File:The redemption of Egypt (1899) (14787199213).jpg

Identifier: redemptionofegyp00worsuoft (find matches)
Title: The redemption of Egypt
Year: 1899 (1890s)
Authors: Worsfold, W. Basil (William Basil), 1858-1939
Subjects: Egypt -- Description and travel
Publisher: London G. Allen
Contributing Library: Robarts - University of Toronto
Digitizing Sponsor: MSN

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deour way southwards, reconnoitering the giant flank of CheopsPyramid as we passed; and then we struck across the sandyplain to the Pyramid of Chephren, and thence to the third, andlesser. Pyramid of Mycerinus. Here, resting under the shelterof the ruined walls of the Temple, which lies beneath the easternflank of the third Pyramid, we looked backwards across the levelstretch of white sand upon the Pyramid of Chephren, whichspread the whole extent of its southern side before our eyes,upon the Pyramid of Cheops, the three lesser Pyramids, and theemerald plains beyond. After we had gazed awhile, I unpacked my portfolio andbegan to sketch. As I proceeded with my task, the enormousbulk of the yellow mass in front of me grew upon my senses.It has been calculated that the Pyramid of Chephren containsmore than two million cubic yards of solid masonry, being somefive million tons in weight; while the Pyramid of Cheops, risingfrom a base little less than thirteen acres in extent, contains over
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a. c H THE PYRAMIDS 221 three million cubic yards of stone. But these figures told nieless than the black-robed Arabs that, moving across the plain ofsand, dwindled to ants as they approached the mighty triangleof stone. It was no business of mine to probe the secrets ofthe past, but, with this enormous flank before my eyes, it wasimpossible to avoid the questions, when, and how, and wherefore,had these gigantic masses been erected ? The account of Herodotus, the first traveller who carried anote-book, has not yet been superseded. He visited Egypt at thetime of the Persian domination, a century or so before Alexandersconquest introduced the era of the Ptolemies, and he has, there-fore, the advantage of Strabo by some four hundred years. Beforehe tells us the story of the building of the Pyramids, as he heardit on the spot, he records a pregnant statement which in itselfexplains the third of these questions—Why did the Egyptiankinofs cause their bodies to be buried in the heart of th

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