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

MYSTERY OF THE GREAT PYRAMID

by the casing-stones—are four huge angle or gable-stones, one pair set over the other (see accompanying diagram). Being too far inside the masonry to protect the outer door from being jambed through settlement of the masonry round it, yet at the same time too near the face of the pyramid to require relieving the roof of the passage from great superincumbent weight, they do not seem to fulfil any very necessary structural purpose.

On turning to the Ritual, however, we find the initiate described in its fifteenth chapter as approaching the ** Double Gate of the Horizon’, appropriately symbolized by the double pairs of stones, and as he does so, invoking the god Harmachis (or Heru-Khuti),! who is to be his guide on his journey of initiation, and who is described in the Ritual as “ he who dwelleth in the Horizon of Heaven ”’. Now it has hitherto been generally understood that there is no hieroglyph of any kind—except the inscriptions in the form of mason’s marks on the ceiling beams above the King’s Chamber—to be found in or on the Great Pyramid. The hieroglyph, however, signifying “horizon of heaven’? has been carved on the stone immediately below the lower pair of gable-stones (refer Diagram, Fig. 4). This fact, first noticed by Marsham Adams, has not been alluded to, as far as the present writer knows, by any other Great Pyramid investigator, and only by one other writer quoting him. Examination of Professor Smyth’s photograph of the entrance at plate x of his Our Inheritance shows that something, now very worn, is carved in this position, but it was only when reading

1 We give the spelling according to Budge’s translation, but which Marsham Adams renders as Haro-eris. This deity was a double god, and united within himself the attributes of both the rising and setting suns. He is the guide of souls in the underworld, the ‘‘ Light dwelling on the Horizon”.

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