"Those are all tombs of kings, but of a later age than this one," said the hierarch, looking towards them. "Each monarch, at the commencement of his reign, laid the foundation of a pyramid. He built first a small one, containing his sarcophagus and sepulchral chamber. Then every year he added to the outside a complete layer of stones, which, after many years, extended its base, and increased its elevation in like proportions. Therefore the size of the pyramids marks the age to which the king lived."
"Then," said I, "the kings who built the multitude of lesser pyramids, which we behold in the distance, must have had much shorter lives than the builders of these vast piles."
"You are right, O prince," he said. "When the pyramid, on which we now stand, and its companions were builded, men's lives were of the duration of a thousand years."
"That was before the traditional deluge?" I replied, with surprise and interest.
"True, O Prince of Tyre!" he answered. "These two great pyramids, say our sacred books, were the work of the giants who lived in the days before the flood of Noachis, or Noah. They are the tombs of their kings, and were centuries in being built according to our years. And when the gods brought the unknown oceans over the earth, to punish the nations which living so long became as wise as the gods, but at the same time grew as wicked as wise, these vast sepulchres withstood, like the lesser hills, the waters of desolation, and remained in ruinous grandeur, not only as witnesses of the flood, but monuments of a past people whose towers, as well as tombs, reached unto the heavens. You see these pyramids, and how they are now defaced by the billows that dashed against and over them. Anciently, when they were completed, their whole surfaces were encased with beautiful tiles of the brightest blue and purest white, inlaid alternately in perfect squares. Upon this magnificent encasing was inscribed, in pictorial signs, the history of man; but no person has ever interpreted them. You see, my prince, that here, at the top, are a few strata still remaining of this rich encasement; all the rest having been destroyed by the deluge—by the abrasion of the waves, and the hurling against its sides of mighty ships, driven by the huge and angry billows which rolled like a boiling sea across the earth. Thus you behold these vast structures, as it were in ruins, yet still retaining fragmentary portions of their original glory and beauty. When the waters departed, the gods limited the lives of men to one hundred years; hence the pyramids that the kings this side the flood have erected are comparatively small in magnitude."
"But the third, was it not built before the flood?"
"I did not intend you should so understand," he answered. "It was commenced before the flood by the king who was destroyed thereby. But the son of the wise and good Prince Noah completed it during the several hundred years that he lived—as did his father also—after the flood; for it was only the lives of their descendants that were to be limited. Thus Amun, says tradition, finished the third pyramid, but did not encase it, as the art was lost by the deluge which had destroyed those who were skilled in it. There are other accounts, my prince, but they either come near this one, or so far differ from it that they are entitled to no credit."
"It is your opinion, then, O high-priest, that these two pyramids were built by the giants of the ages before the great deluge?" I asked.
"I have no other one," he replied firmly. "When the age of man was shortened to one hundred years from one thousand, his stature was also lessened. Hence the men of the ages since the flood cannot build a pyramid like one of these. All the power of engines and art cannot uprear such stones six hundred feet into the air. This is giants' work."
"Then you believe that there were giants in the earth in the days before the flood?" I said, doubtingly.