Volume I Part 19 (1/2)
We have hitherto spoken only of the social purposes of the pyraypt, or rather as the part of that sepulchre that corresponded to the least interesting parts of private toardens and orchards, we see cultivation develop certain organs at the expense of others We find sta us double flowers, and the envelope of the seeds thickened and made to shed perfume We see the sayptian monarchs Under the influence of their pride of station, and as a consequence of the effort which they made to perpetuate their rank even after death, the stone hiding-place which protected the ination, while the funerary chapel remained of modest dimensions This disproportion is to be easily explained The siuishes the pyramid permitted almost indefinite extension, while architecture, properly speaking, was not yet sufficiently advanced to uish the porticos and hypostyle temples of the Theban period
We have now to consider the pyramids froin, of their variety of form, and of the materials of which they are composed Descriptions of these reat works of Vyse[183] and Perring[184], works which gave to the world the accu and costly explorations, must not be looked for in these voluive even a succinct account of the iven by Baedeker or Isa would be a mere duplication of those excellent n to the purpose which we have before us We take the pyramids as known The two books just mentioned are within the reach of all Thanks to the precise inforures which they contain, we eneral observations Some of these observations will refer to the pyramids as a whole, souish a few, peculiarities which do not affect that general type which seeyptian monarchy itself
[183] VYSE (Howard), _Operations carried on at the Pyrae into Upper Egypt, and an Appendix_ (London, 1840, 3 vols 8vo)
[184] PERRING (J L), _The Pyramids of Gizeh, from Actual Survey and Admeasurement, illustrated by Notes and References to the Several Plans, with Sketches taken on the Spot by J
Andrews_ (3 parts, large oblong folio London, 1839-42)
As soon as a society had sprung up on the banks of the Nile which atte lead of chiefs or head by the desire to n Theat the desired result was to heap up the earth over the corpse, so as to form an artificial hillock which should be visible froin of that funerary ists call a _tumulus_ The tumulus is to be found in most districts of the ancient as well as of the modern world But to confine ourselves to our own province, it is to be found in pre-Christian ti the Scythians of Herodotus and our ancestors the Gauls, as well as ae We all know the frequent expression of Honal_, that is to say, to accumulate over the corpse of a warrior a sufficient nunalize_ it, for the worshi+p and admiration of posterity Tradition ascribes those tumuli which are yet to be seen on the plain of Troy to the observance of this custoypt coes which were called by the Egyptians themselves the times of _Hor-schesou_ or slaves of Horus We cannot doubt that the pyra from the mound Its birththe various tribes under his own sceptre, caused the whole race to take a distinct step onwards in civilization The pyramid is but a built mound It is a tumulus in which brick and stone take the place of earth This substitution adds very greatly to its chances of duration, ande The Nile ave bricks which still reood; their manufacture and their constructive use seeyptians as soon as they eed from primitive barbarism Thanks to the facilities thus afforded, they were enabled to build raves of their rulers which could offer a better resistance to injuries of tirass They began, perhaps, by placing a few blocks of stone upon theirthem with a thin coat of brickwork But, after a few experiments in that direction, they found it better to construct the whole body of the tumulus in the harder material Its size increased with the constructive skill and material appliances of its builders, until it became first a hillock and finally a mountain of stone, with the impenetrable rock for its base and flanks of solid masonry
The built-up tumulus of masonry took a form very different, in its definite lines, from the rounded slopes of the ive to the edifice upon which they are eid foreometry When they leave the hands of the builder they are either cubes or parallelopipeds, pyraeneral appearance, they possess the essential properties, of one of those forms We an to use the unyielding iven As soon as this early development was reached he set to work to combine those elementary forance and richness of decoration, and so in the end to form national architectures
When the first pyramid was built upon the borders of the desert man was on the threshold of the movement to which we have referred The form adopted for the royal tomb was one of theThe most simple of all would have been the _tetrahedron_, or pyrale pyraypt The whole of the pyraled base, and in most instances upon one with sides practically equal[185] Mystic reasons for this shape have been given It has been said that each face was dedicated to one of the four powers of Amen, which corresponded to the cardinal points of heaven[186] We are not yet sufficiently well acquainted with the genesis of the Egyptian religion to be able to decide how far into the past the four powers of Amen may be traced: but it is quite possible that they were derived from the four faces of the strictly oriented pyramids Were we inclined to enter into this discussion we should rather, perhaps, attribute the shape of the pyrayptian desire to turn one face of their tombs towards the west, the abode of the dead, and another to the east, whence the hoped-for resurrection was to come
The three-sided pyraereat pyra 390 feet froreat pyramids at Gizeh like most of these structures, are built upon a base which is practically square
[186] MARIETTE, _Itineraire de la Haute-egypte_, p 96
There is also soles which form the three _aretes_ of the tetrahedron; it looks as if there had been a lack of material, and as if the structure would suffer in consequence The four-sided pyranity and more amplitude; its four faces, placed back to back in pairs, seem to counterpoise and sustain each other in a fashi+on which is impossible in the case of the tetrahedron
[Illustration: FIG 128--Plan of the Pyramid of Cheops]
The one characteristic possessed in common by those relics of the Ancient Empire which we call pyramids, is their four-sidedness To an attentive observer these buildings offer ht be believed From Meidoum in the south to Abou-Roash in the north is a distance of 43-1/2 miles as the crow flies Between these two points, which may be called the northern and southern boundaries of the pyramid field, about one hundred have been discovered, sixty-seven of which have been examined by Lepsius Now, in this whole number there are not thich resemble each other in all particulars, or which seem to be copies of one ht, which differs in an extree pyrah respectively, while at their feet are several little pyraht Between these two extremes many of intermediate sizes may be inserted The Stepped Pyraest of those at Abousir is about 165; one of those at Dashour is not quite 100 feet These differences in height are easily explained by one of those national habits to which we have already alluded Every Egyptian, as soon as he arrived at years of discretion, set about building his own to the well and the us to be carved and the funerary chapel to be built It often happened that those who had ordered such works died long before they were finished, and it would see no more than was strictly necessary They placed the rave with the prescribed ceremonies, they filled up the well and sealed the private parts of the to occupied with the preparations for their own funeral, they did not continue the decoration of the chapel, which thenceforward remained _in statu quo_
Thus only can we explain the state in which several important tombs have been discovered both at Mes and sculptures carried out with the greatest care and finish, while on another nothing is to be seen but the first rough outline, in red paint, by the artist charged with the undertaking The completion of the work must have been suddenly arrested by the death of the destined inhabitant of the toreat pyra]
It was the saan the construction of his pyramid as soon as he found hin should be cut short, he began with those constituents of the tomb which were absolutely necessary He pressed on the work until he had raised a pyramid of moderate size with its mummy chamber When this point had been reached, his immediate anxiety ca the course of the work The higher and wider his pyrauardian of his body would it be, and the e carried down by it to posterity as to the power of its builder Year after year, therefore, he employed crowds of impressed workmen to clothe it in layer after layer of dressed stone or brick, so that the edifice raised in con, beca but the nucleus or kernel of one un in the centre and was developed outwards, like the tirew in extent and height, each successive coat, so to speak, required more hands and more time We have no reason to believe that each coat had to be finished within a certain period, and so it would be futile to attempt to found any calculation as to the duration of the different reigns upon the nueneral way that the highest pyrans We know, by the witness of ancient authors, that the kings who built the three great pyramids at Gizeh, naned about sixty years History thus confirms the truth of the induction which arises from the study of those monuments and from a comparison of the constructive processes made use of by the architects of the pyramids[188]
[187] This nized in the Pyramid of Meidoum That curious structure was built in concentric layers round a nucleus These layers are by no means equal in the excellence either of the workmanshi+p or of the ence; in others we find the builders of the Ancient Empire and their materials both at their best The saard to the Stepped Pyramid and the pyraned in sections to different _corvees_, whose consciences varied greatly in elasticity (MARIETTE, _Voyage de la Haute-egypte_, p 45)
[188] LEPSIUS, _Briefe aus aegypten_, pp 41, 42 (in speaking of the Pyramid of Meidoum, from which he received the first hint of this explanation) See also his paper entitled _Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden_, in the _Monatsbericht_ of the Berlin Academy, 1843, pp 177-203
The author of Baedeker's _Guide_ has not been content with believing, like Perring, Lepsius, and Mariette, that the pyrarew by the application of successive envelopes of stone round the centraltowards the axis of the building He has brought forward an elaborate theory of construction, which, though very ingenious, encounters several grave objections We shall point out those objections while we endeavour to explain the system itself by the help of special illustrations drawn for us by the author of the _Guide_ in question[189]
[189] _aegypten_, First part, 1878, p 341
[Illustration: FIG 130--The three great pyraan to think about building his to it the colossal dimensions which it presents even in its actual injured condition The area of the great pyramid is more than double that of Saint Peter's at Rome If we deduct from its total volus which it contains, the rity must have amounted to a total of 3,479,600 cubic yards Even nohen so much of its substances has been detached and carried away, there still re that, two or three years after the commencement of a work upon this colossal scale, death had carried off its projector, can we believe that any successor, even a son as sincerely devoted to the memory of his father, would have burthened himself with the continuation and con would have enough to do in co on the erection of his own tomb, and, moreover, would be irresistibly tempted to make use, for its construction, of the accumulated material and collected labour of his predecessor
[190] It has been suggested by Mr Cope Whitehouse that the nucleus of rock under the great pyrainallyhis expedition in March, 1882, he ascertained that a profile from the Mokattam across the Nile valley into the western desert would present the contours shown in the annexed woodcut He concludes that a large part of the material of those pyramids was obtained upon their sites, and quarried above the level at which the stones were finally placed He cites HERODOTUS (ii 125) as conveying in an imperfect form the tradition that the pyramids were ”constructed from above”
Even four or five thousand years before our era, ratitude of an heir For the closing and final sealing up of the pyraed to depend upon his survivors, he could not do it himself Moreover, the external coreaterand costlyking, so long as he was not too sternly ree, reat reluctance to order the cessation of the hich had gone on under his own eye for so many years, or to arrest that course of develop a continual source of pride and pleasure to hi those of his famous predecessors He was, therefore, very likely to be surprised by death with his tomb still unfinished, with the final cope-stone still upon the ground, or, even when that had been put in place so as to show the total height, with the casing of polished stone which was destined to hide the inner courses of the masonry and the entrances, still incomplete Upon two-thirds or three-quarters of each face, his pyraed to it during the period of its construction; an aspect which has again distinguished the great pyra As each course was set back from that upon which it was placed, the final _enseradually dith as they neared the suyptian princes who from want of patience or zeal, or from some other motive, failed to carry on the enterprise of their predecessors to its destined conclusion We are ignorant as to the condition of the three great pyramids of Gizeh at the death of their projectors But they appear to have been finished in most of their details with a care which would seem to indicate that Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, must have been there to overlook the smallest details of their execution Other pyramids, on the other hand, seem to have been left in a comparatively imperfect state
These observations furnish us with an initial objection to the theory to which we have referred Soinning that his pyraements whichsee But why should he not have done so? If he had died at the end of a few years, his pyramid would, perhaps, have presented to us a shape like that of soe base which had never received either its cope-stone or its casing So too with those of Mycerinus and Chephren Have not absolute monarchs existed at all tiet the eternal limits of time and space? Sometimes Fortune has been cruel to them: but often she seems to have placed herself entirely at their disposal
A the causes which combine to make the royal toht and appearance, the very unequal length of the reigns is the most important If ere better acquainted with the condition of Egypt in those reive other reasons for their want of uniformity The chances of completion and even of preservation in its coreatly depended upon the descent of the crown When king succeeded king in one family those chances were much better than when dynasty succeeded dynasty, whether the break were due to internal revolution or to the failure of the legitimate line It is even possible that some of those pyramids which are now to outward appearance mere heaps of _debris_ never received the ned and built