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

admitted that they were the first civilizers and builders throughout Western Asia, and they are traced by remains of their language, their architecture, and the influence of their civilization on both shores of the Mediterranean. It is apparent that no other race did so much to develop and spread civilization, that no other people had such an extended and successful system of colonization, that they seem to have monopolized the agencies and activities of commerce by sea and land, and that they were the ruling race of their time. The Arabians were the great maritime people of the world in ages beyond the reach of tradition. As Pheenicians they controlled the seas in later times, and they were still (as Southern Arabians) the chief navigators on the Indian Ocean when Vasquez di Gama went to India round the Cape of Good Hope.”

The more one studies the Book of Job in the light of his identity with that mysterious Arabian stranger to whom the Egyptians—according to Manetho—attribute the erection of the Great Pyramid, the stronger appears the likelihood that in him we find the mighty prince and preacher of Jehovah from whom we have that monument. All the circumstances seem amply to accord with the theory that Melchisedec was Job, and that the same can be identified with the Philition of Herodotus.

Melchisedec was a worshipper of the one true God outside of the Abrahamic line, and the same is true of Job.1 From these and other coincidences, it would seem

? Refer footnote (1) above, at p. 32. With reference to the probable era in which Job lived, an era remarkable for advanced scientific knowledge, as was that which saw the erection of the Great Pyramid, the Oxford Helps to the Study of the Bible says : ‘‘ Modern research has been deemed capable of throwing some light on the question. Assyrian tablets bear witness to astronomical knowledge in the cities of the Euphrates valley as far advanced as that displayed by the Book of Job, as early as B.C. 3000.” (Refer, p. 21 above, re date of Great Pyramid2625 B.C.)

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