Rensselaer Union, Volume 9, Number 32, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 April 1877 — A VISIT TO THE GREAT PYRAMID. [ARTICLE]

A VISIT TO THE GREAT PYRAMID.

A visit to the Pyramids is an event in a man’s life. It is worth a voyage to Egypt. There are about sixty such architectural monuments; but the Great Pyramid, or the Pyramid of Cheops, with its two less pretentious neighbors, is woijh all thfe rest. It is the Pyramid,, as the mysterious Sphinx at its base is the Sphinx. It covers an area of about half a million square feet and rises sixty, feet higher than St. Paul’s Cathedral in London. It is the largest building of man’s hands in the world, though a mere pigmy as compared with God’s own pyramids—the Alps. It is the most appropriate symbol, the best welcome and the best rarewell of the land of the Pharaohs, who themselves rose like, pyramids, in solitary grandeur, far above the desert plain of slaveiy round about them. Well might Napoleon fire his soldiers by pointing them to that gigantic monarch of buildings, “ from which forty centuries looked down upon them.” And yet we see it only in its mutilated state. The vandalism of the Greeks, Romans and Saracens has robbed them of their polished red granite casings to enrich their palaces and mosques. The colossal Sphinx, too, carved out of the Solid frock, at the base of the Pyramid, is tnerely a ruin of what it was when sacrifices were offered between Its Jon-like paws fifty feet in length. And yet it makes an overpowering impression as, with sleepless eyes, it stares out, in majestic repose, overthevalley of the Nile and the vast wildernessbeyond—an emblem of sovereign royalty, intellect combined with physical strength; or rather, according to the latest view, a representation of the god Horus, the son of Osiris and Isis, Who, in order to avenge the death of Osiris by slaying his enemy, the evil spirit Typhon, assumed the shape of a Iron with a human head The Arabffcall the Sphinx ” Aboo-ei-hol,” the Father' of Terror or Immensity. It reminds one of the impenetrable- 'mysteries of eternity. We shall die or Islam shall wither away, and etill that sleepless rock will be watching and watching the works of a new, busy race with those same sad, earnest eyes and the same tranquil mien everlastingly. You dare not mock at the Sphinx.” I climbed to the top of the pyramid and enioyed the magnificent view over the garden of the Nile and boundless desert which here border on each other in startling contrast. The green fields, the stately palms, the majestic river, the City of Cairo, with its citadel, palaces and mosques, toward the East, .and this oceanof sand and rocks toward the West, constitute a panorama that has no parallel in this world. And the fcdeepened by the historical associations which involuntarily pass before the mind’s eye—roahs, of the Ptolemies, of the Saracens, of the Turks, of the Memluks, of Napoleon, of Mohamet Ali, and of the present structure—the King’s chamber and the Queen’s chamber—which produce an impresAon equfcfly sMkfhg-VhXigh totally different from |hH qf th# vfew op Vistopt. Here it is the mystery of death and eternity which ©vfTwhrims tlia mind. I am not competent to judge of Piazzi Smyth’s theory, who fifids in the Interior of this royal mausoleum th? evidence pf profound geometrical and astronomical science, and in the empty sarcophagus of the KJng. metoorolpgical . ment or Standard of weight ana measure for all ages, equivalent to the .English measure, and who traces * the design to a divine revelation. He reminds me oLthose commentators Who, not satisfied. wWj the mUurpl grammatical sense of the Scriptures, put their pious and ingenious fancies into them, ana thus substitute imposition sos mcpftdtiflri. His theory is not applicable to any other pyramid. The great majority of Egyptologists rejard Ao Pyramids simply as tomlw—Theyare aitwhated tfii ftoefropolis. They are the massive and impenetrable casings of a muttony, without wta•dows, without, doors and external opening. “The fact," says Marietfe Bay, the present superintendent of Egyptian antiquities, “that one alone has accessible interior chambers from which astronomical observations might have been made as from the bottofa of the Well, ofily proves that such was pot the purpose for whiqpit was originally destined." The alleged absence of all traces of idolatry in the Pyramid of Cheops would be a remarkable testimony to an anterior monotheism.

But the hieroglyphic inscriptions (of which one at least is mentioned by Herodotus) have long since disappeared, and the great Sphinx, to which sacrifices were offered, to said to be much elder than the Pyramid L There is no doubt, however, that monotheism preceded polytheism and underlies, in the .shape of a trinity in unity (Osiris, Isis and their son Horus), the Egyptian mythology. V < • The gigantic proportions, the antiquity and the location or the Pyramids on the border of the deterL constitute their chief interest. And this is the character of all the Egyptian monuments. The rains of temples, tombs and palaces on the Nile, especially al Thebes and Karnak, Denderah and Edfou, defy our notions of grandeur and sublimity, and excite our amazement at the mechanical skill that could remove from the quarries and pile up such enormous masses of stone; but there is no real beauty or grace in them, and all are disfigured by the ever-returning pictures and sculptures of the basest idolatry. The mind is kept vacillating between admiration of this old Egyptians as giants in architecture, sculpture and painting, and pity and contempt for them as worshipers of crocodiles and frogs, cats and beetles. They built aa magnificent tombs for their sacred bulls at Bakkara as for their Kings at Thebes. It was easier, in the days of Herodotus, to find a god on the Nile than a man; .and to these gods—half man, half beast, or all beast—their greatest works of art were dedicated. If idolatry could do so much, what should the worship of the only true and living God be able to do ? But the noblest monuments of Christianity are constructed of better material than gran£ ite and marble.

Nor should we forget that the pyramids, temples and palaces of Egypt could only be built under a system ot absolute despotism or absolute slavery such as Egypt presented in the days of Moses. It was, in the lahguagMPr the Bible “a house ot bondage. ”-4ungcraft and priestcraft, in the possession of all intelligence and power, used the people as beasts of burden apd qto&anical tools. The condition.pf Egypt is not much better now. The jffiiedive, who seems to have taken Napoleon 111. for his model, builds palace after palace for himself and his 800 wives, ana constructs by forced labor railroads and sugar factories; but a more degraded, miserable, slavish and beggarly population than the Egyptians it would be difficult to find within the limits-of the civilized world. “ Backsheesh” is the first word they learn and the last they forget. You hear it everywhere from morning till night, as if it were “the chief end of man.” The Khedive grinds his people to the very dust by taxation. He is very intelligent and has all the varnish of the French civilization, but he builds from the top downward, instead of building from the foundation upward. The result is bankruptcy. But this may end in the annexation of Egypt to England, which" wul be a great blessing to Egypt, and a part of the solution of the Eastern question. Every intelligent man in Egypt (I caniyjtsdd, “ woman,” for woman expresses no wishes in Mohammedan countries) longs for English rule. It is strange that no allusion to the Pyramids should be found in the Bible, unless it be in Job 8: 14, where the Hebrew word cAaradotA (mistranslated “ desol ate-places ”in our English version) signifies a - lofty sepulcher or pyramid (from “ perami,” lofty): For now should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have slept; then had I been at rest With Kings and oounnellors of the earth, Who built themselves . The Books of Moses may be read with increased interest on the banks of the Nile, especially the Boek of Exodus. The real history of Egypt is written in the Pyramids and the Bible. To the Bible student it will always be of deep interest as the adopted home of Joseph and the patriarchal family; as the birthplace of Moses, who was there initiated into all wisdom under the fostering care of Pharaoh's daughter during the loner reign of Barneses the Great; as the training school of the people of God; as the house ot bondage out of which God called His Bon; as the temporary shelter of the infant Jesus and the holy family. And the student of church history can never forget the important service which Egypt rendered to Christendom through the learning of Origen and the orthodoxy of Athanasius. The time will come when the Cross will replace the Crescent, and andthC gospel once more illuminate the darkness of the land of the Nile. — Cairo (Egypt) Cor. N. F. Observer. ‘ <1 ■