shafts, and the sepulchral chambers all of them remarkable, and some of
them simply astonishing. The "Great Pyramid" guards three chambers. One
lies deep in the rock, about a hundred and twenty feet beneath the
natural surface of the ground, and is placed almost directly below the
apex of the structure. It measures forty-six feet by twenty-seven, and
is eleven feet high. The access to it is by a long and narrow passage
which commences in the north side of the pyramid, about seventy feet
above the original base, and descends for forty yards through the
masonry, and then for seventy more in the same line through the solid
rock, when it changes its direction, becoming horizontal for nine yards,
and so entering the chamber itself. The two other chambers are reached
by an ascending passage, which branches off from the descending one at
the distance of about thirty yards from the entrance, and mounts up
through the heart of the pyramid for rather more than forty yards, when
it divides into two. A low horizontal gallery, a hundred and ten feet
long, leads to a chamber which has been called "the Queen's"--a room
about nineteen feet long by seventeen broad, roofed in with sloping
blocks, and having a height of twenty feet in the centre. Another longer
and much loftier gallery continues on for a hundred and fifty feet in
the line of the ascending passage, and is then connected by a short
horizontal passage with the upper-most or "King's Chamber." Here was
found a sarcophagus believed to be that of King Khufu, since the name of
Khufu was scrawled in more than one place on the chamber walls.
[Illustration: GALLERY IN THE GREAT PYRAMID.]
The construction of this chamber--the very kernel of the whole
building--is exceedingly remarkable. It is a room of thirty-four feet in
length, with a width of seventeen feet, and a height of nineteen,
composed wholly of granite blocks of great size, beautifully polished,
and fitted together with great care. The construction of the roof is
particularly admirable. First, the chamber is covered in with nine huge
blocks, each nearly nineteen feet long and four feet wide, which are
laid side by side upon the walls so as to form a complete ceiling. Then
above these blocks is a low chamber similarly covered in, and this is
repeated four times; after which there is a fifth opening,
triangular, and roofed in by a set of huge sloping blocks, which meet at
the apex and support each other. The object is to relieve the chamber
from any superincumbent weight, and prevent it from being crushed in by
the mass of material above it; and this object has been so completely
attained that still, at the expiration of above forty centuries, the
entire chamber, with its elaborate roof, remains intact, without crack
or settlement of any kind.
Further, from the great chamber are carried two ventilation-shafts, or
air-passages, northwards and southwards, which open on the outer surface
of the pyramid, and are respectively two hundred and thirty-three and
one hundred and ninety-four feet long. These passages are square, or
nearly so, and have a diameter varying between six and nine inches. They
give a continual supply of pure air to the chamber, and keep it dry at
all seasons.
The Great Gallery is also of curious construction. Extending for a
distance of one hundred and fifty feet, and rising at an angle of 26°
18', it has a width of five feet at the base and a height of above
thirty feet. The side walls are formed of seven layers of stone, each
projecting a few inches over that below it. The gallery thus gradually
contracts towards the top, which has a width of four feet only, and is
covered in with stones that reach across it, and rest on the walls at
either side. The exact object of so lofty a gallery has not been
ascertained; but it must have helped to keep the air of the interior
pure and sweet, by increasing the space through which it had to
circulate.
The "Pyramid Builders," or kings who constructed the three monuments
that have now been described, were, according to a unanimous tradition,
three consecutive monarchs, whose native names are read as Khufu,
Shafra, and Menkaura. These kings belonged to Manetho's fourth dynasty;
and Khufu, the first of the three, seems to have been the immediate
successor of Sneferu. Theorists have delighted to indulge in
speculations as to the objects which the builders had in view when they
raised such magnificent constructions. One holds that the Great Pyramid,
at any rate, was built to embody cosmic discoveries, as the exact length
of the earth's diameter and circumference, the length of an arc of the
meridian, and the true unit of measure. Another believes the great work
of Khufu to have been an observatory, and the ventilating passages to
have been designed for "telescopes," through which observations were to
be made upon the sun and stars; but it has not yet been shown that there
is any valid foundation for these fancies, which have been spun with
much art out of the delicate fabric of their propounders' brains. The
one hard fact which rests upon abundant evidence is this--the pyramids
were built for tombs, to contain the mummies of deceased Egyptians. The
chambers in their interiors, at the time of their discovery, held within
them sarcophagi, and in one instance the sarcophagus had within it a
coffin. The coffin had an inscription upon it, which showed that it had
once contained the body of a king. If anything more is necessary, we may
add that every pyramid in Egypt--and there are, as he have said, more
than sixty of them--was built for the same purpose, and that they all
occupy sites in the great necropolis, or burial-ground opposite Memphis,
where the inhabitants are known to have laid their dead.
The marvel is, how Khufu came suddenly to have so magnificent a thought
as that of constructing an edifice double the height of any previously
existing, covering five times the area, and containing ten times the
mass. Architecture does not generally proceed by "leaps and bounds;" but
here was a case of a sudden extraordinary advance, such as we shall find
it difficult to parallel elsewhere. An attempt has been made to solve
the mystery by the supposition that all pyramids were gradual
accretions, and that their size marks simply the length of a king's
reign, each monarch making his sepulchral chamber, with a small pyramid
above it, in his first year, and as his reign went on, adding each year
an outer coating; so that the number of these coatings tells the length
of his reign, as the age of a tree is known from the number of its
annual rings. In this case there would have been nothing ideally great
in the conception of Khufu--he would simply have happened to erect the
biggest pyramid because he happened to have the longest reign; but,
except in the case of the "Third Pyramid," there is a unity of design in
the structures which implies that the architect had conceived the whole
structure in his mind from the first. The lengths of the several parts
are proportioned one to another. In the "Great Pyramid," the main
chamber would not have needed the five relieving chambers above it
unless it was known that it would have to be pressed down by a
superincumbent mass, such as actually lies upon it. Moreover, how is it
possible to conceive that in the later years of a decrepid monarch, the
whole of an enormous pyramid could be coated over with huge blocks--and
the blocks are largest at the external surface--the work requiring to be
pushed each year with more vigour, as becoming each year greater and
more difficult? Again, what shall we say of the external finish? Each
pyramid was finally smoothed down to a uniform sloping surface. This
alone must have been a work of years. Did a pyramid builder leave it to
his successor to finish his pyramid? It is at least doubtful whether any
pyramid at all would ever have been finished had he done so.
We must hold, therefore, that Khufu did suddenly conceive a design
without a parallel--did require his architect to construct him a tomb,
which should put to shame all previous monuments, and should with
difficulty be surpassed, or even equalled. He must have possessed much
elevation of thought, and an intense ambition, together with inordinate
selfishness, an overweening pride, and entire callousness to the
sufferings of others, before he could have approved the plan which his
master-builder set before him. That plan, including the employment of
huge blocks of stone, their conveyance to the top of a hill a hundred
feet high, and their emplacement, in some cases, at a further elevation
of above 450 feet, involved, under the circumstances of the time, such
an amount of human suffering, that no king who had any regard for the
happiness of his subjects could have consented to it. Khufu must have
forced his subjects to labour for a long term of years--twenty,
according to Herodotus--at a servile work which was wholly unproductive,
and was carried on amid their sighs and groans for no object but his own
glorification, and the supposed safe custody of his remains. Shafra must
have done nearly the same. Hence an evil repute attached to the pyramid
builders, whose names were handed down to posterity as those of
evil-minded and impious kings, who neglected the service of the gods to
gratify their own vanity, and, so long as they could exalt themselves,
did not care how much they oppressed their people. There was not even
the poor apology for their conduct that their oppression fell on slaves,
or foreigners, or prisoners of war. Egypt was not yet a conquering
power; prisoners of war were few, slaves not very common. The labourers
whom the pyramid builders employed were their own free subjects whom
they impressed into the heavy service.
It is by a just Nemesis that the kings have in a great measure failed to
secure the ends at which they aimed, and in hope of which they steeled
their hearts against their subjects' cries. They have indeed handed down
their names to a remote age: but it is as tyrants and oppressors. They
are world-famous, or rather world-infamous. But that preservation of
their corporeal frame which they especially sought, is exactly what they
have missed attaining.
Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheôps,
says the doggerel of the satiric Byron; and it is the absolute fact
that while thousands of mummies buried in common graves remain untouched
even to the present day, the very grandeur of the pyramid builders'
tombs attracted attention to them, caused the monuments to be opened,
the sarcophagi to be rifled, and the remains inclosed in them to be
dispersed to the four winds of heaven.
Still, whatever gloomy associations attach to the pyramids in respect of
the sufferings caused by their erection, as monuments they must always
challenge a certain amount of admiration. A great authority declares:
"No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great Pyramid without
being struck with astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill
displayed in its construction. The immense blocks of granite brought
from Syene, a distance of five hundred miles, polished like glass, and
so fitted that the joints can scarcely be detected! Nothing can be more
wonderful than the extraordinary amount of knowledge displayed in the
construction of the discharging chambers over the roof of the principal
apartment, in the alignment of the sloping galleries, in the provision
of the ventilating shafts, and in all the wonderful contrivances of the
structure. All these, too, are carried out with such precision that,
notwithstanding the immense superincumbent weight, no settlement in any
part can be detected to an appreciable fraction of an inch. Nothing more
perfect mechanically has ever been erected since that time."[8]
[Illustration: VIEW OF THE GREAT AND SECOND PYRAMIDS.]
The architectural effect of the two greatest of the pyramids is
certainly magnificent. They do not greatly impress the beholder at
first sight, for a pyramid, by the very law of its formation, never
looks as large as it is--it slopes away from the eye in every direction,
and eludes rather than courts observation. But as the spectator gazes,
as he prolongs his examination and inspection, the pyramids gain upon
him, their impressiveness increases. By the vastness of their mass, by
the impression of solidity and durability which they produce, partly
also, perhaps, by the symmetry and harmony of their lines and their
perfect simplicity and freedom from ornament, they convey to the
beholder a sense of grandeur and majesty, they produce within him a
feeling of astonishment and awe, such as is scarcely caused by any other
of the erections of man. In all ages travellers have felt and expressed
the warmest admiration for them. They impressed Herodotus as no works
that he had seen elsewhere, except, perhaps, the Babylonian. They
astonished Germanicus, familiar as he was with the great constructions
of Rome. They furnished Napoleon with the telling phrase, "Soldiers,
forty centuries look down upon you from the top of the pyramids." Greece
and Rome reckoned them among the Seven Wonders of the world. Moderns
have doubted whether they could really be the work of human hands. If
they possess only one of the elements of architectural excellence, they
possess that element to so great an extent that in respect of it they
are unsurpassed, and probably unsurpassable.
These remarks apply especially to the first and second pyramids. The
"Third" is not a work of any very extraordinary grandeur. The bulk is
not greater than that of the chief pyramid of Saccarah, which has never
attracted much attention; and the height did not greatly exceed that of
the chief Mexican temple-mound. Moreover, the stones of which the
pyramid was composed are not excessively massive. The monument aimed at
being beautiful rather than grand. It was coated for half its height
with blocks of pink granite from Syene, bevelled at the edges, which
remain still in place on two sides of the structure. The entrance to it,
on the north side, was conspicuous, and seems to have had a metal
ornamentation let into the stone. The sepulchral chamber was beautifully
lined and roofed, and the sarcophagus was exquisitively carved.
Menkaura, the constructor, was not regarded as a tyrant, or an
oppressor, but as a mild and religious monarch, whom the gods ill-used
by giving him too short a reign. His religious temper is indicated by
the inscription on the coffin which contained his remains: "O Osiris,"
it reads, "King of Upper and Lower Egypt, Menkaura, living eternally,
engendered by the Heaven, born of Nut, substance of Seb, thy mother Nut
stretches herself over thee in her name of the abyss of heaven. She
renders thee divine by destroying all thy enemies, O King Menkaura,
living eternally."
The fashion of burying in pyramids continued to the close of Manetho's
sixth dynasty, but no later monarchs rivalled the great works of Khufu
and Shafra. The tombs of their successors were monuments of a moderate
size, involving no oppression of the people, but perhaps rather
improving their condition by causing a rise in the rate of wages.
Certainly, the native remains of the period give a cheerful
representation of the condition of all classes. The nation for the most
part enjoys peace, and applies itself to production. The wealth of the
nobles increases, and the position of their dependents is improved.
Slaves were few, and there was ample employment for the labouring
classes. We do not see the stick at work upon the backs of the labourers
in the sculptures of the time; they seem to accomplish their various
tasks with alacrity and gaiety of heart. They plough, and hoe, and reap;
drive cattle or asses; winnow and store corn; gather grapes and tread
them, singing in chorus as they tread; cluster round the winepress or
the threshingfloor, on which the animals tramp out the grain; gather
lotuses; save cattle from the inundation; engage in fowling or fishing;
and do all with an apparent readiness and cheerfulness which seems
indicative of real content. There may have been a darker side to the
picture, and undoubtedly was while Khufu and Shafra held the throne; but
kings of a morose and cruel temper seem to have been the exception,
rather than the rule, in Egypt; and the moral code, which required
kindness to be shown to dependents, seems, at this period at any rate,
to have had a hold upon the consciences, and to have influenced the
conduct, of the mass of the people. "Happy the nation that has no
history!" Egypt during this golden age was neither assailed by any
aggressive power beyond her borders, nor had herself conceived the idea
of distant conquest. An occasional raid upon the negroes of the South,
or chastisement of the nomades of the East, secured her interests in
those quarters, and prevented her warlike virtues from dying out through
lack of use. But otherwise tranquillity was undisturbed, and the
energies of the nation were directed to increasing its material
prosperity, and to progress in the arts.
Among the marvels of Egypt perhaps the Sphinx is second to none. The
mysterious being with the head of a man and the body of a lion is not at
all uncommon in Egyptian architectural adornment, but the one placed
before the Second Pyramid (the Pyramid of Shafra), and supposed to be
contemporary with it, astonishes the observer by its gigantic
proportions. It is known to the Arabs as Abul-hôl, the father of terror.
It measures more than one hundred feet in length, and was partially
carved from the rocks of the Lybian hills. Between its out-stretched
feet there stands a chapel, uncovered in 1816, three walls of which are
formed by tablets bearing inscriptions indicative of its use and origin.
A small temple behind the great Sphinx, probably also built by Shafra,
is formed of great blocks of the hardest red granite, brought from the
neighbourhood of Syene and fitted to each other with a nicety
astonishing to modern architects, who are unable to imagine what tools
could have proved equal to the difficult achievement. Mysterious
passages pierce the great Sphinx and connect it with the Second Pyramid,
three hundred feet west of it. In the face of this mystery all questions
are vain, and yet every visitor adds new queries to those that others
have asked before him.
Since what unnumbered year
Hast thou kept watch and ward,
And o'er the buried land of fear
So grimly held thy guard?
No faithless slumber snatching,
Still couched in silence brave,
Like some fierce hound, long watching
Above her master's grave....
Dost thou in anguish thus
Still brood o'er Œdipus?
And weave enigmas to mislead anew,
And stultify the blind
Dull heads of human-kind,
And inly make thy moan,
That, mid the hated crew,
Whom thou so long couldst vex,
Bewilder and perplex,
Thou yet couldst find a subtler than thine own?
Even now; methinks that those
Dark, heavy lips which close
In such a stern repose,
Seem burdened with some thought unsaid,
And hoard within their portals dread
Some fearful secret there,
Which to the listening earth
She may not whisper forth.
Not even to the air!
Of awful wonders hid
In yonder dread Pyramid,
The home of magic fears;
Of chambers vast and lonely,
Watched by the Genii only,
Who tend their masters' long-forgotten biers,
And treasures that have shone
On cavern walls alone,
For thousand, thousand years.
Would she but tell. She knows
Of the old Pharaohs;
Could count the Ptolemies' long line;
Each mighty myth's original hath seen,
Apis, Anubis,--ghosts that haunt between
The bestial and divine,--
(Such he that sleeps in Philæ,--he that stands
In gloom unworshipped, 'neath his rock-hewn lane,--
And they who, sitting on Memnonian sands,
Cast their long shadows o'er the desert plain:)
Hath marked Nitocris pass,
And Oxymandyas
Deep-versed in many a dark Egyptian wile,--
The Hebrew boy hath eyed
Cold to the master's bride;
And that Medusan stare hath frozen the smile
Of all her love and guile,
For whom the Cæsar sighed,
And the world-loser died,--
The darling of the Nile.
FOOTNOTES:
[8] Fergusson, "History of Architecture," vol. i. pp. 91, 92.
V.
THE RISE OF THEBES TO POWER, AND THE EARLY THEBAN KINGS.
Hitherto Egypt had been ruled from a site at the junction of the narrow
Nile valley with the broad plain of the Delta--a site sufficiently
represented by the modern Cairo. But now there was a shift of the seat
of power. There is reason to believe that something like a disruption of
Egypt into separate kingdoms took place, and that for a while several
distinct dynasties bore sway in different parts of the country.
Disruption was naturally accompanied by weakness and decline. The old
order ceased, and opportunity was offered for some new order--some new
power--to assert itself. The site on which it arose was one three
hundred and fifty miles distant from the ancient capital, or four
hundred and more by the river. Here, about lat. 26°, the usually narrow
valley of the Nile opens into a sort of plain or basin. The mountains on
either side of the river recede, as though by common consent, and leave
between themselves and the river's bank a broad amphitheatre, which in
each case is a rich green plain--an alluvium of the most productive
character--dotted with _dom_ and date palms, sometimes growing single,
sometimes collected into clumps or groves. On the western side the
Libyan range gathers itself up into a single considerable peak, which
has an elevation of twelve hundred feet. On the east the desert-wall
maintains its usual level character, but is pierced by valleys
conducting to the coast of the Red Sea. The situation was one favourable
for commerce. On the one side was the nearest route through the sandy
desert to the Lesser Oasis, which commanded the trade of the African
interior; on the other the way led through the valley of Hammamât, rich
with _breccia verde_ and other valuable and rare stones, to a district
abounding in mines of gold, silver, and lead, and thence to the Red Sea
coast, from which, even in very early times, there was communication
with the opposite coast of Arabia, the region of gums and spices.
In this position there had existed, probably from the very beginnings of
Egypt, a provincial city of some repute, called by its inhabitants Apé
or Apiu, and, with the feminine article prefixed, Tapé, or Tapiu, which
some interpret "The city of thrones". To the Greeks the name "Tapé"
seemed to resemble their own well-known "Thebai", whence they
transferred the familiar appellation from the Bæotian to the
Mid-Egyptian town, which has thus come to be known to Englishmen and
Anglo-Americans as "Thebes." Thebes had been from the first the capital
of a "nome". It lay so far from the court that it acquired a character
of its own--a special cast of religion, manners, speech, nomenclature,
mode of writing, and the like--which helped to detach it from Lower or
Northern Egypt more even than its isolation. Still, it was not until
the northern kingdom sank into decay from internal weakness and
exhaustion, and disintegration supervened in the Delta and elsewhere,
that Thebes resolved to assert herself and claim independent
sovereignty. Apparently, she achieved her purpose without having
recourse to arms. The kingdoms of the north were content to let her go.
They recognized their own weakness, and allowed the nascent power to
develop itself unchecked and unhindered.
The first known Theban monarch is a certain Antef or Enantef, whose
coffin was discovered in the year 1827 by some Arabs near Qurnah, to the
west of Thebes. The mummy bore the royal diadem, and the epigraph on the
lid of the coffin declared the body which it contained to be that of
"Antef, king of _the two Egypts._" The phrase implied a claim to
dominion over the whole country, but a claim as purely nominal as that
of the kings of England from Edward IV. to George III. to be monarchs of
France and Navarre. Antef s rule may possibly have reached to
Elephantine on the one hand, but is not likely to have extended much
beyond Coptos on the other. He was a local chieftain posing as a great
sovereign, but probably with no intention to deceive either his own
contemporaries or posterity. His name appears in some of the later
Egyptian dynastic lists; but no monument of his time has come down to us
except the one that has been mentioned.