The great pyramid passages and chambers

PLATE LXXVIUI. terminus. After two or three disillusionments, however, he sinks back on his seat, and waits patiently till the terminus is reached. The tramcars travel very fast along this line, the rails of which are laid on an embankment of their own adjoining the public roadway (Plate LXXVIII) which runs for the entire distance between two rows of beautiful acacia trees. Each tramcar is provided with a continuoussounding horn, worked by the driver's foot. While travelling at night, especially when one is a little overcome by the heat, the sound from these horns is very dreary.

337. As most of our time to-day was spent in taking the photographs described, and in packing for our visit to Palestine, we had little left for work in the Great Pyramid. It was not until about 6 p.m. that John and I entered it. We measured the upper part of the Descending or Entrance Passage, from the “scored lines” on the walls of the passage, up to the end of the ‘ basementsheet’’ of the floor outside. The basement-sheet is very wide, measuring 33 feet from east to west, and is about two and a half feet in thickness. Professor C. The avenue and tramway-car line between Cairo and the Piazzi Smyth was of the opinion Pyramids of Gizeh. that the present outside end of this basement-sheet is also its original north beginning, although the line of the surface of the Pyramid's casing lay several feet to the north of it—Plate LXXX. Down the centre of this long broad sheet of stone, and at a distance of three and half feet apart, the walls of the passage are laid with great care; and placed on top of these are immense roofstones, eight and half feet thick, and over twelve feet wide from east to west.

338 Without doubt, the Entrance Passage was constructed to endure; and the workmanship displayed in it has always been the subject of great admiration by all investigators, both ancient and modern. Professor Greaves, on beholding the beautiful masonry of this passage in 1638, thirty-eight centuries after the completion of the building, exclaimed with almost Tennysonian feeling: ‘ The structure of it hath been the labour of an exquisite hand, as appears by the smoothness and evenness of the work, and by the close knitting of the joints” ; and Professor C. Piazzi Smyth writes: ‘No one with an ability to appreciate good work, can look, unmoved with admiration, at the extraordinarily truthful straight lines, and close fitting of the wall joints near and about the present Entrance’; while Professor Flinders Petrie also adds his testimony in the following eulogism: ‘‘ The pavement, lower casing, and Entrance Passage are exquisitely

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