The Pillar of Fire; or, Israel in Bondage

by J. H. Ingraham

"These pyramids attest the fact," he replied, with an impressive gesture of his right hand towards the opposite one. "Noah himself, says tradition, and his sons, Chephres, Chufu, and Amun or Men-Cherines, were gigantic, and are worshipped as gods, as you know, not only here and in Syria and Ethiopia, but in the Orient, and beyond the seas, under various names. In the third pyramid Amun was entombed. In the second is Chephres, or Chefret, who, when an aged king, was brought from the place where he died, and placed in a sarcophagus above the chamber where lay the king who found sepulture there before the flood. Within the pyramid on which we are, rest the sacred bones of the Prince-god Noah, who, at the age of nine hundred and fifty years, came hither to be buried by the side of his eldest son Chephres. 'Such a mourning of the nations, all of whom sprung from his loins, the earth never knew, and will never witness more,' say the sacred scrolls of the temples. All kings, and queens, and princes, and lords, and nobles, of every realm followed the embalmed body of their father and deity; and King Menes, his grandson, went up from Egypt with all the hosts of the land to meet the funeral procession, and to receive the divine body. Cheops is but another name for Noah. Here also is entombed Menes."

Such, my dear mother, is the priestly tradition of the pyramids. We, of Tyre, have a myth that the Father of the Flood is buried in Damascus; but though Egyptians love to concentrate all history around their own land, and make Egypt the cradle of the human race, yet as this tradition seems to be better founded than ours, and as they can point to the grand tombs of these kings of the flood, I am ready to concede to her the honor which she claims of being the place of sepulture of the giants who survived the deluge. And what fitter tombs, than these eternal mountains of granite, could the progenitors of the race repose in! Fit sepulchres are these in their grandeur of proportions, for men whose stature was gigantic, and whose lives extended through a thousand years!

But I must return to the prospect from the summit of this mausoleum of giants. The sun was near the horizon, and sent his level and mingled rose, golden, and purple beams aslant across the valley. The air was perfectly clear, and our view unimpeded in all directions.

To the south, along the verdant plain of the Nile, the pyramids shone in the sun as if sheathed with plates of gold. Palms, temples, obelisks in pairs, and pylones were mingled with them in the richest confusion; while as far as the eye could penetrate they receded into the desert, till their size was diminished by distance to shining mounds.

Turning my eyes to the west, the yellow plain of Libya, with its rocky hills inclosing the verdant valley of the Nile in that direction, rolled away to the edge of the horizon, an arid, undulating, illimitable expanse, which, under the sun, blazed like a lake of fire from the burning reflection of its sands. The contrast of this realm of desolation, and its storm-piled drifts of gray, brown, and dusky sand, lying so near the groves, and green fields, and blooming gardens which surrounded the pyramids and extended to the base of the ridge, was very remarkable. One part looked like the abode of Osiris, full of beauty, and light, and happiness: the other like that of Typhon, or the spirit of evil, who strove, ever battling with his storms of sand, to invade, overwhelm, and desolate these scenes of beauty! And, ere many centuries, his arid hosts threaten to sweep past the pyramids, and to overleap the very gates of Memphis! But at present, all the land within the hills is a region of delight, presenting a pleasing contrast, with its perennial green, to the desolate and savage realm of the desert. Luxuriantly covered with verdure; bright with golden wheat-fields, charming green meadows, foliage of every variety; groups of trees rising from a thousand courts; countless villages everywhere, and myriads of brilliant lakes, it was a scene of unmixed beauty. Jizeh, a little to the east, with its temple-palaces and gardens, filled the view. Farther east lay, first, the glorious city of Apis, its squares, avenues, lakes, groves, fanes, and monuments, all open to the eye like a magnificent picture. Beyond the glittering Nile, the banks of which were rich with fertility and adorned with villas, I beheld Raamses, and still farther Pythom, the treasure-cities, in the fair expanse of the land of Goshen,—alas! beautiful only to the eye, for upon it rests the dark shadow of Hebrew bondage; and south, a few miles, after a thousand scenes of rural beauty fill the vision, towers, like the throne of the kingdom, the city of the Lord of the Sun, its gorgeous temple and forest of obelisks flinging back the sunbeams with a splendor that fills the soul with wonder and delight!

"O happy, glorious, mighty Egypt! what a blessed and favored land art thou! With one foot upon the seven mouths of thy mighty river, another upon Ethiopia, and thy head in the clouds, all nations bow down to thy might and greatness! Leader of the kingdoms of the earth! what a future is thine, if thy kings and rulers are true to thee and to themselves!"

The hierarch heard me utter these words, for I spake aloud in my wonder at the glory of this kingdom and the magnificence of her power.

"The future of Egypt, my prince, no man can foresee. But the sacred books contain a prophecy, that during one cycle of a soul, three thousand years, she will be a nation despised and ruled by kings of another race, and all that will remain to her will be her defaced pyramids and temples; the marvel of which will bring strangers from the ends of the earth, curious to gaze upon these mute witnesses of her ancient power and glory."

"The gods forbid!" I said warmly.

"The gods," he answered, "govern the earth, and do what they will with its kingdoms. These sacred papyri also speak of Tyre and prophesy its desolation, and say that the empire of commerce shall be removed to an unknown world beyond the great sea of the West, and that a race yet unborn shall sway the destinies of the earth, and another religion shall prevail in the hearts of men."