Egyptian veneration for the dead? There is yet an alternative; the pile may have been erected over the body like the rude cairns of barbarous nations. But history says no: the opposite theorists themselves say no: it was built during the life of the intended possessor. Besides, in that case, what occasion for the passages?

And, allowing the postulatum to stand, which, I am afraid, is granting too much, what need of a triangular platform, and its triple division of passages. Was the funeral procession,' illustrious, truly, as the narrow galleries and the well must have rendered it, to advance three ways to the burial place? or was the body of the king gifted with the self-multiplying faculty of Southey's Kehama? I am aware that an opinion has been hazarded that attendants were confined with the defunct, and that for them the rooms and galleries were built: but the same theorists contend that the vestibule before the centre room was closed by a portcullis of granite. Had the servants then the same power of ubiquity as their master? The story only wanted such a theory as Maillet's to render it ridiculous: viz. that the holes in the sides of the room were intended to draw up the provisions of the prisoners. So that we are to imagine a basket of provisions dangling from the outside of the pyramid, like that in the fairy tale of Princess Finetta! Napoleon's Moulah was quite as reasonable, when he affirmed that the body of the king was hermetically sealed in by walls to prevent the decomposing power of nature; an opinion not deficient in sublimity, if the unlucky cavities before mentioned were not silently attesting, in full view of both philosophers, against its coherency even as an alchemical dream.

To show the absurdity of the theory here noticed, I quote Maillet's words: "The pyramid has been only attacked by the ROYAL ROUTE, through which the CORPSE of the king must have been taken and ALL THE PEOPLE to be buried with him. By the same route (that is to say, a passage 3 FOOT SQUARE and in one part 2 FOOT HIGH) the ATTENdant MOURNERS must have entered and come out." Such an inlet was ridiculous for the purposes of any thing but disgraceful burial, but strictly proper, as will be shown hereafter, for Cavern rites, avowedly performed in similar excavations.

2 I quote again from Maillet: "I think and hope sensible people will agree with me that these HOLES were made for the use of the persons shut up with the body of the king. Through the first they were to receive air, food, and other necessaries, and they had no doubt provided a long case with a cord which the persons in the pyramid might draw up, &c. [The other was for purposes which I scruple to name.] I suppose each of the persons, continues Maillet, to be provided with a coffin to contain his corpse, and that they successively paid the last debts to each other!!!'

But to leave the solemn trifling of such fancies, how in reality does the question stand with regard to Herodotus, on whose evidence the Great Pyramid has been considered as that of Cheops? That historian knew nothing of the passages: even Strabo and Diodorus knew little; they therefore had no means of drawing the same reasonable conclusion as ourselves. The first derived his knowledge from the priests, who seem frequently to have framed tales for the credulity of the Greeks, and in this case do not appear to have been certain of the facts which they detailed. Indeed they assured him that Cheops was not buried in the pyramid. They went farther: they informed him that he was the most impious of their princes; that he was an atheist, and closed the temples of the gods.

Was a man of this principle likely to be governed by the common fears of the Egyptians? Would he insult the gods and deny a resurrection and a judgment, while he spent a life in providing for a future state and separate existence? for the Egyptians thought that a body preserved from corruption 4000 years would revive with its original members; what then are we to think of the passage but that Cheops closed the adyta of the mysteries, together with the temples to which they appertained, and that from this circumstance the structure may have derived its appellation?

If we turn from surveying the mechanism of the passages to the external form of the pyramids, the latter is by no means more favorable to the supposition that they are tombs. I know it is the opinion of many scholars, and among the rest of the learned Dr. Clarke, that the pyramids are nothing more than finished analogies of the carns and barrows common over all the world, and in which, perhaps I should say under which, bodies were certainly inhumed. Much deference is due to the erudition of such great names; and indeed the fact above stated is the strongest argument brought forward for the opposite question. Juvat me hoc tribuisse. But I would venture to suggest that there is, in reality, much greater distinction between the perfect pyramidal figure and the rude conic form of the carn or barrow than at first sight appears.

Hieroglyphically the cone and the triangle meant two very different things-as different perhaps as spirit and body. The

'I am inclined to think with Mr. Salt, that the priests showed Strabo no more of the pyramid than the lower chamber, discovered by Caviglia, where, perhaps, a sarcophagus was, and concealed those parts devoted to secret rites: thence, too, the silence of the father of History. NO. LV.

VOL. XXIX.

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first we know was an emblem of Venus and of Astarte; most likely in their material capacity. Juno' and Diana were represented by columns. So were Hermes and Pan, and all the terminales, which comprised most of the deities. The worship appears very ancient. Oses in Sanchoniatho consecrates stones to fire and wind. Jacob calls a stone the HOUSE OF GOD, and anoints it. Thence the anointed Bateli of antiquity. At Delphi a stone was anointed daily as a symbol of Apollo. In most cases garlands were lavished on these stones as well as ungnents. The Arabians of Petreia worshipped a black cubic figure as their God. The sun of Heliogabalus was a pyramidal black stone so is the modern deity of Jaggernaut. Cybele Pessinuntia and perhaps many others were Aerolites. Two stones, one black and the other white (implying good and evil or night and day), remain in the CUBIC temple of Mecca. Of all these, pyramidal stones were more particularly divine than others. Jupiter was represented under that form at Corinth.3 Vulcan and fire was symbolised by it. But they were more exclusively devoted to Bacchus and Apollo and the sun. The modern Chinese offer an express worship to pyramids, and the pyramidal god Manippe, 9 heads upon a cubic base. Generally speaking, cones were employed as phalloi; but pyramidal stones appear to have been generally dedicated to the solar fire. The distinction is not casuistical. We sometimes see among the hieroglyphics male figures presenting a cone to some deity, at others a triangle. The latter has descended to us through painting and chemistry, as a symbol of fire and of the deity. The former,' says Eusebius, represented earth, the latter, spirit. I may, therefore, venture to infer, that it would be deemed perfectly impious and revolting to enshrine a body in one form, while it might be quite appropriate in the other. The carn is a rude figure: not so the pyramids; there is much skill and science displayed in their construction, a deep knowledge of astronomy, and as much of mechanics and mathematics. The builders must, at least, have known the position of the poles of the earth, and so rendered the form an inscribed astronomical stele.

But my great object now is with the triangle: we know from Proclus and the Platonists the veneration which the Egyptians

3 Ibid. 4 Suidas.

! Clemens Alexand. lib. i. 2 Pausanias Corinthiaca. s Isidore, 18. B. Chap. 1. 6 Kircher. China illustrata. p. 135. 7 Proclus gives the same explanation. Procl. Comm. Proclus Comment, and the Platonists pass.

entertained for it, and the mysteries it implied. By the square they symbolised matter or the womb of things: generating fire was pourtrayed by the triangle. From their conjunction, as in the quadrangular pyramid, all things according to them proceeded.. Hence the allegory of the marriage of Venus and Vulcan, from whose embrace sprung Cupid, the beautiful frame of things. The curious fable that Harmony was the daughter of Mars and Venus is of a. similar. description. By the pyramid, then, was allegorised the mundane soul, or.anima mundi: this we learn from the eclectics. They appear also to have attached something talismanic to the form; even the sedate. Macrobius speaks of the "magic pyramid" and the "decad of perfection:" while the Cabbalists and the Rosycrucians, who succeeded the Platonists, mystified on it without bounds. Enough, perhaps, has been adduced, to show that a mysteriously religious character was attached to the pyramidal structures, which by no means applies to the carn or any of its family of tombs. Nor is it unlikely that the vulgar opinion of their casting no shadow may be traced to a mistaken association of the form with spirit.

Is it not, then, fair to imagine that the outward mysterious form was "prologue to the swelling act" of mystery within? Is

Plato says "the soul has the form of a pyramid and is of a fiery na ture." Timæus..

"The terrestrial element has the form of a square; fire, air, and water, of different species of triangles; and their various configurations explain all the effects of nature."

Tim. Locr. ap. Plat. Vol. iii. p. 98. To these the Rosycrucians added another triangle, the fifth element or spirit, thus completing the pyramid. There is indeed little doubt that among the Egyptians a square signified earth, and chemistry has handed down triangles, as symbols of the elements, to this day.

The sacred quaternary of Pythagoras and magical Pyramidal decad are both expressed in the following figure:

1

The monad or intelligence, described as an all permeating fire and active principle.

The dyad or passive principle of matter..

The world proceeding from their union.

The sacred quaternary, the nexus of all things, all harmony and all number, extending to physics, morals, &c. and evolving 10 (Öshiri.)

This figure and the division of the musical Gamut by means of it Pythagoras avowedly derived from the Egyptians. Aristid. Quintil. de Music. lib. iii. v. 2. Boëth. de Music. lib. i. c. i. p. 1373. Plut. de Placit. Philos. lib. i. p. 3. Macrob. de Som. Scip.

it probable that the tenacious Egyptians would have consecrated the interior of a building to death, while the exterior bore the imprest character of life? It is difficult to imagine that a form of building so awful, representing the universal deity, should be erected for the enshrinement of corrupting matter. Nevertheless, I admit that the pyramids may have been erected as our temples are now, over sepulchral vaults: and there are instances of columns erected similarly in different parts of the world. But this differs much from the enshrinement of a body within the columnar structure, and it is straining an analogy too far to compare the earth, or stones heaped over a body in a barrow, to rooms and passages distinguished by regular masonry and elegant structure, within the body of a perfect mathematical form. The cavern temples of Ethiopia, themselves imperfectly pyramidal, resemble one of the pyramids accurately in having three dark sekoi, one within another; and in the last sometimes a CHEST, sometimes a Monolithic Cage. The same mode of inference as is employed by the advocates of the Sepulchral theory, should pronounce these also to be tombs as well as the cavern temples of Attica and Arcadia, and those dedicated to Neptune,' Pan, and Egeria, in the vicinity of Rome.

2

These arguments appear to me of some weight: but grant that some of them are ill-poised or visionary, is any strong case made out for the sepulchral theory? By no means. There are analogies as strong on one side as the other. The most ancient temples of India, where many circumstances attest a cognate religion to Egypt, are pyramidal. So are many of the temples of Java, in which the style of structure may be called Egyptian. The general style of the old temples of Java consists of a graduated pyramid, based upon a square cell, which is in fact a cavern chamber. Over the door is the Egyptian symbol of the Gorgon's head, or rather the opening forms its mouth, which seems to imply similar rites to those which I have attributed to the pyramids. These dark sekoi are accessible. But no one has yet pronounced them the sepulchres of kings.

1

2.

Plutarch, called Consus, from Consulting.

Livy, B. i. c. 5. called Lupercal.

3 Mandelso in Maurice Ind. Antiquities justly compares them to caverns requiring perpetual illumination. Above, the trident of Serapis and Seeva, the Indian Pluto, is remarkable. The trident agrees with the three ways of initiation, and the priests of the former deity carry triangles. Kircher says it was a sign of the great numen triplex, which was worshipped in the cavern of Eleusis, as appears from Pausanias; and in Elephanta and the cavern temples of Java, as appears from extant monuments.