THE GREAT PYRAMID LOOKS DOWN ON THE CATARACT OF PHILÆ.
Now I gain the mountain’s brow,
What a landscape lies below!—DYER.
There is some interest in the comparison contained in the following
figures. The Great Pyramid was originally 480 feet high. In consequence
of the sacrilegious removal of its outer courses by the Caliphs to
provide materials for the construction of the Mosk of Hassan, and other
buildings at Cairo, its height has been reduced twenty feet, that is to
460 feet. It stands at the northern extremity of the valley of Egypt. The
First Cataract is at the other, or southern extremity. These two extreme
points of the valley are separated by a distance, following the windings
of the river, of 580 miles. Throughout this distance the river falls on
an average five inches a mile. This gives an uniformly rapid stream.
To ascend this distance in a steamboat, such as are used on the Nile,
requires seven days of continuous work; no time having been allowed for
stoppages, except of course during the night. I need hardly say that the
voyage is never accomplished in so short a time. But supposing a week
has been spent in the ascent of the river, when, at the end of it, you
land at the Cataract, you are at very little more than half the height
you had reached when you were standing, at the beginning of the week,
on the top of the Pyramid. So it would be supposing the Pyramid stood
on the level of the river-bank, instead of standing, as it does, on a
spur of the limestone ridge that overlooks the valley. To think, when
you are entering Nubia, that a building in the neighbourhood of Cairo,
so many hundred miles away, is still towering nearly 240 feet above your
head, and that it has been there from an antiquity so remote that, in
comparison with it, the most ancient monuments of Europe are affairs of
yesterday, an antiquity that is separated from our own day by more than
5,000 years, makes one feel that those old Egyptians understood very well
what they were about, when they undertook to set for themselves a mark
upon the world, which should stand as long as the world endured. Judging
from what we still see of the casing at the top of the Second Pyramid,
we feel certain that, if the destroying hand of man had not stripped off
its polished outer casing from the Great Pyramid, the modern traveller
would behold it precisely as it was seen fifty centuries ago, when the
architect reported to Cheops the completion of the work.
I have been speaking of the relation, in respect of height, of the Great
Pyramid to the Cataract of Philæ only; it may, however, be noticed, for
the sake of enabling the fireside traveller to picture more readily to
his mind the peculiarity of the hypsometrical features of this unique
country, that this Pyramid looks down, and always from a relatively
greater height, on every part of the cultivated soil of the whole land of
Egypt.