The mystery of the Great pyramid : traditions concerning it and its connection with the Egyptian Book of the dead : with numerous illustrations

THE HOUSE OF OSIRIS

forming a square figure, similar to the hotep, or “ table of offerings ”, belonging to the time of Thothmes III, which is now to be seen in the museum at Boulaq. In a word, every detail goes to show that the founder never designed to erect the benben, or pyramidal crown, but raised instead a hotep, or sacrificial table of offering’’—Book of the Master, pp. 109-10.

In thus regarding the summit of the Great Pyramid as a sacrificial altar or table of offering, the ancient Egyptians showed again they misunderstood its true significance, in the same way that they perverted its Messianism by identifying Osiris as the Messiah of the Pyramid. For the Great Pyramid was not erected as an altar of sacrifice, but as an altar of witness (see Isaiah xix, 19-20). This all-important difference is well illustrated in Joshua xxii, 26-7: “ Let us now prepare to build us an altar, not for burnt offering, nor for sacrifice: but that it may be a witness between us and you, and our generations after us.”

Other investigators, before Marsham Adams, have referred to these blocks on the summit of the Great Pyramid (shown in illustration at p. 92 (Pyramid section) of Cotsworth’s Rational Almanac). hus Professor Greaves (refer p. 14 above), whose work on the Great Pyramid entitles him to the credit of being the forerunner of modern scientific study of the subject, says: “‘ The top of this Pyramid is covered, not with one or three stones, as some have imagined, but nine, besides two which are wanting at the angles.” }

Another investigator, Dr. Richardson, describes the

1 Cited from Pyramid Facts and Fancies, by James Bonwick, F.R.G.S. (C. Kegan Paul, London), 1877. This writer has collected together a quantity of interesting information—fact and fable—from numerous sources, from early Arab writers down to modern times, presented in handy form.

69