New Orleans daily crescent. [volume] ([New Orleans, La.]) 1851-1866, 1852-02-04
Professor alddon's Leoture-Lyceum Hall,

This celebrated voyager and stirrer-up OF the
dry bones Of Egyptian mummyology delivered his
fourth lecture last night to an overfowing audi
ence. His subject was stThe Pyramids" He
described them as historic monuments, built by
the vanity of departed kings for the perpetual
ton of their memories, and gave their number
us sixty-seven, each having been erected by an
individual monarch, thus proving the existence
during their erection of as many rulers in Egypt
as there exist Pyramids. He exhibited the
drawing of the largest, supposed to have been
built by Cheops, who has slumbered in state Of
munmyism for more than five thousand years.
This pyramid, he said, was originally four
hundred and eighty feet high, but that by the
vandalism of the Ishmaelites, it had withered
down to exactly four hundred and fifty feet, nine
inches Others, he mentioned, of less dimen-
sons, each being smaller than the other, and
dwindling in height by geometrical retrogres-
sion, as the lower rounds of q ladder are not
equal in altitude to the upper, or, as King Lii
liput was of shorter statue than his illustrious
visitor CULVER, from having been earlier
checked in his growth. Each of these monu-
ments, he said, were commenced by different
Kings, in the first year of their reigns.
They were built from the ground up, COM
mencing at the foundation, where the Kings
chamber was located, wherein, after his demise,
he held his grand banquet of worms; and then,
if he found it convenient to depart this life, the
whole structure was Immediately encased and
the work brought to close. But, on the con-
trary, if his Majesty concluded to remain some
years longer, the work was continued upward
in the stair-step fashion to the end of his king
ships s.mortal COLL and only plastered and
smoothed over at his demise. By this process
of building, the antiquarian was enabled to
discover the number of layers of masonry COM
posing the pile, and thus to ascertain the years
employed in its structure; in the same man
ner that the antiquity of beef is known by the
number of rings on the living cows horn.
The mass of the Pyramid, he said, built by
Cheops or &c Choofoo,' was more than thousand
times greater than that of the Bunker Hill
Monument, and asked, if the latter had occa-
stoned so much joy by its completion, what JOY
did the like contamination bring to the builders
of the Pyramid of &C Choofoo''? did we hazard
an opinion, we would venture to say that the
sshod carriers who walked up the ladders o
this immense mound of antiquity, and piled il
to its present altitude, if7called toanswer thu
query, would vote that there was more of swea
than joy on the day of its fnishing)
The Professor passed from the Pyramids tt
the Memphian cemeteries, and walked up thu
| legons of mummydom that have rested in theil
marble sarcophagi since thirty centuries priol
to the Christian era; gave glowing pictures o
the scenery of the Nile, and unclaimed the at
tention of his auditory during an hour and {
quarter with discourse replete with the lore o
ancient times and Astounding in instructive il
s lustration.
r A quotation illustrated the folly of erecting
marble mementoes to perpetuate the names o
the dead for
: How monument give you or me hopes.
When not pinch of dust remains Of Cheops?n