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

THEORIES AND TRADITIONS

These pyramids—that is Seneferu’s pyramids at Meidoum and Dashur—in conjunction with Zoser’s Step-pyramid at Sakkara (to which reference will be made again later), in view of their inferiority of construction, have been held to represent stages, or experiments, in pyramidbuilding. Such an evolutionary theory, however, carried to its logical conclusion, would lead one to expect to find pyramids indicating various stages towards perfection, until we came eventually to some approaching the wonderful standard—one still unequalled in many respects even after 4,500 years—set by the Great Pyramid. The actual facts, however, are just the opposite. On the foregoing hypothesis, which is apparently the view of Egyptologists as a body (vide reference to Cambridge Ancient History quoted above at page g), there should be far more pyramids in Egypt of megalithic construction before the Great Pyramid than after it. Yet, as we have pointed out, the one true stone pyramid completed before it, that of Seneferu at Dashur, owes its design to the Great Pyramid, while the same monarch attempted to convert his other monument, the “ false” pyramid of Meidoum, to the same model. In other words, the Great Pyramid led off the art of gigantic monolithic construction by a sudden attainment to perfection.

“Tn the (Great) Pyramid period, the most surprising feature is the rapidity of accurate monolithic construction, Four massive pyramids, aggregating 251 million cubic feet of masonry, were built in sixty-eight years, as we now learn from contemporary records." From the mason’s inscriptions over the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid we discover that the upper 424 million cubic feet of this pyramid were built during the

1 These were Seneferu’s two pyramids and the pyramids of Khufu and Khafra at Gizeh.

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