The Columbia herald. [volume] (Columbia, Tenn.) 1850-1873, 1873-05-23
The Ruins in Egvnt.


The Ruins in Egypt.
No grander or more impressive ruins,
no more sublime monuments of mans
power to build, have come down from
remote ages IN a sufficient state of
preservation to be apprf ciated III modern
times, than the vast architectural monu-
ments of ancient Egypt. Nearly every
body, now, is familiar with the general
structure and appearance of tine Pyra-
mids; if not by actual observation OBJ
tanned by travel, at least by the many
pictures and written descriptions. Such
vast, peculiar, and majestic structures
are nowhere else to be met with on the
globe. One, built for the tomb of
Cheops. is nerrIy 900 feet in breadth,
and almost 500 feet high. It's enormous
stones. each thirty feet long, and Ibid
end to end, so as to form q giant stair,
between five and six hundred feet long,
are so thick and high that man unac-
customed TO such climbing must be lift
ed from stair to stair, SO great is the
height of each step in the vast slope up
the sides. Once it was covered by a
reddish coating (see Herodotus) and
thousands on thousands of incriptions.
rors, and its lofty and narrow point, far
higher than the tip of Trinity church in
New York, seemed to pierce the sky:
but the slow tooth of time, even in that
warm, rainles land, has eaten off tee
peak, and left a fiat surface on the lofty
summit. From the top one can see
across the desert forty miles. A strong
armed man can throw a stone a long way;
but no man can throw q stone from the
top which shall go beyond the base of
the large Pyramid. Owing to q COM
men optical illusion he who casts the
imagines that he has sent his missile to
a great distance beyond the bottom of
the structure but, us the eye follows it,
the stone seems to turn back, and it
falls only at the foot of vast pile, steep
as its mighty slopes are. There are
evidences that the great structure was
erected by men who knew something of
astronomy, as an opening in it was made
to give bearing upon the North Star.
But that was in an econ when the North
Star was not the present one.
No mortal has ever fully explored the
mysterious interior OF the Pyramids. In
the great pyramid there are chambers
which have maintained their hollow and
sepulchral gloom for untold ages, while
the world has grown old, and nations
have arisen and fallen in other lands
Bayard Taylor, exploring the inner re-
cesses of these stony chambers, was sur
prised to hear on the walls the "mys-
FERROUS rappings," which evinced the
inscrHtable intelligence everywhere as
cribed to them. His reference to the
occurrence suggests thoughts of the
Pharaohs-of Sesostris, and Cheops. and
Cephrenes. Are these forgotten shades
of a mighty civilization that was old be-
fore Greece was born, uneasy in their
stony beds of uncounted centuries?
These pyramids were 30 years in
building. 1t took 100000 men all that
time to do the mighty work and they
relieved each other in vast armies, every
three months. How could they have
lifted such stones into such positions :?
We could hardly do it to-day, with all
the aids of steam and science. But there
the mighty blocks are, and so nicely
fitted together that knife blade cannot
be inserted in the mortarless joints.
KARNAK.
But at Karnak, much further up the
Nile going south, the traveller meets
with ruins which fairly transcend, in
some respects, the Pyramids. Thegreat
palace OF Karnak, the first great ruin
seen on the right bank of the Nile,
originally covered and area of 270 acres );
all enclosed in a wall of unbaked
bricks. The directly connected ruins
are quarters of a mile in one direc-
ton, by half mile in another. There
are palaces and avenues of sphinxes !;
there are great halls of columns, mighty
columns consisting each OF q single stone.
ga symmetrical forest of oaks and
beeches, ten centuries old, would not
give an adequate idea of its thirty paral-
lei ranks OF columns. No tree could
attain the diameter, or the height, of
the II great columns that form the axis
of the hall. Twelve columns, like the
Nelson monument in London might give
the reader some idea of the vastness Of
these pillars The enormous monoli
capitals opp1ess the imagination with
their size. GA hundred men could
stand on one of them without crowding."
Fallen piles OF obelisks, sphinsex, towers
and columns strew the ground for
mile or more around. Let us open
another booklet us quote Mr.. Prime
on these wonderous ruins =
It is not storm nor decay that over
threw the temples of Egypt. Time had
no more power over them than he had
over the stars. The last mark of the
chisel which the sculptor left on the
stone remains as it was left, and the
pencil-lines, drawn to direct his future
work, are uneffaced, and literally as
fresh as at the moment they were drawn.
This is fact which every person who
has examined Koum OmboS can verify,
where, on the portico of the temple, ex-
posed to evey wind that blows over the
lofty hill on whose summit it stands, re-
main the outline sketches, in red and
brown, made by the sculptor to direct
his chisel, and the last touches of the
chisel among them, as if he had but
yesterday laid down his mallet, and
would tomorrow resume it. And this
among fallen columns, and the scattered
ruins of the temple.
What, then, worked the ruin? 1t was
not earthquake for those parts which
earthquakes could never have shaken are
scattered over the plain. What shatter
ed the colossal statue of Osymandyas,
and broke his granite throne?
The answer is with God. Conjecture
vainly seeks to account for the ruin
Probably the conquering armies of in
vadiDg nations wasted their energies in
the vain attempt to efface the memory
of the conquered.
I am more than ever impressed with
the conviction that theancient Egyptians
built temples for Immortality That
they expected in their own proper per-
sons to return to these plains, to worship
at these affairs, possibly with the visible
presence of their gods.
For this they sought tombs in the
solid mountains, whence they could
walk out in the latter days and view the
the redemption of the land of Misraim;
for this they embalmed their dead, that
in the resurrection the might know each
other, and souls might not wander in
deep darkness, seeking in vain clay
tenement
The people of Montana, becoming
discouraged by the slow building of the
a, III