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

TRADITIONS REGARDING THE BUILDERS

foundation with that of some building on it well known to Job, and of which Job himself might well have been the actual architect: ‘‘ Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? declare, if thou hast understanding. Who hath laid the measures thereof? .. ., or who hath stretched the line upon it? Whereupon are the sockets thereof made to sink (marginal reading), or who laid the corner-stone thereof ?’’ Now the reference to a “corner-stone”’, as is explained elsewhere in another connection (see p. 73 post), makes it evident that it is to a pyramidal form of construction that allusion is made, while the expression “‘ sockets made to sink ”—which is the more correct rendering of the original than “‘ foundations fastened ”’, as given in the text—implies in addition that the Great Pyramid is the one particularly meant, since this pyramid alone, of all the thirty-eight known pyramids in Egypt, has its foundation sockets at each corner cut out of the native rock (see Note K).

Additional allusion to Egypt and its pyramids is given by the question “ who hath stretched the line upon it 2”, for the ceremony of setting out any building in ancient Egypt was known as “ the stretching of the cord (or line) ”, and was one of great antiquity.

The idea conveyed by the above verses may be expressed more clearly if we paraphrase them as follows: “ You, Job, laid the foundations of that great monument in Egypt (see Isai. xix, 19-20), but where were you when J, Jehovah, laid the foundations of the earth itself? You set out its measures and ‘ stretched the cord’ upon it, but who laid down the measures of the earth? You embedded its sockets in the rock for a foundation, but on what are the foundations of the globe fastened ? You completed the Pyramid, but who finished the earth ‘ and all the sons of God shouted for joy ’ thereat ? ”

33 D