HOW THE PYRAMIDS WERE BUILT.

Thames Star, Volume XII, Issue 3824, 31 March 1881, Page 1

HOW THE PYRAMIDS WERE BUILT.

Brugsch Bey, the eminent Eeyptologist, says, in his work on Egypt:—From the far distant you See the giant forms of the' pyramids, as if they were regularly crystallised mountains, which the ever* creating nature has cnlled forth from the. rock, to lift themselves up "toward the vault of heaven. And yet they are bint tombs, built by the hand of men, which have been the admiration and astonishment alike of the ancient and modern world. Perfectly adjusted to the cardinal points of the horizon, they differ in breadth and height,' as is shown by the measurements of the three oldest, as follows :—The Pyramid of Khufa — height 450.75 feet; breadth,- 736 feet. 2. Pyramid of X hafra—height, 447 5 feet; breadth, 690.75. Pyramid of Menkara—height, 203 feet; breadth, 352 78 feet; ' Ttis construction of these enormous masses has long been a puzzle, but later generations have succeeded in solving the mystery. The king began his work from his accession. As soon as he mounted the, throne, the sovereign gave orders to a nobleman, the master of all the buildings of his land, to plan the work and cut the stone. The kernel of the future edifice was raised on the limestone soil of the desert, in the form of a small pyramid built in steps, of which the well constructed and finished interior formed the king's eternal dwelling,-with his stone sarcophagus -lying on the rocky floor. Let us Suppose that this first building was finished while the Pharaoh still lived in the bright sunlight. A second covering was added, stone by stone, on the outside of the kernel; a third to (his second, and to this even a fourth; and and the mass of the giant building grew greater the longer the king enjoyed existence. And 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 sepulchre, presenting a gigantic triangle on each of its four faces. More than 70 such pyramids once rose on the margin of the desert, each telling of a king of whom it was once the tomb and monument. Had not the greater number of these sepulchres of the Pharaohs been destroyed almost to the foundations, and had the names of the builders of these which still stand been accurately " preserved, it would have been easy for the enquirer to prove and make clear by calculation what was originally, and of necessity, the proportion between the masses of the pyramids and the years of the reigns of their respective builders.