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

years ” (Gen. xxv, 8). The lives of mankind were thus so much shortened before the days of Abraham, that his life of 175 years is recorded as one of unusual duration. Job, consequently, must have been a contemporary of the earlier patriarchs.1 The genealogies given in the fifth chapter of Genesis refer, not to individuals, but to dynasties—hence their long duration (see Table V in Davidson’s Great Pyramid).

Job was a veritable personage (Ezek. xiv, 20; James v, 11), of whom it is recorded he was “ the greatest of all the men of the East” (Job i, 3), and declared by the Lord Himself to be “ without his like in all the earth, a perfect and upright man” (Job i, 8); while of Melchisedec St. Paul says: “Consider how great this man was” (Heb. vii, 3). We are told also that Job came from Arabia (‘land of Uz’’)—see Notes G and J—and that he possessed enormous flocks of sheep, camels, oxen, and asses. He must, therefore, have been a great Arab emir or sheik—of princely rank even as Melchisedec was, and such agrees with the traditional origin of the individual Herodotus called Philition, or Philitis, the shepherd prince and reputed architect of the Great Pyramid.

It is, however, when we turn to the Book of Job that we find allusions therein to astronomy and science—and even, apparently, to the Great Pyramid itself—which seem to strengthen the argument for Job being its designer. ‘Thus the references in chapter xxxviii, verses 4-6, appear to point clearly to the Great Pyramid in particular.

Jehovah, the Creator, is here describing to Job His own Divine action when the earth was formed by comparing its

1 'This is confirmed by Professor Peake in his ‘‘ Introduction ”’ to A. las Mumford’s Metrical Version of the Book of fob. ‘‘ The characters,” he writes, ‘‘ are represented as living in the patriarchal age, and do not belong to the Hebrew race.”