| In about half an hour, after descending and ascending difficult
places, we gained the centre. The feeling in going up to the centre
of the pyramid is akin to that which one experiences when ascending
a very high hill. When we had accomplished the feat of reaching the
centre, the Arabs themselves, who are not unaccustomed to the
enterprise, seemed to think it a wonderful achievement, for they
burst out into simultaneous boisterous hurrahs. The floor of the
hall was one huge stone. On the sides were engraved the names of
visitors who had been there centuries ago. But there were very
few names : comparatively few travellers, it would seem, go into
the pyramids. In the centre of the hall stands the large porphyry
coffer in which the embalmed bodies of the kings were deposited—
evidently too large to pass through the narrow passages by which
we entered. How was it brought to this place? The Arabs said it
was put here while the pyramid was building. "While the pyramid
was building!" thought I : "that takes us back to the days of
Noah—anterior to Abraham." What a wonderful sight!
Sir J. S. Wilkinson, one of the most competent authorities on
all Egyptian questions, fixes the date of the construction of the
pyramids at 2400 B.C. Job refers to them in chap. iii., 13, 14. "Now,"
says he, "should I have lain still and been quiet, I should have
slept; then had I been at rest, with kings and counsellors of the
earth, which built desolate places for themselves." "Desolate
places", in the Arabic translation of Smith and Van Dyck, is
rendered "pyramids" (ahram). The Coptic version is said to give
"monuments". It is clear that Job saw or knew of the pyramids.
Perhaps Abraham during his sojourn in Egypt, Jacob, Joseph, and
his brethren, Moses and Aaron, stood and wondered at these
structures. It is certain that Homer, Thales, Solon, Pythagoras,
Herodotus, Plato, and many other distinguished Greeks, who
visited Egypt for purposes of study and travel, saw them.
I was amazed at the stones of immense size, placed in every
possible position, by which I was surrounded. The constant wonder
is, how were these stones brought hither? and how could they
be arranged as they are? Instead of imagining the use of machinery
now entirely unknown, may we not suppose that there were giants
in those days?—that the strength of one man of those times was
equal to the strength of several men in these degenerate days?
Homer tells us that Diomed, in the Trojan war, hurled, with one
hand, a stone at /Eneas, which two men in his day would not have
been able to carry. We read in Deuteronomy iii, 11: "For only
Og king of Bashan remained of the remnant of giants; behold,
his bedstead was a bedstead of iron. Is it not in Rabbath of the children
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