The following observations form a corrected Abstract, from No. 75 of
the _Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh_, of a
communication made to that Society on the 20th January 1868, and
entitled _Pyramidal Structures in Egypt and elsewhere; and the
Objects of their Erection_. Some additional points are dwelt upon in
the Notes and Appendix. As stated at the time, the communication was
not at all spontaneous, but enforced by the previous criticisms of
Professor Smyth.
There are many proposed derivations of the word Pyramid. Perhaps the
origin of the name suggested by the distinguished Egyptologist, Mr.
Birch, from two Coptic words, "_pouro_," "ing," and "_emahau_," or
"_maha_," "tomb,"--the two in combination signifying "the king's
tomb,"--is the most correct. "_Men_," in Coptic, signifies "monument,"
"memorial;" and "_pouro-men_," or "king's monument," may possibly also
be the original form of the word.[233]
Various English authors, as Pope,[234] Pownall,[235] Professor Daniel
Wilson,[236] Burton,[237] had long applied the term pyramid to the
larger forms of conical and round sepulchral mounds, cairns, or
barrows--such as are found in Ireland, Brittany, Orkney, etc., and also
in numerous districts of the New and Old World;[238] and which are all
characterised by containing in their interior chambers or cells,
constructed usually of large stones, and with megalithic galleries
leading into them. In these chambers (small in relation to the hills of
stone or earth in which they were imbedded) were found the remains of
sepulture, with stone weapons, ornaments, etc. The galleries and
chambers were roofed, sometimes with flags laid quite flat, or placed
abutting against each other; and occasionally with large stones arranged
over the internal cells in the form of a horizontal arch or dome. In his
travels to Madeira and the Mediterranean (1840), Sir W. Wilde details in
interesting terms his visit to the pyramids of Egypt; and in describing
the roof of the interior chambers of one of the pyramids at
Sakkara,[239] he remarks on the analogy of its construction to the great
barrow of Dowth in Ireland; and again, when writing--in his work on the
_Beauties of the Boyne_ (1849)--an account of the great old barrows of
Dowth, New Grange, etc., placed on its banks above Drogheda, he
describes at some length the last of these mounds (New Grange),--stating
that it "consists" of an enormous cairn or "hill of small stones,
calculated at 180,000 tons weight, occupying the summit of one of the
natural undulating slopes which enclose the valley of the Boyne upon the
north. It is said to cover nearly two acres, and is 400 paces in
circumference, and now about 80 feet higher than the adjoining natural
surface. Various excavations (he adds) made into its sides and upon its
summit, at different times, in order to supply materials for building
and road-making, having assisted to lessen its original height, and also
to destroy the beauty of its outline." Like the other analogous mounds
and pyramids placed there and elsewhere, New Grange has a long
megalithic gallery, of above 60 feet in length, leading inward into
three dome-shaped chambers or crypts. After describing minutely, and
with a master-hand, the construction of these interior parts, and the
carvings of circles, spirals, etc.,[240] upon the enormous stones of
which the gallery and crypts are built, Sir William Wilde goes on to
observe:--"We believe with most modern investigators into such subjects,
that it was a tomb, or great sepulchral Pyramid, similar in every
respect to those now standing by the banks of the Nile, from Dashour to
Gizeh, each consisting of a great central chamber containing one or more
sarcophagi, entered by a long stone-covered passage. The external
aperture was concealed, and the whole covered with a great mound of
stones or earth in a conical form. The early Egyptians, and the
Mexicans also, possessing greater art and better tools than the
primitive Irish, carved, smoothed, and cemented their great pyramids;
_but the type and purpose is all the same_.... How far anterior to the
Christian era its date should be placed would be a matter of
speculation; it may be of an age coeval, or even anterior, to its
brethren on the Nile."
Other pyramidal barrows at Maeshowe, Gavr Inis, etc., were referred to
and illustrated; showing that a gigantic sepulchral cairn was in its
mass an unbuilt pyramid; or, in other words, that a pyramid was a built
cairn.