[19] An essay “On the Construction of the Pyramids” was transmitted by me to the Royal Academy of Sciences, and printed, in accordance with a decree of the 3rd of August of the same year.—See the Monthly Report of the Academy in 1843, pp. 177-203, with three plates. [The following summary of Dr. Lepsius’ discovery, obtained from various sources, may not be unacceptable to the reader. At the commencement of each reign, the rock chamber, destined for the monarch’s grave, was excavated, and one course of masonry erected above it. If the king died in the first year of his reign, a casing was put upon it and a pyramid formed; but if the king did not die, another course of stone was added above and two of the same height and thickness on each side: thus in process of time the building assumed the form of a series of regular steps. These were cased over with stone, all the angles filled up, and stones placed for steps. Then, as Herodotus long since informed us (Euterpe, c. cxxv), the pyramid was finished from the top downward, by all the edges being cut away, and a perfect triangle only left.—See, in addition to Lepsius himself, Letronne, Dicuil, pp. 90-115, 1814; Athenæum, Bonomi, 16th Sept. 1843; J. W. Wild, 15th June, 1844. Wilkinson’s Materia Hieroglyphica, Malta, 1830, p. 14; and last, though not least, Gliddon’s Otia Egyptiaca, Lecture IV. Ethnological Journal, No. VII. p. 294.—K. R. H. M.]
[20] I have spoken more fully on this subject in my “Chronology of the Egyptians,” vol. i. p. 294. [See also Vyse, Pyramids of Gizeh, vol. iii. pp. 118, 119; Letronne, Inst. de l’Eg. vol. ii. pp. 460-466; and Wilkinson, Modern Eg. and Thebes, vol. i. p. 353.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]
[21] [See Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal History (Engl. transl.), vol. i. p. 515; Ideographics, No. 277.—K. R. H. M.]
[22] [The more extended our acquaintance with ancient monuments or ancient writings becomes, the more simple and human do we find their signification to be. It has been the case with Egypt, Assyria, with Mexico, and indeed with most of those monuments that occur in connexion with the ancient world, in the popular acceptation of the word. If mystery and types possess a home anywhere, it must be in India, for even in Yucatan, the hieroglyphics seem very simple and the reverse of mysterious, when properly examined, as I hope to prove one day, in an extended investigation into Mexican antiquities, upon which the labour of some years has been bestowed. Instead of seeking for such remote causes, the reader will do well to consider the simple opinion of Gliddon, in his Otia, Lecture VIII. Burke’s Ethnological Journal, No. IX. p. 395, regarding the origin of animal worship. I should not have been led to this lengthy note if I did not feel that, while the earliest tenets of worship were indeed veiled in types (the result, however, as much of accident as design), animal worship is too recent to conceal any such mysterious dogmas. I do not wish to place my notion in competition with that of Lepsius; this is a mere suggestion.—K. R. H. M.]
[23] [See a lively description of this ceremony in Bayle St. John’s Village Life in Egypt.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]
[24] [News have just been received from Egypt that most enterprising excavations have been commenced at Mitrahinneh, partly under the direction of Mr. A. Harris, of Alexandria.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]
[25] See my essay “On the general employment of the Pointed Arch in Germany in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries,” as an Introduction to H. Gally Knight’s Progress of Architecture from the Tenth to the Fourteenth Century under the Normans, from the English; Leipsig, 1841; and my father’s treatise, “The Dome of Naumburg,” by C. P. Lepsius, Leipsig, 1840 (in Puttrich’s “Monuments of Architecture,” II. pt. 3, 4).
[26] [In Catherwood’s beautiful work on Central America we find that at some of the cities a peculiar arch was employed. This consisted in an arch of which the point was destroyed by laying a beam across at the top. In the Polynesian islands we also find almost perfect approaches to the pointed arch.—K. R. H. M.]
[27] [Indeed, we learn from Bayle St. John that the Fellahs are not only contented with this treatment, but proud of the number of times they have been thus used. It saves money, and that is quite enough reason.—K. R. H. M. 2nd edit.]
[28] [From the labyrinth and the remains of lake Mœris.—K. R. H. M.]