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EGYPTIAN history is only less ancient than that of Babylon and western Asia, which we have just traced from its beginning to the present day. The first clear fact that stands out from the mists enwrapping the earliest Egyptian story is the event shown in our picture here. Nearly four thousand years before Christ a king or "Pharaoh," by the name of Khufu, or, as we more commonly call him, Cheops, ruled over Egypt with great splendor. During three months of every year all the fertile lands of Egypt are overflowed by the Nile, so that the peasantry cannot work upon their farms. Through these three months Cheops compelled the people to work for him. Probably in return he fed them from the vast stores of grain which he had previously made them surrender to him as tribute. With this army of laborers Cheops constructed the great pyramid which still, after nearly six thousand years, remains the heaviest and most solidly constructed of all man's buildings upon earth. We have structures here in America covering as much ground; we have them of far greater height; but there is no one that presses down on earth with such stupendous weight-and no one of such little practical use. All this tremendous labor was expended simply to make a tomb wherein the single body of the proud Cheops could repose in mummified state until, as his religion taught him, his spirit should come to occupy it again. |
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