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

pyramids attributing their construction to Surid, and the time taken to erect them, and concluding with the warning anent their destruction. (Italics as quoted.)

In all the foregoing traditions can be readily traced certain characteristic features of the Great Pyramid overlaid with much that is highly imaginative. Thus, while its construction does embody a knowledge of astronomy, mathematics and geometry, to a degree centuries in advance of what was generally known of these sciences at the era the Great Pyramid was built—if, indeed, it could be said (with the exception, perhaps, of astronomy, the most advanced of the early sciences) they existed at all, but in a very rudimentary fashion, at that remote timeand while it is also a record of history, geometrically expressed, over a period of 6,000 years, addressed, too, to a generation which would arise long afterwards and be able to comprehend it, we know it contains no such hieroglyphic inscriptions or representations of the heavenly stars and planets such as these traditions infer. It is only when we turn to the Book of the Dead that we find the passages and chambers of its ‘‘ Secret House” inscribed with such hieroglyphic texts and formule, and adorned with mythical figures and stars. That is to say, Coptic and Arab traditions have erroneously identified the inscribed passages of the allegorical Pyramid of the Book of the Dead with the actual passages and chambers of the Great Pyramid itself.

The tradition that the Great Pyramid was erected as a result of warnings about a coming deluge is also given by other writers ; notably Josephus, and the Chaldean priest Berosus (third century B.C.).

Thus, in his Antiquities (bk. i, ch. iii), Josephus states

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