“The Vedas, or Sanscrit records of Hindustan, furthermore state that these invaders were the “Pali,” or shepherds, a powerful, warlike, and enterprising Indian tribe. While the deadly aversion which existed in the minds of the Egyptians against the name and office of a shepherd in Joseph’s day, is a lasting memorial of their visit and their severity.”[173]
They did not go, however, without leaving behind them other signs. The pages of Herodotus afford ample evidence of the resemblance between the Egyptian customs and those of the more remote East. By his description of the rites and ceremonies, the mode of life, etc., of the priests of Egypt, they are at once identified with the Brahmins of India. China still celebrates that festival of lamps which was formerly universal throughout the extent of Egypt;[174] and “we have the most indubitable authority for stating that the sepoys in the British overland army from India, when they beheld in Egypt the ruins of Dendera, prostrated themselves before the remains of the ancient temples, and offered up adoration to them; declaring, upon being asked the reason of this strange conduct, that they saw sculptured before them the Gods of their country.”[175]
But the most stupendous and appalling memento of their dominion and science was the three great pyramids of Geeza, the erection of which, Herodotus assures us (bk. ii. sec. 128), though the priests would attribute to Cheops, Cephrenes, and Mycerinus, three Egyptian kings, “yet the people ascribed them to a shepherd named Philitis, who at that time fed his cattle in those places”; so consonant with the invasion above authenticated. This is additionally confirmed by the Sanscrit records already referred to, informing us of three mountains, Rucm-adri, “the Mount of Gold,” Rajat-adri, “the Mount of Silver,” and Retu-adri, “the Mount of Gems”; having been raised by that Indian colony who had conquered Egypt; which is only a figurative denotation of those factitious heights, those astounding monuments of religion and ostentation, which were originally cased with yellow, white, and spotted marbles, brought from the quarries of Arabia, until stripped by the rapacity of succeeding colonies.
Belzoni’s testimony is decisive on this point, as his drawing of the second pyramid represents the upper part of its casing remaining still entire, about a third of the distance from the summit to the base downwards. We meet with other pyramids, it is true, chiefly dispersed about the Libyan deserts, but they are much inferior to the fore-mentioned three, except one near the mummies, whose dimensions and structure are very nearly the same with the largest Gezite one. This latter, according to Greaves, is 693 feet square at the base; its perpendicular height 499 feet; that is, 62 feet higher than St. Peter’s at Rome, and 155 feet higher than St. Paul’s in London; while the inclining height is 693 feet, exactly equal to the breadth of the base; so that the angles and base make an equilateral triangle.[176] Belzoni measures them all differently, and gives to the second even greater dimensions than are usually assigned to the first or largest, viz. base, 684; perpendicular height, 456; central line down front, from apex to base, 568; coating, from top to where it ends, 140.
The variation arises from the circumstance of the latter gentleman’s measurement having been taken after the base had been cleared away of all sand and rubbish; while those of his predecessors applied only as taken from the level of the surrounding heap. The small ones above noticed are some quadrilateral, some round, terminating like a sugar-loaf, some rising with a greater and some with a lesser inclination. All commence immediately south of Cairo, but on the opposite side of the Nile, and extend, in an uninterrupted range, for many miles in a southerly direction, parallel with the banks of the river.
After what has been said above, I need scarcely allude to the ridiculous supposition of those having been built by Joseph as granaries for his corn! Their form and construction, ill adapted to such an occasion, refutes that absurdity, as it does the derivation upon which it has been founded, viz. the Greek words πυρος, wheat, and αμαω, I gather; as if, forsooth, an Egyptian structure, erected before the Greek language was ever known to exist, should wait for a designation until Greece should be pleased to christen it. Still more disposed must one be to discard with contempt the usual derivation given them, of πυρ, fire; as this not only labours under the weakness of the former, but betrays an ignorance of the correct idea of the Greek word πυρος, of which πυρ, fire, is the true derivation, “quia flammæ instar in acutum tendit”;[177] intimating its continually tapering until it ends in a point; whereas the top of the Egyptian pyramids never does so end; that of the largest above described ending in a flat of nine stones, besides two wanting at the angles, each side of this platform being about sixteen feet; so that a considerable number of people may stand on it, and have, as from most of ours, one of the most beautiful prospects imaginable.
Wilkins’s derivation from pouro, a king, and misi, a race, would seem plausible enough, being a purely Coptic or Egyptian analysis; but when we consider the general ascription of them by the people to the shepherd Philitis, whether as one of the Pali—that is, shepherds—or Uksi, which meant the same—king-shepherds above adduced; or as emphatically the shepherd, the son of Israel,[178] it argues a disposition on the part of the people to assign the honour—if taken in the latter light—to the workmen employed; if in the former, to a prince of a different dynasty from those whom the Egyptian priests would fain associate with them. This derivation, therefore, will not stand; and we have only to betake ourselves to the ingenious conjecture of Lacroze,[179] which, perhaps, may give more satisfaction respecting the etymology of the word pyramid. Lacroze derives it from the Sanscrit term Biroumas, and traces an analogy between Brahma, Birma (which the Indians of Malabar pronounce Biroumas), and the word Piromis, which means the same thing, namely, a virtuous and upright character—Piromia meaning, according to him, in the language of Ceylon, man in general.
Herodotus states,[180] that the priests of Egypt kept in a spacious building large images of wood, representing all their preceding high priests, arranged in genealogical order, every high priest placing his image there during his life. They mentioned to Hecatæus, the historian, when they were showing this edifice to him, that each of the images he saw represented a Piromis, begotten by another Piromis, which word, says Herodotus, signifies, in their language, a virtuous and honest man. A passage from Synesius, the celebrated bishop of Cyrene, in his treatise “on Providence,” at once coincides with, and is illustrative of this anecdote. “The father of Osiris and Typhon,” says he, “was at the same time a king, a priest, and a philosopher. The Egyptian histories also rank him among the gods; for the Egyptians are disposed to believe that many divinities reigned in their country in succession before it was governed by men, and before their kings were reckoned in a genealogical order by Peirom after Peirom.”
The Japanese celebrate an annual festival in honour of one Pireun, who, they say, was many ages ago king of Formosa, and who, being disgusted with the abandoned morals of his subjects—wealthy traders—consigned himself solely to the worship of the gods. Forewarned in a dream, he took flight from the impending visitation, and had scarcely sailed ere the island, with its inhabitants, sunk to the bottom of the sea. As for the good king, he arrived safe in China, whence he went over to Japan, where he has been ever since honoured by the above commemoration.
The true Coptic name for those edifices is Pire monc—which signifies a sunbeam[181]—not so much in allusion to their form as to their appropriation, which we shall make the subject of a separate inquiry.