Now, it is not a little remarkable, as connecting the erection of the pyramids with the “royal shepherd race,” the former occupants of the above fertile territory, that those immense edifices happen to be situated in the very vicinity of Goshen. Geeza, where the three great ones stand, is universally allowed to have been the site whereon Memphis once stood; and as a west wind took away the locusts, and cast them into the Red Sea (Ex. x. 19), Goshen, which we find by Gen. xlv. 10, cannot have been far from Joseph’s own residence, will be more aptly fixed in the vicinity of this spot within the Heliopolitan nome, than within any other nome or præfecture, particularly the Tanitic, “where the same wind,” as has been justly remarked by Dr. Shaw, “would not have blown those insects into the Red Sea, but into the Mediterranean, or else into the land of the Philistines.” Goshen, then, was that part of “the land of Rameses,” “the best of the land” (Gen. xlvii. 6-11) which lay in the neighbourhood of Cairo, but on the opposite side of the Nile, where, as already observed, the pyramids are first met with, and whence they proceed in a continued line along the banks of the river, in a southerly direction for many miles together.
After reading these details it will be impossible, I conceive, for any dispassionate mind to remain longer in suspense as to the origin of the pyramids. The doubt, too, and obscurity in which they have been heretofore enveloped can be explained with similar ease, if we but remember the execration in which their Cushite founders were held by the Egyptians, and their consequent disinclination to associate their name with such splendid memorials. With this view, indeed, it is not at all improbable but that active legislative measures were adopted to cancel and suppress every vestige of proof which could tend to perpetuate the memory of the obnoxious erectors. So that we must not wonder if, after a lapse of years, their history was as great a riddle to the Egyptians themselves as that of our pyramids is to the Irish nation.
A collateral cause for this universal ignorance of their use and origin was the probable absence of letters on the part of the Egyptians, until now, for the first time, introduced by those learned Arabians; and though any one who is acquainted with the oriental disquisitions of Wilfrid, and the coincidences he establishes between the ancient history of Egypt and the account given of the customs and dynasties of that kingdom, as drawn from the Hindoo Puranas, will at once admit that “there must have been a period when a Hindoo power had reigned in Egypt by right of conquest,” and established therein the peculiar rites of their religion with the elements of literature and social civilisation, yet it is probable that during their sojourn, which, we have seen, was a continued series of warfare, they kept themselves aloof from all intercourse with the natives, and checked, as much as possible, the circulation of their science among them.
Some sparks of it, however, must inevitably have transpired; and the Egyptian intellect was too finely constituted to be insensible to its value, or allow it to extinguish without food; so that, in the time of Moses, and long after, their learning and accomplishments were courted by the philosophers of the day, and were so eminently conspicuous, as to become a proverb (Acts Apost. vii. 22). Homer, we all know, visited that favoured land—so did Pythagoras—so did Solon, Thales, Plato, and Eudoxus; in short, all the sages of antiquity, of whom we read so much, and whom we peruse with such recuperative pleasure, either finished their education in that favoured school, or conversed with those who had themselves done so.
The Egyptians are said to have been the first who brought the “rules of government,” with the art of making “life easy” and “a people happy”—the true end of worldly politics—to a regular system. But much as they excelled other nations in scientific lore, in nothing was their superiority so conspicuous as in that magic art which enabled them to cope, for so long a time, and under such trying varieties, even with the prophet and ambassador of God himself.
These exhibitions are too stubbornly authenticated by scriptural proofs, as well in the Old as in the New Testament,[185] for any one to affect disbelief in them without at the same time disbelieving the authenticity of the Scriptures themselves. Yes, I implicitly subscribe to the truth of the narration; and as I mean to bring home their initiation in the art, as well as in their other several accomplishments, to the Chaldean diviners, or Aire Coti shepherds—a branch of the Tuath-de-danaan colonists of this our western isle—from whom, or their relatives, under the designation of Uksi, Indo-Scythæ, or Cushite shepherds—who, if not all one and the same, were at least mixed and incorporated—the Egyptians had imbibed it—this, I trust, will plead my excuse for obtruding its notice here, as well as for dilating so much at large upon the early history of Egypt.[186]
CHAPTER XII.
I come now, with the same view, to consider the destination of their famous “Pyramids.”[187] In this pursuit the first thing that strikes us is the uniform precision and systematic design apparent in their architecture. They all have their sides accurately adapted to the four cardinal points, as the four apertures near the summit of most of ours indicate a similar regard to fidelity to the compass. In six of them which have been opened, the principal passage preserves the same inclination of 26° to the horizon, being directed towards the polar star. And I doubt not, were the ground within and around all of ours sufficiently explored, there would be found, in some at least, regular vistas to correspond with this description. Their obliquity too being so adjusted as to make the north side coincide with the obliquity of the sun’s rays at the summer’s solstice, has, combined with the former particulars, led some to suppose they were solely intended for astronomical uses; and certainly, if not altogether true, it bespeaks, at all events, an intimate acquaintance with astronomical rules,[188] as well as a due regard to the principles of geometry.[189]