"There is God, there is! It is because there is God that he has gone away!"
II
The pyramid cemetery of the ancient kings stretched along the edge of the desert from Memphis to Heliopolis—a three days' journey.
A great battle of men with death had once been fought here; death conquered, men ran away, the field became a desert; only the pyramids remained like fortresses, besieged but not taken.
In the very middle of the cemetery, in the plain of Rostia, the three largest pyramids stood—those of Menkaur, Hafra and Cheops. The many hundred-weight blocks of stone over the king's tomb within were packed so close together that a needle could not be thrust between them; outside, the mirror-like facing of sandstone was so perfect that the pyramids looked like huge crystals. The eternal triangles, rising from the earth to one point in the sky, proclaimed to men the mystery of Three: "I began to be as one God, but three Gods were within me."
All the other tombs had been destroyed; the royal mummies had been thrown out and lay about in the sand, turning to dust under the feet of the passers-by. Bats, hyenas and jackals lived in the tombs. Thieves had plundered them for a thousand years, but had not yet succeeded in clearing everything away.
As the blind singers sang at feasts:
"I have heard of what befell my forefathers:
The walls of their tombs are destroyed,
Their coffins are empty like coffins of beggars,
Forsaken by everyone on earth.
Their dwelling-place is no more.
It is as though they had never been.