Volume I Part 21 (1/2)

[204] The discovery of these cha from another point of view The name of Choufou was found continually repeated upon the blocks of which they are formed It ritten in red ochre, and, in places, it was upside down, thus proving that it must have been written before the stones were put in place It cannot therefore have been traced after the tradition which assigned the pyramid to Cheops, that is, to Khoufou, arose; and so it affords conclusive corroboration of the stateitudinal section through the lower chalory of the workmen who built the Great Pyraallery which opens i's Chah and 7 feet wide, the visitor can breathe es which lead to it, and can examine at his ease the beautiful blocks of limestone from Mokattam of which its polished walls are composed The faces of these blocks have been dressed with a care which is not to be surpassed even by the most perfect examples of hellenic architecture on the Acropolis at Athens The internal faces must have been worked with equal care No ce, and the adherence is so perfect that, in the words of Abd-ul-Latif ”not a needle, not even a hair, can be introduced into the joints”[205] These joints are not even to be distinguished without careful exaallery is built with no less care[206] Each of the upper courses is slightly set off froether that the opening le stone, or rather, row of stones

These, being held between the two upper courses of a quasi vault, play the part of key stones Thishas been employed in other parts of the pyramid, especially in what is called the _Queen's Cha's, or sarcophagus-charanite which form the walls of the two chambers Even the fine limestone used for the walls of the Grand Gallery was not considered rich and solid enough for the walls of the apartment in which the prince in whose honour the whole of the colossal edifice was reared would repose; and it was determined to use the richest and yptian architect could dispose[207] The plain sarcophagus, without either inscription or ornaranite

[205] This is no exaggeration JOMARD expresses himself to the saypte_, vol v p 628)

[206] The extre

152

[207] The presence of this lining in the ”Queen's Cha dubbed a funerary chaus was found in it If we had any reason to believe that the pyraes, we should look upon this as a provisional chamber, made before it was certain that the pyramid would attain its present dimensions As the ent on, it would be decided that another, larger, and better defended chamber should be built In this case the first may never have been used, and may always have been as e of the pyramid has entirely disappeared, as we have already said On account of their moderate size the stones of which it was composed would seereat cities which, after the collapse of the ancient civilization, succeeded each other, under different nahbourhood of the Me seems to have been made of more than one kind of stone, if we may believe an ancient text which has been interpreted by Letronne with the skill and sagacity of which he has given so many proofs[208]

[208] These observations are to be found in one of the early works of Letronne Their presence is in no way hinted at by the title, which is: _Recherches Geographiques et Critiques sur le Livre 'De mensura orbis terrae'_ (8vo 1844) The treatise, ?e??

t?? ?pt? ?ea?t??, may have been written either by Philo of Heraclea or Philo of Byzantiued to the third century before our era, but the bombastic style and numerous errors incline us to believe that the little work must have been from the pen of some unknown rhetorician of a later date

The author, named Philo, of a treatise upon the Seven Wonders of the World, tells us that the Egyptians employed upon this work ”the most brilliant and varied stones, which were carefully fixed” Heto the splendid result white reen breccia from Arabia, which must have been what is called _verde antique_ And as for his white marble, it must have been the white limestone from Mokattarain as ypt by the Greeks, and that in very small quantities, for the use of sculptors Philo says nothing of granite, but its use was so general that it must have found a place in the scheme of decoration[209]

[209] These are the words of Philo, which we have translated rather freely:-- ??????a? d? ?a? p??f??a? ????? f?se?? ?????a??

?p?ded?e?a?, ?a? t? ?? ?st?? ? p?t?a ?e??? ?a? a?a??t??? t?

d? ?????p??? ?a? ??a??a ?a? et? ta?t?? ? ?a???e??? a?at?t??

?????? e?ta p??????? ?a? d???????? ?p? t?? ??a?a? ?e???s????, p 2,259, A

The various kinds of stone must have been so placed as to form zones, and perhaps patterns, of different colours, white, red, black, rose, green, and so on To form an idea of the effect we must think of Giotto's cas of the same kind

It has been questioned whether the testimony of this Philo is to be depended upon, as few of those who have busied themselves with the pyramids seem to have laid reat respect We do not knohen Philo lived, but we know that the casing of the pyraes, because in the tiht, and its ascent was still very difficult[210] On the other hand we have proofs that, although the author of the Seven Wonders of the World may have written more in the tone of a rhetorician than of an eyewitness of the wonders which he describes, he took some of his information from excellent sources In fact with the exception of Pliny, he is the only ancient writer who gives us an approxith of the base line of Cheops' Pyramid While the measureure given by Philo is only 16 feet 6 inches in excess of the truth The idea of decorating such an expanse of surface with varied colour was quite in accordance with Egyptian taste They loved polychromatic ornaayest hues; they delighted in the juxtaposition of thesuch an immense surface with paint, and as it was necessary, in any case, to cover it with a s, it would be no more difficult to employ many kinds of stone than one They would thus obtain a kind of gigantic htened in effect by the use of gold We know that the pyrailded, and it is probable enough that sinificent and carefully finished pyramids, to draw the eye to their topmost stone and thus to add to the i adorn nearly five hundred feet into the pure blue of an Egyptian sky

[210] According to the calculations of Letronne, the Great Pyrah when it was cohtly over 480 feet; in that of Abd-ul-Latif it measured 477 feet 3 inches In 1795 it was only 456 feet and a few inches, so that it lost about 24 feet in the course of eighteen centuries This lowering of the summit was mainly caused by the destruction and re Since it disappeared the Arabs have been in the habit of loosening the stones on the top and launching them down the sides for the a alone could prevent such outrage as this The co in the world is erroneous Even if we take its height when cos, as s now existing:--

Feet

Spires of Cologne Cathedral 533 Fleche of the Cathedral at Rouen 500 Spire of St Nicholas, Ha Cathedral 473 Pyramid of Cheops 456 Spire of St Stephen's, Vienna 450 Spire of St Martin's, Landshut 443 Spire of the Cathedral of Freiburg, Breisgau 417 Spire of Antwerp Cathedral, not including the cross 411 Spire of Salisbury Cathedral 404 Dome of Cathedral at Florence 396 Dome of St Paul's, London 371 Fleche of Milan Cathedral 363 Tower of Magdeburg Cathedral 344 Victoria Tower, Westminster 336 Rathhaus Tower, Berlin 293 Spire of Trinity Church, New York 287 Pantheon, Paris 266 Towers of Notre Dame, Paris 226

But this is a conjecture which can never be verified Even if the topmost stone were still in place upon any of the pyrailding; but the whole of those edifices have their apex more or less truncated Even before our era, Diodorus[211] found the Great Pyramid crowned by a plateau six cubits square

[211] DIODORUS, i 63, 64

It has sometimes been supposed that the pyramids, when complete, were terminated by such a plateau as that described by Diodorus, and that it bore a statue of the king whose mue of Herodotus which treats of the Lake Mris ”There are,” he says, ”in the h (309 feet)each of them is surmounted by a colossal stone statue seated upon a throne”[212]

Herodotus insists so often upon having seen the Labyrinth and Lake Mris with his own eyes, that we cannot affect to doubt his assertions; we shall therefore confine ourselves to a few observations upon them

[212] HERODOTUS, ii 49

In the descriptions which he gives of the three great pyra his comments upon the methods employed in their construction, Herodotus does not say a hich can be construed into the most distant allusion to statues upon their summits If he had seen colossi perched upon those lofty pedestals, or if he had heard froerations he has elsewhere so navely reproduced--that they had formerly existed, would he not have e, at least, where he explains how they raised such huge stones to so great a height, and describes the successive stages in the construction of a pyramid?[213] Would he not have found rooe in which he contrasts the virtues of Mycerinus with the iinary wickedness of Cheops and Chephren, for ht of their statues upon their respective pyra? Would he not have atteh some popular tradition, to have accounted for the presence of one statue and the absence of another? It is evident, therefore, that Herodotus neither saw any statues upon the Pyramids of Memphis nor had he any reason to suppose those structures had ever been crowned in such a fashi+on He lays stress upon the seated statues of the pyramids in Lake Mris because they were new to hihbourhood of the ancient capital

[213] M MASPERO has given in the _Annuaire de l' association pour l'Encouragement des etudes Grecques_ and elsewhere, several extracts from a commentary upon the second book of Herodotus, which we should like to see published in its entirety We may point out more particularly his remarks upon the text of the Greek historian in the matter of the 1,600 talents of silver which, he says, was the value of the onions, radishes, and garlic consumed by the workmen employed upon the Great Pyra that Herodotus enious and probable explanation (_Annuaire de 1875_, p 16)

Unless we are very much mistaken, this superposition of a colossus upon a pyramid was a novelty devised by the architects of the middle empire, when, under the Ousourtesens and Amenemhats, it was proposed to revive the pyramidal form of to results Although ypt attempted, at each period of renascence, to introduce new combinations into the details, at least, of the ancient forms, and this was one of the number