This is the tomb of which Herodotus speaks as the resting-place of the builder of the Great Pyramid, to whom he gives the names of Chemmis, Cheops, Xufu, Suphis, Philition the Shepherd, &c. All these appellations belong to no other person than Zaphnath-paaneah, the Viceroy of Pharaoh, King of Egypt, the great-grandson of Abraham the Hebrew, the friend of God!
The sarcophagus is empty, for the bones of Joseph were carried away by the children of Israel when they took their departure from Egypt under the leadership of Moses and Aaron.
Visitors who enter the Pyramid get covered with a fine grey dust or powder similar to that found in large rooms or buildings wherein grain has been stored; for any person entering such places, though emptied of their contents, but left unswept, would get covered with a grey powder fallen from corn, or rice, or wheat, &c., which in every respect resembles this fine grey dust. In confirmation of this the following is an instance:—
“Last month (1877) an American newspaper, recounting a recent visit to the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid, mentions how the clergyman of the party, the Rev. Dr. ——, insisted on laying himself down full length inside the coffer. He had heard the inspiration, and scientific metrological theory of the Great Pyramid duly related by Dr. Grant, and had not denied it; but so strongly was he imbued with the mere tombic idea of the Egyptians, that he held, as he lay there, with the notion that he was lying down in a royal coffin; and when he, Dr. ——, rose up from that open granite chest and found himself filthy, horrible, odious, with fine grey dust begriming his hair and transfusing his clothes, he had a great deal of trouble about it; for not until he had got right away from Egypt, and obtained the help of the steward’s assistant on board ship to give the clothes an extra beating over the waves of the rolling sea, was the last of the penetrating powdery stuff got rid of.”[[25]]
Colonel Howard Vyse also found a substance of this description when he entered the Pyramids, of which he gave a minute account in his work on the Pyramids of Egypt. It is as follows:—“For a day or two after the chamber had been opened those who remained in it became blackened as if by a London fog. As this effect gradually disappeared, I conceive it to have been occasioned by the blasting and by the sudden admission of the air.
“Upon first entering the apartment, a black sediment was found, of the consistence of a hoar-frost, equally distributed over the floor, so that footsteps could be distinctly seen impressed on it, and it had accumulated to some depth in the interstices of the blocks. Some of this sediment which was sent to the French establishment near Cairo was said to contain ligneous particles. When analysed in England it was supposed to consist of the exuviæ of insects; but as the deposition was equally diffused over the floor, and extremely like the substance found on the 25th instant (1837) at the Second Pyramid, it was most probably composed of particles of decayed stone. If it had been the remains of rotten wood, or of a quantity of insects that had penetrated through the masonry, it would scarcely have been so equally distributed; and if caused by the latter, it is difficult to imagine why some of them should not have been found alive when the place was opened evidently for the first time since the Pyramid was built.”
Previous to the visitation of the seven years’ famine, these granaries were built and stored, and the casing-stones fitted with cement and polished, making these edifices appear like natural rocks. Bruce, the great traveller, and other old travellers of those days, mistook them for such (natural rocks) and paid no attention to them whatever.
When the time arrived that the Storehouses of the King were required to be tapped, and food distributed to the famine-stricken people, the exterior of these buildings was left entire, and the operation of taking out the grain carried on by means of long shafts bored in the adjacent ground to a depth reaching the foundation of the Pyramid, where there were openings from which the contents could be tapped. These could be opened and shut at pleasure, as Joseph ordered that all the granaries should be closed with the exception of one, where he hoped to see his brothers when they came to buy corn in Egypt.
Colonel Howard Vyse gives a description of one of these entrances, thus:—“The Pyramid of Saccara. This Pyramid was built in steps, or degrees, and was entered from a sort of well, or shaft, made in the sand on the northern side. The passage, which was long and winding, and apparently in many places forced, led to a lofty chamber, in the roof of which wood had been employed. Various forced passages wound around this chamber, and conducted to openings, or windows, which looked down into it from a considerable height.[[26]] These passages were much encumbered with rubbish, pieces of alabaster, and decayed wood; and in one place there was an accumulation of large blocks of polished granite, raised up by small fragments of stone sufficiently high to admit of a man’s crawling beneath them. For what purpose they were so placed we did not find out.”