Americus times-recorder. [volume] (Americus, Ga.) 1891-current, 1911-05-30
DESCRIPTION OF PYRAMIDS
AS Seen in EGYPT
Required Ten Years to Build
Them


of the seven wonders of the world
which are still standing as sentinels
of the very distant past, are the pyra-
mids, seventy in number, and, as
Thomas Fuller describes them, doc
ing with age, have forgotten the names
of their founders" To fully appreci-
ate the wonderful work required in
their construction, an historian has
Ireckoned that it required 100000 men
| ten years to build the Pyramid of
Gizeh, and to build the greater 9pyra-
mid it required at least twenty years
more, and consumed a mass of stone
weighing not less than 6,80O,O00 tons.
To show the tremendous extent OF
this, the most wonderful of all the
pyramids, he further sets out that with
the stone a wall might be built six
feet high to inclose the whole land of
Egypt and still have left enough 70
reach the Black Sea-
The pyramids at Gizeh are by far the
oldest. Fifty generations of men, per-
haps hundred, have already passed
beneath the shadow of these great
monuments of stone Even in this
day of big things the pyramids still
rank with the most colossal monu-
ments that the hand of man has ever
reared
Various are the opinions that have
been expressed to account for their
building, Ia tradition reaching down
from the Middle Ages almost to the
present day, represents them as the
granaries of Joseph. Pliny suggested
that they were very likely erected by
ancient kings to avoid leaving their
money to their successors, and another
ancient historian thought perhaps
/ they We're a mere autocrat's device 70"
employing labor and preventing dis
content, Herodotus reckons that they
were built by kings to make provision
for burial place.
In the graphic description that Her
odotus gives of his examination Of
these structures, he notes that their
method of building was by raising the
great stones, a step at time, until
they were in position. But in Herod-
otus' day the surfaces of the pyramids
were not jagged with steps as now;
for the prismatic stones, which served
as castings, and which the sacrilege of
modern quarrymen has torn away,
were still in place, giving up to the
whole structure, at a little distance,
the appearance of single block.
There is considerable romance
framed about many of the great Pyra-
mids. Beside the Great Pyramids
nestles the smaller one, which is said
to have been the tomb of Rhodopis.
The third, and the most sumptuous of
all in it's ornamentations, was built by
Mycerinus for his only daughter. When
she died, it is said, he buried her in a
sarcophagus made like the sacred COW
of Isus. The case was of wood inlaid
with gold. Every year, in obedience
to her dying request, she was brought
out to see the light of the sun which
had made her childhood so full Of
happiness.
The mechanical means by which
such masses of stones were raised TO
their places is a mystery, and various
methods have been suggested There
are traces, however, of machinery by
which they may have been wound up.
The exact measurement of the
Great Pyramid has yielded a height of
481 1-3 feet and width of each side
at the base of 755 2-3 feet. On the
east side of each of the three great
Pyramids, and of many of the less i'm
portant ones, are ruins of temples,
which might still further confirm the
opinion that they were built as sepul-
cheers. The ancient Egyptian, in his
solicitude to find his body a secure
home, that his soul might lead
secure life, sought a grave beyond the
reach of the river waters, and, before
the days of perfect embalming, sought
to guarantee the preservation of the
body by finding it housing in the
desert and in the finest habitation his
means could afford.
The Great Pyramid of Cheops may
have few mystical secrets embalmed
within its lines and mass, but It
stands as an unfaltering witness to
the power of an ancient state and the.
strength of an early faith.
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