and by degrees the whole Egyptian alphabet was recovered.
What had come down the stream of ages and were universally recognised as unsurpassed memorials of a mysterious past were the famous pyramids, successively described by Herodotus, Diodorus and Pliny among classical, and Abd el-Latîf among Arabian, chroniclers.
Although the rifling of the most important of these structures for the purpose of finding treasure dates at least as far back as 820 A.D., the Khalîf El-Mamun being the destroyer, the scientific study of their mode and objects of construction is a work of quite modern times, and may be said to have been inaugurated by Colonel Howard Vyse in 1839.
Much that has been written has been wild and nonsensical, but from the exact descriptions and measures now available, it is impossible to doubt that these structures were erected by a people possessing much astronomical knowledge. The exact orientation of the larger pyramids in the pyramid-field of Gîzeh has been completely established, and it is not impossible that some of the mysterious passages to be found in the pyramid of Cheops may have had an astronomical use.
Let us, to continue the subject-matter of the present chapter, come to the year 1820. It was about then that were gathered some of the first-fruits of the investigations carried on by the Commission to which I have referred; that some translations of the inscriptions had been attempted, and that, some of the new results were discussed by the members of the French Academy, while at the same time they astounded and delighted the outside world.
TEMPLE OF EDFÛ, LOOKING EAST: SHOWING PYLON AND OUTER COURT.
From the point of view which now concerns us, it may be said that the new discoveries might be arranged into three different groups. First of all, the land had been found full of temples, vast and majestic beyond imagination; among these the temples at Karnak were supreme, but there were others on a par with them in points of architectural detail. But besides these, then as now, above ground and inviting inspection, there were many others which were then—as undoubtedly many are still—more or less buried in the sand; some of these have since been unearthed to reveal the striking features of their structure.
I shall show subsequently that, on the evidence of the ancient Egyptians themselves, these temples were constructed in strict relation to stars; they, then, like the pyramids, must be taken as indicating astronomical knowledge.
If we deal with the general external appearance of the temples, they may be arranged architecturally into two main groups. Edfû is the most perfect example of the first group, characterised by having a pylon consisting of two massive structures right and left of the entrance, which are somewhat like the two towers that one sometimes sees on the west front of our English cathedrals.