In these rocky valleys rich mineral treasures had been discovered, valuable copper ore, besides the blue and green precious stones so much prized in Egypt. These mines were explored and worked by labourers sent from Egypt, and the district gradually passed into possession of its kings.
Fortresses were erected and soldiers stationed there to protect the workmen, and temples were erected that all might be carried on under the protection of the gods. This treasure-yielding district was jealously watched and guarded by the Egyptians, who were thus often brought into collision with neighbouring tribes. Nor is Senefru’s tablet by any means the sole record of battle and of conquest, for his successors left many such memorials there. It is not, however, by these alone, or by these principally, that their name and fame has been preserved to modern days.
THE SPHINX.
The rocky platform at the foot of the Libyan hills is of unequal breadth; at one spot, near Memphis, it widens considerably, and forms a sort of promontory jutting out into the plain. It was here that the pyramids of Ghizeh rose in their stupendous majesty. Not far off a huge block of limestone rock, bearing probably some accidental resemblance to an animal at rest,[11] was transformed by the skill of the royal architect into the colossal image of a mysterious being—a lion with the head of a man wearing the crown and insignia of an Egyptian monarch—symbol of strength, intellect, and royal dignity. He lay in solemn repose, gazing ever towards the east, where arose each morning Horus of the horizon (Hor-em-khu), the bright deity he represented. To the south of the Sphinx (as the Greeks afterwards called the mystic creature), Khufu, successor of Senefru, erected a temple to Isis, ‘Queen of the Pyramids,’ and to the north a temple to Osiris, ‘Lord of the unseen world,’—thus consecrating the whole of that vast city of the dead to the threefold guardianship of Osiris, Isis, and Horus, names so nearly associated in the Egyptian mind with death, the unseen world, and life triumphant and immortal.
Whilst the great image of Horus was being shaped, and the temples of Osiris and Isis were building, Khufu was by no means unmindful of his own sepulchral monument. The colossal pile,—which he named ‘Khut’ (Splendour of Light),—is known to us by the name of the ‘Great Pyramid.’
The building of these royal tombs, the pyramids, was the work of a lifetime. A square was first formed, the corners of which were exactly north, south, east, and west; course upon course was added as the years went by, but it could be finished off at any given moment. The angles were then filled in with granite or limestone, fitted with absolute exactness, and the whole sloping surface was beautifully polished. As King Khufu reigned for fifty-seven years, it is no wonder that his sepulchral monument should have attained such gigantic proportions. To form any idea of what the pyramids must once have been, we must restore these polished casing-stones which are now all but gone, and have probably been used in the building of Cairo. Now, ‘their stripped sides present a rude, disjointed appearance,’ but then, the first and second were of ‘brilliant white or yellow limestone, the third all glowing with the red granite from the First Cataract,’ five hundred miles away. ‘Then you must build up or uncover the massive tombs, now broken or choked up with sand, so as to restore the aspect of vast streets of tombs, out of which the Great Pyramid would arise like a cathedral above smaller churches. Lastly, you must enclose two other pyramids with stone precincts and gigantic doorways; and, above all, you must restore the Sphinx as he was in the days of his glory.’[12]
Narrow passages lead into the heart of the mighty mass of Khufu’s pyramid, which rises on a base of 764 feet to the height of 480 feet. When the traveller has climbed, or crept, to the centre he finds himself in a chamber, the walls of which are composed of polished red granite. Nothing is left there now to tell of the royal builder but his empty sarcophagus, and his name and titles, amongst other scrawls, written by the masons in red ochre on the walls.
Khafra, the successor of Khufu, is made very real to us by the wonderful statue of him which was found uninjured amongst a number of other broken ones of the same monarch, in a deep well near his burial-place. It is of a bright greenish stone, and admirably executed. The king’s features are life-like and benign. A hawk, symbol of Ra, not seen in our illustration, stands behind, and embraces his head with its wings, as if sheltering and protecting the sovereign, who was ‘Son of the Sun.’