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

other pyramids with its summit rising to a point, and that its present blunted appearance is due either to spoliation, such as has brought about the almost entire destruction of the casing-stones, or else to the effects of earthquake.

The present writer, for reasons given in his other volume, has always been of the opinion that the Great Pyramid was never completed with its apex-stone, and from the earliest times writers—Greek, Roman, and Arab—have all invariably commented on its truncated appearance long before the destruction of its exterior commenced. Thus Abd-al-Latif, the Arab historian already referred to, tells us that the Great Pyramid ended in a platform at the top, and Diodorus, twelve centuries before him, described its summit as “‘ making each of its sides six cubits”. ‘The spoliation which eventually led to its present rough and broken appearance did not begin with the small area displaced by the forced entry of Al Mamoun in the ninth century, as Abd-al-Latif refers, long after this event, to the Great Pyramid as being perfect to look at. Destruction of its casing-stones followed a severe earthquake in 130T, which so ruined Cairo that it had to be practically rebuilt, and the pyramids at Gizeh, which formed the most convenient quarry, and whose stones were, no doubt, loosened by the quake and some bodily dislodged, were pillaged for stone. In the case of the Great Pyramid, spoliation, no doubt, began round the already disturbed stones in the vicinity of Al Mamoun’s forced entry.

Marsham Adams also points out that the summit of the Great Pyramid “‘ betrays no symptom either of incompletion or destruction, but presents a flat surface structurally enroofing the Secret House. On the centre of the platform, and inseparably affixed to it, are some huge blocks arranged in the figure of a rough cross ; and on the highest of these stones are sculptured a number of holes

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