Egypt Through The Stereoscope

A Journey Through The Land Of The Pharaohs

by James Henry Breasted | 1908 | 103,705 words

Examines how stereographs were used as a means of virtual travel. Focuses on James Henry Breasted's "Egypt through the Stereoscope" (1905, 1908). Provides context for resources in the Travelers in the Middle East Archive (TIMEA). Part 3 of a 4 part course called "History through the Stereoscope."...

Position 19 - Looking Up The Northeast Corner Of The Great Pyramid, Where The Tourists Ascend. (raise The Instrument And Look Upward)

Who but the visitor at these pyramids could have conceived that the hand of man had ever reared such a mass of masonry as this! Here we stand looking up the northeast corner; we face southwestward, and our line of vision coincides with the diagonal which runs southwestward through the pyramid group. Here the vast mass has full sway over us; it overpowers and overwhelms us. It has sometimes been flippantly said that several modern buildings have surpassed it in height; yet how puny appear the one or two slender spires referred to beside this gigantic mass of solid masonry towering its enormous bulk well-nigh five hundred feet into the blue.

See how the great blocks dwindle and dwindle as the eye soars upward and follows them until they merge and melt into the mountainous bulk of the mass; and still it rises ever higher, to the distant peak where the Arab waving his black garment seems like a tiny insect, or a lofty bird, soon to be enveloped in that fleecy cloud, which floats in from the west. What an answer to Sir Thomas Browne's contemptuous remark upon the builder of this pile: “To be but pyramidally extant is a fallacy of duration!”

Here is the very embodiment and potentiality of that ancient state of which the Pharaoh was the soul. Think of the organization of men and means, of force and skilled labor required to quarry these 2,300,000 blocks, each weighing about two and a half tons, to transport them across the Nile and lift them to the rising courses of this ever-growing monster, till the cap-stone is 481 feet from the pavement. The base of the sea of stone which forms each face is 755 feet long, and the square which it forms on the ground includes a field of over thirteen acres. When you have walked around it you have gone over 3,000 feet, some three-fifths of a mile.

And in spite of the fact that a rise of ground on the spot where the pyramid stands, did not permit the engineer, who laid out the ground plan, to see his stakes from one corner to the other, but forced him to measure up and then down again, the error in the length of the sides of this square base is but sixty-five one-hundredths of an inch; and the error of angle at the corners is but one three-hundredth part of a degree (00°-00′-12″).

This far exceeds the accuracy of such masses of masonry in modern times, for although it may be quite within his power, the modern engineer finds no occasion for producing such work. It is accurately oriented to the cardinal points. But the structure before us is not the only witness to the amount and character of the labor put into it, for the engineers of the time have shot over the face of the bluff of the plain below, a mass of waste chips from the cutting and facing of these blocks, which equals fully half the bulk of the pyramid itself.

Perhaps you are saying to yourself that this masonry looks rather rough in exterior finish to be the product of skilled workmen. Quite true, but as you have doubtless surmised, this was not originally the final exterior finish. When completed the pyramid was sheathed from summit to base in magnificent casing masonry, so skilfully set that the joints were almost undiscernible. Vast smooth surfaces then greeted the eye from base to summit.

Later on we shall see a very striking demonstration of the cunning with which this work on the casing was executed. It was still in place when the first Greek visitors beheld the pyramid and wrote of it. Occasional references through classic times, and after the Moslem conquest, show that the casing was still in place until the 13th century A. D.

Then all mention of it ceases until the 16th century, when an Italian traveler refers to the pyramid in such a way as to show that the casing has now disappeared. It was removed then some time between the 13th and the 16th century by the Moslem builders of Cairo, who used the blocks thus gained for building the mosques and tombs and houses there. You viewed from the citadel the mosque of Sultan Hasan, into which some of them went, in the 14th century (Page 60).

Thus the beautiful Saracen structures of Cairo grew up at the expense of this older monument of the country. Some of the casing blocks in the lower courses were covered up by the accumulations of detritus from above, and thus escaped the crow-bars of these Moslem vandals; thus part of the lowermost course is still in position in the centre of the north side. But this quarrying has cost this pyramid some 30 feet of its height, and 15 or 20 feet in the length of its sides.

Perhaps this loss is not so felt by the tourist as by the archaeologist, for the former finds compensation in the fact that he may now ascend the pyramid, which would have been quite impossible had not the smooth casing masonry been removed and the terraced courses below revealed. To be sure they do not form the most comfortable stair-case in the world, for as you will note by looking at the native nearest us, some of them are nearly shoulder high; but by dint of sundry pulling in front and pushing from behind at the hands of the willing Arabs, we shall be able to make the ascent with plenty of stopping to rest, within a half hour.

Our next position then is to be on that lofty summit, and from it we shall look practically east, that is, to our left, over the full width of the Nile valley. Find the red lines numbered 20 marking out the field of vision on Map 5, but especially on Map 4.

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