THE PYRAMID AND THE SPHINX.
The sarcophagi of the sacred bulls, twenty-four in number, are hollowed out from single pieces of granite and are covered with immense slabs of the same kind of stone. Each is large enough to contain a good sized animal, and some of them are covered with hieroglyphics giving the pedigrees of the blue-blooded occupants. These caskets of the royal line rest in subterranean vaults hewn out of rock and connected by spacious halls.
Still nearer to Cairo, only six miles away, in fact, are the great pyramids of Gizeh—Cheops and Khephren. These have been described so often that any elaborate comment upon them might weary the reader. We climbed to the summit of the largest, and by doing so not only gained an idea of the immensity of this three million cubic feet of stone, but obtained an excellent view of the green valley on the one side and the yellow plain of shifting sand upon the other, for these pyramids stand upon the dividing line between Egypt's far famed fertile lands and one of the most barren of earth's deserts. We also followed the narrow passage which leads to the center of the pyramid and peered into the empty granite sarcophagus which, for more than four thousand years, kept the body of the builder concealed from the sight of man, and when we came out, half crawling and half climbing, each assisted by two Arabs, our muscles as well as our memories testified that we had seen all of this stupendous pile.
At the foot of these two pyramids stands the silent Sphinx, and near it a granite temple almost as old. The Sphinx itself is a little disappointing because photographs often show it in the foreground and the pyramids behind it, and it thus appears relatively larger than it really is. It represents the body of an animal with a human head and is cut from a huge stone that juts out into the valley. It was a grand conception of the brain of one long ago forgotten and is the oldest product of the chisel of man. It has outlived unnumbered generations and seems to mock at time. Its position by the pyramids is a fitting one, and looking upon it and them one is awed by the sense of their antiquity and recognizes the appropriateness of the lines of the lecturer, Stoddard:
Eternal Sphinx; The pyramids are thine; Their giant summits guard thee night and day; On thee they look when stars in splendor shine, Or while around their crests the sunbeams play; Thine own coevals, who with thee remain Colossal genii of the boundless plain. Eternal Sphinx!
A SPHINX