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

NOTES

wanderings in the wilderness. The prophet Amos also refers to this incident : ‘‘ Have not I (Jehovah) brought up Israel out of the land of Egypt, and the Philistines from Caphtor ?”’

Now Caphtor is not only identified with Egypt (wide article “ Caphtor” in Smuith’s Bible Dictionary, for example), but with Upper Egypt, the very region in which the Great Pyramid stands, and on the authority of Amos and Jeremiah (xlvii, 4) the Caphtorims were the primitive (that is, in point of time) Philistines. Not only, therefore, from Herodotus and other authorities (see p. 29 and Note G above), but from the Bible also, we discover Philistines as at one time in the neighbourhood of the Great Pyramid, who were the objects of Divine favour and who were brought out from the land of Egypt as were the Israelites long afterwards. That there were Philistines in Canaan long before the arrival there of the Israelites is shown by Gen. xxi, 22-34, wherein we read of Abraham entering into a covenant with them and sojourning with them many days. Also they worshipped the true God (verse 22). The name Abimelech is simply a title, like the Egyptian Pharaoh or the Latin Cesar, denoting a monarch. These Caphtorites are the same race as that mentioned in Note G, who colonized the sea-coasts of Arabia, Palestine, and Africa, and who, under the style of Pheenicians (Waddell), carried civilization and science over the whole world (see Note H).

“ Abimelech in Gerar (Gen. xx, 2), and Melchisedec in Salem, would seem to be closely related as to religion, language and race. They were, perhaps, the representatives of two branches of one and the same people, who came into Palestine at one and the same time, from one and the same place in Egypt, under one and the same motive, close about the time of the completion of the Great Pyramid There certainly is nothing to disprove this conclusion. The name

1 Dr. Seiss is, of course, here referring to the Abimelech and Melchisedec contemporary with Abraham. As pointed out (see p. 29 ante), this would make the date of the Pyramid too late. As, however, these names are titles only, the above quotation can apply equally well to earlier holders of them.

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