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 26 - Ruins Of The Granite Temple By The Sphinx, With, The Great Pyramid Of Gizeh On The Northwest

As we stand here looking northwestward across the granite structure by the Sphinx, we have Memphis behind us and Cairo on our right. If you will examine our former point of view in this locality (Position 17), you will see that we have here merely stepped to the right and ascended the ridge of sand, which was there in our front; thus bringing into view this granite building which lies too deeply embedded in the sands to be seen from below.

The exterior has never been excavated, but the interior has been almost wholly cleared of the encumbering sand. It is about 140 feet square and some forty feet high. The rough wall which you notice on the further side is but the core of a wall once splendidly cased with granite.

It has been supplemented at this corner by this rude rubble wall built by the Service des Antiquités to keep out marauding native intruders. The ancient wall once surrounded a court open to the sky, which it enclosed like a parapet. The pavement of this court formed the roof of the series of chambers below, these chambers having been lighted by slits cut obliquely through the floor of the court. You may see the remains of these slits on the upper edge of the side wall of the central hall, just to the left of the native, who stands on the modern wall directly in front of the camel close to us.

These lower halls are still largely intact. They form a large T, the perpendicular of which lies pointing westward toward the second pyramid, out of range on the left. We are looking obliquely across this perpendicular as it emerges on the left of the native in the long black robe, to whom we have referred. It is in the further wall of this hall that the lighting slits may be seen. In the corner diagonally opposite us is a descending entrance passage, of which we may see the upper edges of the side walls. Directly under the camel on the further wall is a door piercing that wall; it terminates a winding stairway, which rises from the descending entrance passage and formed the connection between the lower halls and the court above.

The top of the door leading to the lower end of this stairway, may be seen near the upper end of the descending entrance passage, just on the left of our black-robed native's white cap. The roof of these walls, which, as we have said, was likewise the floor of the court, was supported on magnificent granite pillars, each hewn in one block. Those in the stem of the T, ten in number, are forty-one inches square and weigh thirteen tons each.

Directly over the hollow of the camel's neck, just before us, is a smaller hall, parallel with the head of the T, and here, Mariette, who discovered the building, in 1853, found a well, from which he took no less than seven portrait statues of Khafre, the builder of the second pyramid. One of these statues we have already seen, during our visit at the museum in Cairo.

The presence of these statues and the fact that yonder descending entrance passage is built in obliquely so as to point directly up the causeway leading to the temple, which we have already seen on the east side of Khafre's pyramid (Position 21), would indicate that this building here was erected by him, and that it therefore belongs to the same period as the pyramids. Indeed, it is thus clear that the building begins the causeway leading up from the plain on our right to the second pyramid, now out of range on our left.

The recent discovery of a similar structure at Abusir, south of our present station, further demonstrates, that the building before us is the massive monumental gateway, forming the entrance to the masonry causeway, leading up to the pyramid-temple, on the east front of the second pyramid. We have retained the term “temple” in the above title, only to avoid misleading those numerous travelers who only know the building as a temple, which it has so long been supposed to be. Up through this monumental portal passed the white-robed processions in the departed Pharaoh's honor, to ascend the long causeway beyond leading to the court of the pyramid temple, where the periodic feasts of the temple-calendar were celebrated.

Many a problem which now vexes the student of this remote age, would be solved, if we could have stood on the now vanished floor of the roof-court which crowned this great gateway, and looked down upon such a celebration. It is a structure worthy of the builder of such a pyramid, and its walls and floors of polished granite and translucent alabaster make it one of the most magnificent monuments of Egypt.

And now as it rises over the head of the silent Sphinx, we gain our last view of the Great Pyramid, towering in the background and dominating all this scene, so rich in monuments of a decadent people's one-time magnificence, so strewn with landmarks that determine for us the course of that long road by which man has journeyed through past ages to attain his present exalted station.

Our next position is to be out there in front of the Sphinx.

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