I am firmly convinced that a careful investigation into the ground plans of the various other groups of pyramids will amply confirm my survey theory—the relative positions of the groups should also be established—much additional light will be then thrown on the subject.
Let me conjure the investigator to view these piles from a distance with his mind's eye, as the old surveyors viewed them with their bodily eye. Approach them too nearly, and, like Henry Kinglake, you will be lost in the "one idea of solid immensity." Common sense tells us they were built to be viewed from a distance.
Modern surveyors stand near their instruments, and send their flagmen to a distance; the Egyptian surveyor was one of his own flagmen, and his instruments were towering to the skies on the distant horizon. These mighty tools will last out many a generation of surveyors.
The modern astronomer from the top of an observatory points his instruments direct at the stars; the Egyptian astronomer from the summit of his particular pyramid directed his observations to the rising and setting of the stars, or the positions of the heavenly bodies in respect to the far away groups of pyramids scattered around him in the distance; and by comparing notes, and with the knowledge of the relative position of the groups, did these observers map out the sky. Solar and lunar shadows of their own pyramids on the flat trenches prepared for the purpose, enabled the astronomer at each observatory to record the annual and monthly flight of time, while its hours were marked by the shadows of their obelisks, capped by copper pyramids or balls, on the more delicate pavements of the court-yards of their public buildings.
We must grasp that their celestial and terrestrial surveys were almost a reverse process to our own, before we can venture to enquire into its details. It then becomes a much easier tangle to unravel. That a particular pyramid among so many, should have been chosen as a favoured interpreter of Divine truths, seems an unfair conclusion to the other pyramids;—that the other pyramids were rough and imperfect imitations, appears to my poor capacity "a base and impotent conclusion;"—(as far as I can learn, Mycerinus, in its perfection, was a marvel of the mason's art;) but that one particular pyramid should have anything to do with the past or the future of the lost ten tribes of Israel (whoever that fraction of our present earthly community may be), seems to me the wildest conclusion of all, except perhaps the theory that this one pyramid points to the future of the British race. Yet in one way do I admit that the pyramids point to our future.
Thirty-six centuries ago, they, already venerable with antiquity, looked proudly down on living labouring Israel, in helpless slavery, in the midst of an advanced civilization, of which the history, language, and religion are now forgotten, or only at best, slightly understood.
Thirty-six centuries hence, they may look down on a civilization equally strange, in which our history, language, and religion, Hebrew race, and British race, may have no place, no part.
If the thoughts of noble poets live, as they seem to do, old Cheops, that mountain of massive masonry, may (like the brook of our Laureate), in that dim future, still be singing, as he seems to sing now, this idea, though not perhaps these words:
"For men may come, and men may go,
But I go on for ever."
"Ars longa, vita brevis." Man's work remains, when the workman is forgotten; fair work and square, can never perish entirely from men's minds, so long as the world stands. These pyramids were grand and noble works, and they will not perish till their reputation has been re-established in the world, when they will live in men's memories to all generations as symbols of the mighty past. To the minds of many now, as to Josephus in his day, they are "vast and vain monuments," records of folly. To me they are as monuments of peace, civilization and order—relics of a people living under wise and beneficent rulers—evidences of cultivation, science, and art.