stones, and each side of that platform sixteen or eighteen feet long.

It is also remarkable that the four sides of this, and indeed of all the pyramids, face the cardinal points. The inside contained numberless rooms and apartments. There were expressed on the pyramid, in Egyptian characters, the sums it cost only in garlic, leeks, onions, and the like, for the workmen; and the whole amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver; from whence it was easy to conjecture what a vast sum the whole must have amounted to.

Herodotus ascribes this pyramid to Cheops, a tyrannical and profligate sovereign. He barred the avenues to every temple, and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice to their G.o.ds; after which he compelled the people at large to perform the work of slaves. Some he condemned to hew stones out of the Arabian mountains, and drag them to the banks of the Nile; others were stationed to receive the same in vessels, and transport them to the edge of the Libyan Desert. In this service a hundred thousand men were employed, who were relieved every three months. Ten years were spent in the hard labour of forming the road on which these stones were to be drawn,--a work of no less difficulty and fatigue than the erection of the pyramid itself. This causeway is five stadia in length, forty cubits wide, and its greatest height thirty-two cubits; the whole being composed of polished marble, adorned with the figures of animals. Ten years were consumed in forming this pavement, in preparing the hill on which the pyramids are raised, and in excavating chambers under the ground. The burial-place which he intended for himself, he contrived to insulate within the building, by introducing the waters of the Nile. The pyramid itself was a work of twenty years; it is of a square form, every side being eight plethra in length and as many in height. The stones are very skilfully cemented, and none of them of less dimensions than thirty feet. Such is the account of Herodotus.

Pliny and Diodorus Siculus agree in stating that not less than three hundred and sixty thousand men were employed in the work[363].

The pyramid next in size was erected by Cephrenus, and is thence called CEPHREN: he was the son of Cheops. These two princes, who were truly brothers by the similitude of their manners, seem to have striven which of them should distinguish himself most, by a barefaced impiety towards the G.o.ds, and a barbarous inhumanity to men. Cheops reigned fifty years, and his son Cephrenus fifty-six years after him. They kept the temples shut during the whole time of their long reigns, and forbade the offering of sacrifices under the severest penalties. On the other hand, they oppressed their subjects, by employing them in the most grievous and useless works; and sacrificed the lives of numberless mult.i.tudes of men, merely to gratify a senseless ambition of immortalising their names by edifices of an enormous magnitude and a boundless expense. It is remarkable, that those stately pyramids which have so long been the admiration of the whole world, were the effect of the irreligion and merciless cruelty of those princes.

The magnificent prospect from the top of this pyramid has been described by the French traveller, Savary, who visited Egypt in 1770, in glowing terms. After occupying seven hours in ascending to its summit, "the morning light," says he, "discovered to us every moment new beauties: the tops of gilded minarets, and of date-tree and citron groves, planted round the villages and hills; anon the herds left the hamlets; the boats spread their light sails, and our eyes followed them along the vast windings of the Nile. On the north appeared sterile hills and barren sands; on the south, the river and waving fields, vast as the ocean; to the west, the plain of Fayum, famous for its roses: to the east, the picturesque town of Gizeh, and the towers of Fostat, the minarets of Cairo, and the castle of Saladin, terminated the prospect. Seated on the most wonderful of the works of man, as upon a throne, our eyes beheld by turns a dreadful desert; rich plains in which the Elysian fields had been imagined; villages; a majestic river; and edifices which seemed the work of giants. The universe contains no landscape more variegated, more magnificent, or more awful."

The ancients knew little of the interior structure of these giant piles.[364] Herodotus, who lived 445 years before Christ, merely speaks of an entrance leading to the interior, by hearsay from the priests, who informed him that there were secret vaults beneath, hewn out of the natural rock. Strabo, who lived after the Christian era, only describes a single slanting pa.s.sage which led to a chamber in which was a stone tomb. Diodorus Siculus, who lived forty-four years before Christ, agrees with this; and Pliny, who lived A.D. 66, adds, that there was a well in the Great Pyramid, eighty cubits deep. This is all the ancients have said about the interior.

"The Egyptian priests, indeed, a.s.sured Aristides, a Greek traveller about two centuries before Christ, that 'the excavations beneath were as great as the height above.' And Ebn Abd Alkokim, an Arabic writer of the ninth century, says, that the builders 'constructed numerous excavated chambers, with gates to them, forty cubits under ground.' Other Arabian writers say, that these chambers contain chests of black stone, in which were deposited the sacred archives of king Saurid, who built the pyramid. Many discoveries (perhaps a burial-place under ground) obviously remain to be made.

"The same Arab historian, Alkokim, gives an account of the opening of this building under the Caliphate, from which time it has remained in the condition seen and described by all modern travellers, to the time of the Italian traveller Caviglia, who made a discovery of a new chamber and pa.s.sages about ten years ago. 'After that, Almamon the Caliph (A.D.

820) entered Egypt, and saw the Pyramids: he desired to know what was within, and therefore would have them opened. He was told it could not possibly be done. He replied, I will have it certainly done. And that hole was opened for him, which stands open to this day, with fire and vinegar. Two smiths prepared and sharpened the iron and engines, which they forced in: and there was a great expense in the opening it; and the thickness of the wall was found to be twenty cubits. Within they found a square well, and in the square of it there were doors: every door of it opened into a house (or vault), in which there were dead bodies wrapped up in linen. Towards the upper part of the pyramid, they found a chamber, in which was a hollow stone; in it was a statue of stone, like a man, and within it a man, upon whom was a breast-plate of gold, set with jewels, and on him were written characters with a pen, which no man can explain.'

"Greaves, an Englishman, who visited the Great Pyramid in 1648, described the pa.s.sages thus opened, and then open, very accurately, and suspected that at the bottom of a well in the pyramid was the pa.s.sage to those secret vaults mentioned by Herodotus; but he made no new discovery. Davison, who visited it in the middle of the eighteenth century, discovered some secret chambers and pa.s.sages connecting the largest gallery with the central room, and an apartment four feet high over it. He descended the well 155 feet, but found farther progress blocked up. Caviglia was the first to discover the above suspected pa.s.sage. After much trouble in clearing the narrow opening at the end of the first or entrance gallery of the pyramid, he found that it did not terminate at that point, as. .h.i.therto supposed, but proceeded downwards to the distance of two hundred feet. It ended in a doorway on the right, which was found to communicate with the bottom of the well. But the new pa.s.sage did not terminate here: it went beyond the doorway twenty-three feet, and then took a horizontal direction for twenty-eight more, where it opened into a s.p.a.cious chamber immediately under the central room.

"This new chamber is twenty-seven feet broad, and sixty-six feet long.

The floor is irregular; nearly one half of the length from the eastern, or entrance end, being level, and about fifteen feet from the ceiling; while, in the middle, it descends five feet lower, in which part there is a hollow s.p.a.ce bearing all the appearance of the commencement of a well, or shaft. From thence it rises to the western end, so that there is scarcely room between the floor and the ceiling to stand upright.

"On the south of this chamber is a pa.s.sage hollowed out, just high and wide enough for a man to creep along upon his hands and knees, which continues in the rock for fifty-five feet, and then suddenly ends.

Another at the east end commences with a kind of arch, and runs about forty feet into the solid body of the pyramid.

Mr. Salt, the late intelligent British Consul to Egypt, was so struck by this discovery, as to express his belief that the under-ground rooms were used for 'the performance of solemn and secret mysteries.'

"As to the second pyramid of Gizeh, the ancients knew less about it than they did of the first. Herodotus says it has no under-ground chambers, and the other ancient authorities are silent. But the enterprising Belzoni found its entrance, in the north front, in 1818, and discovered, at the same time, that it had been previously forced open by the Arabian Caliph, Ali Mehemet, A.D. 782, more than a thousand years before. After forcing an entrance, and advancing along a narrow pa.s.sage, one hundred feet long, he found a central chamber, forty-six feet long by sixteen wide, and twenty-three high, cut out of the solid rock. It contained a granite sarcophagus, (a tomb,) half sunk in the floor, with some bones in it, which, on inspection by Sir Everard Home, proved to be those of a cow. An Arabic inscription on the walls implies that it had been opened in the presence of the Sultan Ali Mehemet[365]."

This pyramid was, as has been already said, opened by Belzoni. We shall select another account of this enterprise.

"According to Herodotus, (whose information has generally been found correct,) this pyramid was constructed without any internal chambers. M.

Belzoni, however, believed the fact might be otherwise; and having reasons of his own for commencing his operations at a certain point, he began his labours, and with so much foresight as actually to dig directly down upon a forced entrance. But, even after this success, none but a Belzoni would have had the perseverance to pursue the labour required to perfect the discovery. It was by attending to the same kind of indications, which had led him so successfully to explore the six tombs of the kings in Thebes, that he was induced to commence his operations on the north side.

"He set out from Cairo on the 6th of February, 1818, went to the Kaia Bey, and gained permission; the Bey having first satisfied himself that there was no tilled ground within a considerable distance of Ghiza. On the 10th of February he began with six labourers in a vertical section at right angles to the north side of the base, cutting through a ma.s.s of stones and lime which had fallen from the upper part of the pyramid, but were so completely aggregated together as to spoil the mattocks, &c.

employed in the operation. He persevered in making an opening fifteen feet wide, working downwards, and uncovering the face of the pyramid.

During the first week there was but little prospect of meeting with anything interesting; but on the 17th, one of the Arabs employed called out with great vociferation that he had found the entrance. He had, in fact, come upon a hole into which he could thrust his arm and a djerid six feet long. Before night they ascertained that an aperture was there, about three feet square, which had been closed irregularly with a hewn stone. This being removed, they reached a larger opening, but filled with rubbish and sand. M. Belzoni was now satisfied that this was not a real, but a forced pa.s.sage. Next day they had penetrated fifteen feet, when stones and sand began to fall from above; these were removed, but still they continued to fall in large quant.i.ties, when, after some more days' labour, he discovered an upper forced entrance, communicating with the outside from above. Having cleared this, he found another opening running inward, which proved, on further search, to be a continuation of the lower horizontal forced pa.s.sage, nearly all choked up with rubbish.

This being removed, he discovered, about half way from the outside, a descending forced pa.s.sage, which terminated at the distance of forty feet. He now continued to work in the horizontal pa.s.sage, in hope that it might lead to the centre, but it terminated at the depth of ninety feet; and he found it prudent not to force it further, as the stones were very loose over-head, and one actually fell, and had nearly killed one of the people. He therefore now began clearing away the aggregated stones and lime to the eastward of the forced entrance; but by this time his retreat had been discovered, and he found himself much interrupted by visitors.

"On the 28th of February he discovered, at the surface of the pyramid, a block of granite, having the same direction as that of the pa.s.sage of the first pyramid, that of Cheops; and he now hoped that he was not far from the true entrance. Next day he removed some large blocks, and on the 2d of March he entered the true pa.s.sage, an opening four feet high, and three feet and a half wide, formed by blocks of granite, and continued descending at an angle of about twenty-six degrees to the length of one hundred and four feet five inches, lined all the length with granite. From this pa.s.sage he had to remove the stones with which it was filled, and at its bottom was a door or portcullis of granite, (fitted into a niche also made of granite,) supported at the height of eight inches by small stones placed under it. Two days were occupied in raising it high enough to admit of entrance. This door is one foot three inches thick, and, with the granite niche, occupies seven feet of the pa.s.sage, where the granite work ends, and a short pa.s.sage, gradually ascending twenty-two feet seven inches towards the centre, the descending commences; at the end of which is a perpendicular of fifteen feet. On the left is a small forced pa.s.sage cut in the rock; and above, on the right, a forced pa.s.sage running upward, and turning to the north thirty feet, just over the portcullis. At the bottom of the perpendicular, after removing some rubbish, he found the entrance of another pa.s.sage, which inclined northward. But, quitting this for the present, he followed his prime pa.s.sage, which now took a horizontal direction; and at the end of it, one hundred and fifty-eight feet eight inches from the above-mentioned perpendicular, he entered a chamber forty-six feet three inches long, sixteen feet three inches wide, and twenty-three feet six inches in height, for the greater part cut out of the rock; and in the middle of this room he found a SARCOPHAGUS of granite, eight feet long, three feet six inches wide, and two feet three inches deep inside, surrounded by large blocks of granite, as if to prevent its being removed. The lid had been opened, and he found in the interior a few bones, which he supposed to be human; but some of them having been since carried to England by Captain Fitzclarence, who was afterwards in this pyramid, and one of them (a thigh-bone) having, on examination by Sir Everard Home, been found to have belonged to a cow, it has been doubted whether any of them ever belonged to a human subject: but such a suspicion is premature, and without any solid foundation; since it appears, from an Arabic inscription on the west wall of this chamber, that this pyramid was opened by architects named Mahomet El Aghar and Othman, and inspected in the presence of the Sultan Ali Mahomet, the first Ugloch (a Tartaric t.i.tle, as Uleg Bey, &c.). The length of time the pyramid remained open is not known; and it indeed appears to have been closed only by the fall of portions of the structure, and by the collecting of the sands of Libya. From this, and from the lid of the sarcophagus having been opened, and the remains of other animals being also found in the same sarcophagus, as is stated in other accounts, such an opinion does not even appear to be probable. On other parts of the walls are some inscriptions, supposed by M. Belzoni to be in Coptic.

"He now returned to the descending pa.s.sage at the bottom of the above-mentioned perpendicular. Its angle is about twenty-six degrees. At the end of forty-eight feet and a half it becomes horizontal, still going north fifty-five feet; in the middle of which horizontal part there is a recess to the east eleven feet deep, and a pa.s.sage to the west twenty feet, which descends into a chamber thirty-two feet long, nine feet nine inches wide, and eight and a half high. In this room were only a few small square blocks of stone, and on the walls some unknown inscriptions. He now returned to the horizontal part and advanced north, ascending at an angle of sixty degrees; and in this, at a short distance from the horizontal part, he met with another niche, which had been formerly furnished with a granite door, the fragments of which were still there. At forty-seven feet and a half from this niche the pa.s.sage was filled with large stones, so as to close the entrance, which issues out precisely at the base of the pyramid. All the works below the base are cut in the rock, as well as part of the pa.s.sages and chambers.

"By clearing away the earth to the eastward of the pyramid, he found the foundation and part of the walls of an extensive temple which stood before it at the distance of forty feet, and laid bare a pavement composed of fine blocks of calcareous stone, some of them beautifully cut and in fine preservation. This platform probably goes round the whole pyramid. The stones composing the foundation of the temple are very large: one, which he measured, was twenty-one feet long, ten high, and eight in breadth[366]."

The pyramid of MYCERINUS is one hundred and sixty-two feet in height, and two hundred and eighty on each side of the base. "If," says Diodorus Siculus, "it is less in size and extent than the others, it is superior to them in the costliness of the materials and excellence of the workmanship."

Of Mycerinus historians write in the following manner:--He was the son of Cheops, but of a character opposite to that of his father. So far from walking in his steps, he detested his conduct, and pursued quite different measures. He again opened the temples of the G.o.ds, restored the sacrifices, did all that lay in his power to comfort his subjects, and make them forget their past miseries; and believed himself set over them for no other purpose but to exercise justice, and to make them taste all the blessings of an equitable and peaceful administration. He heard their complaints, dried their tears, eased their misery, and thought himself not so much the master as the father of his people. This procured him the love of them all. Egypt resounded with his praises, and his name commanded veneration in all places.

"Men," says one writer, "have very justly reckoned these prodigious ma.s.ses of earth and stone among the wonders of the world; nevertheless their use appears to us very trivial, or is unknown. The Egyptians seem to have been more desirous of exciting wonder, than of communicating instruction."--"The most probable opinion respecting the object of these vast edifices," says another writer, "is that which combines the double use of the sepulchre and the temple, nothing being more common in all nations than to bury distinguished men in places consecrated by the rites of divine worship. If Cheops, Suphis, or whoever else was the founder of the Great Pyramid, intended it only for his tomb, what occasion, says Dr. Shaw, for such a narrow sloping entrance into it, or for the well, as it is called, at the bottom;--or for the lower chamber with a large niche or hole in the eastern wall of it;--or for the long narrow cavities in the sides of the large upper room, which likewise is incrusted all over with the finest marble;--or for the two ante-chambers and the lofty gallery, with benches on each side, that introduce us into it? As the whole of the Egyptian theology was clothed in mysterious emblems and figures, it seems reasonable to suppose that all these turnings, apartments, and secrets in architecture, were intended for some n.o.bler purpose;--for the catacombs or burying-places are plain vaulted chambers hewn out of the natural rock;--and the deity rather, which was typified in the outward form of this pile, was to be worshipped within."

"If thoughtlessness should condemn the immense and apparently useless labours of ancient Egypt," says a third, "so are they easily condemned, under the use of the ever-acceptable term tyranny, the ever-ready word of him who abuses all the power which he can command. Yet he who would eat must labour: it is the unvarying law, not of G.o.d alone, but of human society; the bond by which it is held together. The soil of Egypt was the possession of its singular government, and the labour of the people was the only manner in which they could demand or acquire a share of the produce: it was the only mode in which they ought to have possessed their portions. There is reason to believe that the soil had appropriated all the labour applicable to it; and commercial industry, as it then was, had probably done the same. An artificial invention to occupy labour became, therefore, imperiously necessary; and through this was Egypt peopled to an extent which seems to have been very great. The bearing of this fact on other cases, where, under a general law pervading all creation, conditions of labour have been attached to possession, must be obvious; and though tyranny had been the immediate cause, even thus does the Deity often direct the wickedness of man to his own good ends."

"I should, however," says a fourth, (Maupertuis,) "have been much better pleased had the kings of Egypt employed the millions of men who reared these pyramids in the air, in digging cavities in the earth of a depth answerable to the marvellous we find in the works of those princes."--"There have been many opinions expressed by learned men as to the object of these structures," says a fifth. One is, that they were the granaries of Joseph. This may be confuted by the smallness of the rooms, and the time required in building. Another, that they were observatories; which is accusing the builders of great absurdity, since the neighbouring rocks were better calculated for the purpose. The Arabians generally think that they were built by king Saurid, before the Deluge, as a refuge for himself and the public records from the Flood; but this opinion requires no answer. Josephus, the Jewish historian, who wrote A.D. 71, ascribes them to his countrymen, during the captivity in Egypt. As sun-dials, they would have failed. Shaw and Bryant, who wrote in the middle of the last century, believed them to be temples, and the stone chest, a tank for holding water used for purification. Pauw, who lived at the same time with Shaw and Bryant, considers the Great Pyramid as the tomb of Osiris; and that Osiris having fourteen tombs for various parts of his dismembered body, fourteen pyramids must have been devoted to them, and the annual funeral mysteries connected with his death and resurrection. But the greater number of writers, ancient and modern, believe it to be the tomb of Cheops, the alleged builder. Improving on this notion, Maillet (1760) supposed that the chambers were built for the purpose of shutting up the friends of the deceased king with the dead body; and that the holes on each side of the central chamber of the Great Pyramid were the means by which they were to be supplied with food, &c: an opinion which would have appeared sufficiently ludicrous, if it had not been exceeded by that expressed by an old Moulah to Buonaparte, when in Egypt (1799), that the object was to keep the buried body undecayed, by closely sealing up all access to the outward air.

Another ingenious theory ascribes them to the shepherd kings, a foreign pastoral nation which oppressed Egypt in the early times of the Pharaohs. However, this is, after all, but conjecture. The utmost uncertainty exists in all that concerns these gigantic, unwieldy, and mysterious buildings. Their builders, origin, date, and purposes, are entirely lost in the night of ages. As the sides of all the pyramids face the cardinal points, and of course give the true meridian of the places where they are situated, it would seem that their builders had made some progress in _scientific_ knowledge; and the buildings themselves, under all circ.u.mstances, notwithstanding their plain exterior, clearly show the advanced state of art in those very early times.

When the traveller approaches[367] those vast monuments of human labour, the imagination seems to burst, as it were, the bands of ages, and the mind appears as if it had lived a thousand years. When the French were at Thebes, the whole army stopped among the ruins, and clapped their hands with delight: and when Buonaparte was about to engage the Mamelukes, who were advancing with loud cries, superbly accoutred, he called out to his army, "Behold! Yonder are the Pyramids; the most ancient of the works of men. From the summits of those monuments forty ages are now beholding us." The battle which ensued laid all Egypt at the feet of the French general.