Rensselaer Union and Jasper Republican, Volume 8, Number 37, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 June 1876 — Age of the Pyramids. [ARTICLE]

Age of the Pyramids.

“As old as the Pyramids,” is the saying <>f everybody, but just how old the Pyramids are is_a question which has puzzled the wise heads of all times and defied solution. Modern investigation, however, stops at nothing, and at last the studious application of mind promises to record the year, the day; and even the hour and minute when the cap-stones were laid upon old Cheops and the minor Pyramids at Ghizeh. It is known that the Egyptians were wonderful astronomers, and that all their important events were recorded in hieroglyphics, as occurring while-some star was occupying a certain place in the heavens. These records were made on stone, the hieroglyphics ol the Egyptians covering nearly every standing monument of their architectural skill. These records are the riddles which are destined, not only to tell the age of the pyramids, the Sphinx and the Egyptian tombs, but to reveal the national history of tltat ancient people; -■ y ”96 late As’April 'J there was a meeting of the French Academy of Inscriptions in Paris, when one M. de Lauley treated of this subject of astronomical inscriptions, by reading a paper in relation to a dicovery by the scholastic -Frenchman, M. CJiabas.- The essay stated that Chabas recently unraveled an inscription upon the famous Ebers papyrus, which proved to be the name of Pharaoh Mynkeres, the bytilder Of the smallest pyramid. Under this name was also found an astronomical date.* ■■.

Taking this date to an eminent astronomer, it was ascertained, to the delight of of the Egyptologist, that it marked a point in the motion of the star Sirius, which mtist have been in the year 3,010 B. C. Other astronomers corroborated tile fact, and hence waj gained the first date of ab.- ' solute certainty established buck of the. ybir 1300 B. C. By this discovery the age of one pyramid, the third and smallest, is definitely established at 4,830 y’eafs. This is agreat point for tlie*scholars of the age to gain, and will doubtless be the key to the establishment of other important data in the history of the many curious relics of Egypt, made in an age and by .a people . existing in the far Long Ago of the world. —Chicago Journal, A parliament abv return just issued respecting railway accidents reported to the*Boaru of Trade during the year 1875 stated that the total number of persons killed on railways in the United Kingdom was 1,290, and the total number injured, 5,755. A summary of the tables given in the return states that during the year 116 passengers were killed and 594 injured from their own want of caution or misconduct.' Of other persons included in this division, sixty-six were killed and forty-one injured while passing over railway’s at level crossings; 248 were killed and 185 injured when trespassing on the railways; twenty-five persons committed, suicide by throwing themselves on the lines in front of approaching trains; while' of other persons not speciftcltlly^chissed, but mostly private people having business ■on the companies’ premises, fifty-two were killed and 105 were injured.