Papers On The Great Pyramid.

silver and gold , the jewels and the arms % The plundering fanatics look wildly around them , but can see nothing , not a single dirhem anyAvhere . They trim their torches , and carry them again and again to every part of that red-Availed , flinty hall , but Avithout any better success . Nought but pure , polished red granite , in mighty slabs , looks calmly upon them from every side . The room is clean— -garnished too , as it were ; and , according to the ideas of its founderscomplete and perfectly ready for its visitorsso

, , long expected , ancl not arrived yet ; for the gross minds Avho occupy it UOAV find it all barren , and declare that there is nothing Avhatever there , in the whole extent of the apartment , from one end to the other , nothing except an empty stone chest without a lid . "

But this room has some wonderful secrets to reveal , according to those Avho have sought the riches of wisdom hi the Avay they are to he found , and therefore it is deserving of a little more notice than the treasure-seekers gave it . Sandys ( 1610 ) Avrote of it , saying : " A goodly chamber , twenty foote Avide , and forty in length ; the rooffe of a lnaruelous height , and the stones so great , that eight floores it , eight rooffes it , eight flagge the ends , and sixteene the sides , all of well-ivrolight . Theban marble . " * A very

taking description , though scarcely accurate . Unable to easily discern the joints of the masonry , Sandys appears to have given his imagination free play . Smyth , in his plate of this chamber , SIIOAVS 9 stones hi the roof , ancl 100 in the 4 sides , in 5 courses of masonry , of Avhich the top course contained 7 stones only . Greaves , the Oxford Professor of Astronomy ( 1638 ) made 6 courses , but Smyth worked longer and under better conditions . In other respectsthe old Professor ' s remarks and measures have proved

, very accurate ; much more than those of many of his successors , Avho appear to have roughly guessed their measures , with a result sufficiently beAvildering if all writers Avere to be received as of equal authority . Greaves had been greatly struck Avith the Avorkmanship of the Grand Gallery , which Avas " not inferiour , " says he , " either in respect to the curiosity of Art , or richness of materials , to the most sumptuous and magnificent buildings ; " ancl when he comes to the King ' s Chamberhe describes it as folloAVS : —

, " This rich and spacious chamber , in which Art may seem to have contended Avith Nature , the curious work being not inferior to the rich materials , stands , as it were , in the heart and centre of the Pyramid , equi-clistant from all the sides , and almost in the midst between the basis and the top . The floor , the sides , the roof of it , are aU made of . vast but exquisite tables of Theban marble . "f

Nor are modern engineers less sparing in their admiration of the work of those early masons who reared the apparently simple yet strangely complex pile . According to Sir John Hawkshaw the three greater pyramids mark the summit of perfection in the art of building attained in Egypt . Had he limited his remarks to the Great Pyramid , he mi ght have said that it was the most perfect monument of all masonic skill that the Avorld has ever seen .

Professor OAven' j is not less enthusiastic in his admiration ; he says : "The arts of tpiarrying and of masonry , manifested by the marvellous bulk of granite blocks , the perfection of their shaping , and the fineness of their polished surfaces , Avere as advanced m E gypt at the date of the pyramids as at any subsequent period , or as they are now practised with the aid of gunpowder ancl of steam machinery in the granite quarries and works at Aberdeen . " And again he : " This material ( granite ) enters into the

says internal architecture of the Great Pyramid . Emerging' from the Entry gallery into the Grand Passage , Availed ancl roofed by mighty masses of polished granite , called the King ' s Chamber , ' conducting to the mortuary chapel , contiguous to the chamber of the royal Sarcophagus , § the unexpected dimensions of the 'Granite Chamber' impressed too with a resemblance to the side aisle of a cathedral . The whole of the knoAvn in-