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

their oppression, statements which must have originated with assertions made to them by the priests, and purposely exaggerated. The sole cause of this hatred was the suppression of the Egyptian religion and the closing of the temples, which the priests, for their own ends, magnified into all kinds of oppression and even slavery. But the actual building of the Great and Second Pyramids could not have been the sole cause of this animosity, because the mighty temples of Karnac, Luxor, Thebes, and elsewhere, must have involved labour almost as great, yet we are not told their construction called forth hatred against their builders. Seeing that the men employed on the Great Pyramid worked in relays, each for three months only in the year, so that other necessary work should not suffer, and were at the same time supplied with free rations (Herodotus), they were probably treated with more consideration than those employed by the great Theban kings to erect their temples and palaces. Menkaura, on the other hand, the builder of the Third Pyramid of Gizeh, the construction of which aroused no hostility against him, was regarded as one of the most honoured of kings because he reopened the temples and restored the worship of the Egyptian gods. This seems to imply that, on the close of Khafra’s reign, these colonists departed from the country which consequently lapsed again into paganism. Also Menkaura, unlike his two predecessors, was duly buried in his pyramid, for his mummy and coffin have been found in its underground burial chamber with his name and titles on it. It is largely from this discovery that it has been too hastily concluded that the Great Pyramid was also intended for the tomb of its founder, the consideration of which theory is discussed in our next chapter.

Such is the line of argument which has led some writers 28