HELIOPOLIS.*

About five miles to the north-east of Cairo stands the little village of Maṭarîyeh †, built upon part of the site of Heliopolis, where may be seen the sycamore tree, usually called the "Virgin's Tree," under which tradition says that the Virgin Mary sat and rested during her flight to Egypt; it was planted some time towards the end of the XVIIth century, and was given to the Empress Eugénie by Isma'îl on the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal. Beyond the "Virgin's Tree" is the fine Aswân granite obelisk which marks the site of the ancient town of Heliopolis, called "On" in Gen. xli. 45, "House of the Sun" in Jeremiah

* Called in Egyptian, Ännu meht, “Annu of the

North," to distinguish it from

173 ✪, Ânnu Qemāu, “Annu

of the South," i.e., Hermonthis.

†, Juynboll, op. cit., t. ii., p. 110. At this place the balsam

مطرية

trees, about which so many traditions are extant, were said to grow. The balsam tree was about a cubit high, and had two barks; the outer red and fine, and the inner green and thick. When the latter was macerated in the mouth, it left an oily taste and an .aromatic odour. Incisions were made in the barks, and the liquid which flowed from them was carefully collected and treated; the amount of balsam oil obtained formed a tenth part of all the liquid collected. The last balsam tree cultivated in Egypt died in 1615, but two were seen alive in 1612; it is said that they would grow nowhere out of Egypt. They were watered with the water from the well at Maṭarîyeh in which the Virgin Mary washed the clothes of our Lord when she was in Egypt. The oil was much sought after by the Christians of Abyssinia and other places, who thought it absolutely necessary that one drop of this oil should be poured into the water in which they were baptized. See Wansleben, L'Histoire de l'Eglise d'Alexandrie, pp. 88-93; Abd-al-Laṭîf (ed. de Sacy), p. 88.

xliii. 13, and “Eye or Fountain of the Sun" by the Arabs. Heliopolis was about twelve miles from the fortress of Babylon, and stood on the eastern side of the Pelusiac arm of the Nile, near the right bank of the great canal which passed through the Bitter Lakes and connected the Nile with the sea. Its ruins cover an area three miles square. The greatest and oldest Egyptian College or University for the education of the priesthood and the laity stood here, and it was here that Ptolemy II., Philadelphus, sent for Egyptian manuscripts when he wished to augment the library which his father had founded.

O

The obelisk is sixty-six feet high, and was set up by Usertsen I. U about B.C. 2433 ; a companion obelisk remained standing in its place until the seventh century of our era, and both were covered with caps of smu (probably copper) metal. During the XXth dynasty the temple of Heliopolis was one of the largest and wealthiest in all Egypt, and its staff was numbered by thousands. When Cambyses visited Egypt the glory of Heliopolis was well on the wane, and after the removal of the priesthood and sages of the temple to Alexandria by Ptolemy II. its downfall was well assured. When Strabo visited it (B.C. 24), the greater part of it was in ruins; but we know from Arab writers that many of the statues remained in situ at the end of the twelfth century. Heliopolis had a large population of Jews, and it will be remembered that Joseph married the daughter of Pa-ta-pa-Ra (Potiphar) a priest of On (Annu), or Heliopolis. It lay either in or very near the Goshen of the Bible. The Mnevis bull, sacred to Rã, was worshipped at Heliopolis, and it was here that the phoenix or palm-bird brought its ashes after having raised itself to life at the end of each period of five hundred years. Alexander the Great halted here on his way from Pelusium to Memphis. Macrobius says that the Heliopolis of Syria, or Baalbek, was founded by a body of priests who left the ancient city of Heliopolis of Egypt.

THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH.

On the western bank of the Nile, from Abu Roâsh on the north to Mêdûm on the south, is a slightly elevated tract of land, about twenty-five miles long, on the edge of the Libyan desert, on which stand the pyramids of Abu Roâsh, Gîzeh, Zâwyet el-'Aryân, Abuşîr, Sakkâra, Lisht, and Dahshûr. Other places in Egypt where pyramids are found are El-lâhûn* in the Fayyûm, Hawâra, and Kullah near Esneh. The pyramids built by the Nubians or Ethiopians at Ķurrû, Zûma, Tanķassi, Gebel-Barkal, Nûri, and Bakrawiyeh (Meroë), are of various dates and are mere copies, in respect of form only, of the pyramids in Egypt. It is well to state at once that the pyramids were tombs and nothing else. There is no evidence whatever to show that they were built for purposes of astronomical observations, and the theory that the Great Pyramid was built to serve as a standard of measurement is ingenious but worthless. The significant fact, so ably pointed out by Mariette, that pyramids are only found in cemeteries, is an answer to all such theories. Tomb-pyramids were built by kings and others until the XIIth dynasty. The ancient writers who have described and treated of the pyramids are given by Pliny (Nat. Hist., xxxvi. 12, 17). If we may believe some of the writers on them during the Middle Ages, their outsides must have been covered with inscriptions; which were, probably, of a religious nature.† In modern times they have been examined by Shaw (1721),

+ "..... their surfaces exhibit all kinds of inscriptions written in the characters of ancient nations which no longer exist. No one

knows what this writing is or what it signifies." Mas'ûdi (ed. Barbier de Meynard), t. ii., p. 404.

Pococke (1743), Niebuhr (1761), Davison (1763), Bruce (1768), Denon and Jomard (1799), Hamilton (1801), Caviglia (1817), Belzoni (1817), Wilkinson (1831), Howard Vyse and Perring (1837-38), Lepsius (1842-45), and Petrie (1881).

It appears that before the actual building of a pyramid was begun a suitable rocky site was chosen and cleared, a mass of rock if possible being left in the middle of the area to form the core of the building. The chambers and the galleries leading to them were next planned and excavated. Around the core a truncated pyramid building was made, the angles of which were filled up with blocks of stone. Layer after layer of stone was then built around the work, which grew larger and larger until it was finished. Dr. Lepsius thought that when a king ascended the throne, he built for himself a small but complete tomb-pyramid, and that a fresh coating of stone was built around it every year that he reigned; and that when he died the sides of the pyramids were like long flights of steps, which his successor filled up with right-angled triangular blocks of stone. The door of the pyramid was walled up after the body of its builder had been laid in it, and thus remained a finished tomb. The explanation of Dr. Lepsius may not be correct, but at least it answers satisfactorily more objections than do the views of other theorists on this matter. It has been pointed out that near the core of the pyramid the work is more carefully executed than near the exterior, that is to say, as the time for the king's death approached the work was more hurriedly performed.

During the investigations made by Lepsius in and about the pyramid area, he found the remains of about seventyfive pyramids, and noticed that they were always built in groups.

The pyramids of Gizeh were opened by the Persians during the fifth and fourth centuries before Christ; it is

probable that they were also entered by the Romans. Khalif Mâmûn (A.D. 813-833) entered the Great Pyramid, and found that others had been there before him. The treasure which is said to have been discovered there by him is probably fictitious. Once opened, it must have been evident to every one what splendid quarries the pyramids formed,. and for some hundreds of years after the conquest of Egypt by the Arabs they were laid under contribution for stone to build mosques, etc., in Cairo. Late in the twelfth century Melik el-Kâmil made a mad attempt to destroy the third pyramid at Gîzeh built by Mycerinus; but after months of toil he only succeeded in stripping off the covering from one of the sides. It is said that Muḥammad 'Ali was advised to undertake the senseless task of destroying them all.

THE GREAT PYRAMID.

This, the largest of the three pyramids at Gîzeh, was built by Khufu or Cheops, the second king of the IVth dynasty, B.C. 3733, who called it▲ Khut. His.

name was found written in red ink upon the blocks of stone inside it. All four sides measure in greatest length about 755 feet each, but the length of each was originally about 20 feet more; its height now is 451 feet, but it is said to have been originally about 481 feet. The stone used in the construction of this pyramid was brought from Turra and Mokaṭṭam, and the contents amount to 85,000,000 cubic feet. The flat space at the top of the pyramid is about thirty feet square, and the view from it is very fine.

The entrance (A) to this pyramid is, as with all pyramids, on the north side, and is about 45 feet above the ground The passage A B C is 320 feet long, 34 feet high, and 4 fe