A Miracle in Stone, Or, the Great Pyramid of Egypt (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos, missing text or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1877. Not illustrated. Excerpt: ... The History. There is no known time within our historic periods when this pyramid was not famous. Herodotus, the so-called Father of History, as early as 445 B.C., made a personal examination of it, and devoted some most interesting paragraphs to it. It was then already considered very ancient. Traditional accounts of its erection he gathered through an interpreter from an Egyptian priest, and these he has recorded with much particularity. His own appreciation of the structure, and of the causeway over which the materials were conveyed, was that of wonder and admiration.* Homer does not seem to make any allusion to it, perhaps for the reason that it had no connection with mythology, or with any of his heroes. Eratosthenes (236 B.C.), Diodorus Siculus (60 B.C.), and Strabo and Pliny (about the beginning of our era), all wrote of it. The latter, in referring to the Pyramids, also says, "The authors who have written upon them are Herodotus, Euhemerus, Durius Samius, Aristagoras, Dionysius, Artemedorus, Alex * See Rawlinson's Herodotus, Book II, chap. 124, vol. 2, pp. 169-176. .mder, Polyhistor, Butorides, Autisthenes, Demetrius, Deraoteles, and Apion."* But though the Great Pyramid has been standing in its place for 4000 years, it is only within a very recent period that there has been any rational appreciation of it. For 3000 years of its existence, up to the time of the mediaeval Caliph Al Mamoun, no mortal man, perhaps, ever penetrated into its upper passages and main openings. Certainly, for many centuries before him, it was completely closed up, no entrance to it being known any more to any human being. This son of Haroun Al Raschid of the "Arabian Nights," flattered and almost worshipped as a god, was so wrought upon by the romancers and fabulists of his cour...