and it requires no little education at home, or experience abroad, before we can fully realise to ourselves that a particular building which we behold, can touch, enter into, and make use of for social purposes,-is the same actual building which has seen Romans, Greeks, Persians, Egyptians of Pharaonic rule, Israelites under Moses, and even the patriarch Abraham himself, pass by or enter into in a similar manner; and yet such is the fact and such the case, as testified by every Egyptological author of every country, and by innumerable internal evidences in the buildings themselves. This remarkable power of Egyptian architectural duration depends, in no small degree, upon the almost rainless character of the climate-a feature considerable in every part of Egypt, but more intense in the interior, or at a distance from the Mediterranean coast. More than 150 miles from its mouth, therefore, have we to ascend the Nile, before the monuments of ancient Egypt begin to appear; and then, the first sight which breaks on the view, and tells us that Egypt is not as other lands, is the appearance on the distant horizon edge of the sharply-cut, brilliantly-lit, mathematical forms of the giant pyramids of Jeezeh,-unlike everything else one has ever seen in the world, defying time, defying decay, defying question by man,-the veritable "audacia saxa Pyramidum" of the Roman poet, and of all nations as well those before, as since his time. These weird forms are first seen across, or over, the tree tops and flat cultivated grounds of the valley of Egypt-the trees indeed not very numerous; and, what there are, mostly date palms. Picturesque enough these appear, with their spreading crests of waving fronds and tall columnar stems,— but testifying to the complete drowning of the land once a-year by the annual inundation,-which destroys all young trees not semi-amphibious, and then leaves the land soppy, manured, black, and in a state appropriate to a field of corn a garden of cucumbers, or any ephemeral vegetation. Through such fields, and past villages raised on earthen mounds above the inundation-level, you travel on westward over the dull horticultural flat, until suddenly, at a sharply-defined line stretching north and south,-you leave all the black of the garden soil, with the green of vegetation, behind,—and enter on the silent, lifeless desert, with its universally lightcoloured surface of yellow sand and stone. To your right and left now expands unlimitedly this arid soil, with its league after league of melancholy gold;" no plant, no animal appears,-but grandly before you stand the Pyramids, the solitary kings of the deathly scene. Vast in themselves, and high raised on the edge of the gaunt and white table-land of rock,-as if forming the utmost bound of the everlasting hills,-and where, if marked at all by any ordinary human handiwork, it is, that all the ground is honeycombed with ancient tombs, or is heaving with sepulchres of many nations and various ages, under wreaths of drifted desert sand-the lengthy folds of nature's one, great, unwoven winding-sheet. Everywhere, indeed, on the hill of the Pyramids, are our footsteps among tombs, or rather the ruins of tombs; for, eminent as have been the energies and perseverance of earlier nations through long ages, in building up, and graving into the rock, and inventing secret and yet more secret forms of sepulture,-equally eminent have been the subsequent labours and determination of others in pulling down, and disclosing, and turning inside out, and utterly breaking in pieces whatever was once highly prized, or much revered, or sacredly regarded. Everything, in fact, has thus been destroyed except the Pyramids themselves,whose enormous mass has fatigued the hand of the spoiler, though it has not prevented their being robbed of the greater part of their ancient exterior coating; and they stand up now, in consequence, not so much the finished monuments of an architect, as the hugest cairns of rude stone the world ever saw. As such, appears eminently, at your first near view, the Great Pyramid; for not only has the casing been there entirely stripped away, but the remaining rough surface of the mere core of masonry is, on close examination, so lamentably weathered, loaded with debris, and heaped about below with whole hills of rubbish,-that much less of accurate form is immediately visible there than on several of its smaller compeers; and yet, led by some strange intuitive knowledge, or by a stranger guidance still, without any knowledge, the crowds of European visitors, who almost daily visit the hills, all rush,-very much as they used to do in the time of Herodotus and Strabo, near 2000 years ago,to see the Great Pyramid; and having seen and touched that, and that one only, leave the place for ever, with their minds satiated with content. Gradually, however, within the last few years, and under the application of modern. science, has it been coming out-that there are reasons, and of a very high order, for this remarkable predilection of mankind for the Great Pyramid beyond all other pyramids -reasons too, of which, as our photographs may disclose some grounds or traces,-I will, without further delay, request Mr Nicol to show us the first example ; There then followed the exhibition successively, on a screen 15 feet square, of thirty-six photographs, selected out of a much larger number, and representing the following subjects: 1. Travellers arriving in view of the fertile plains of Egypt. 2. The cultivated land and villages of Egypt, with the Mokattam hills in the distance. 3. The last of the trees, and the beginning of the Libyan desert. 4. The three Pyramids of Jeezeh, from the southern uplands. 5. A highly-magnified portion of the foreground of the said uplands, showing the apparent stones and gravel to consist almost entirely of petrified sea shells. 6. Bird's-eye view of the Great Pyramid and its hill of tombs, from a hill-top to the south. 7. The northern causeway leading up to the Great Pyramid. 8. The Great Pyramid from the sand plain on the northeast, specially showing the disposition of the ancient rubbish. 9. The Great Pyramid and Second Pyramid from the north. 10. Close view of three-fourths of the masonry of the Great Pyramid at the south-west corner. 11. Close view of one-third of the masonry of the Great Pyramid at the north-east corner. VOL. VII. 2 E 12. Very close view of the three lower courses of masonry at the north-east corner, now much injured, of the Great Pyramid. 13. The north-east corner socket of the Great Pyramid, as excavated by Messrs Aiton and Inglis in April 1865. 14. The north-west corner socket, similarly excavated. 15. The entrance into the Great Pyramid, and Caliph AlMamoon's forced hole. 16. View on the side of the Great Pyramid, showing the ranges of stone near the entrance. 17. Beginning of the descending entrance-passage, showing the straightness and fineness of the joints. 18. The King's Chamber in the interior of the Great Pyramid, by the magnesium light. 19. The upper north-east corner of the Coffer in the same, by magnesium light. 20. The upper south-east corner of the same, by the same. 21. Bird's-eye view of the Second Pyramid, and its hill of tombs. 22. Cliff wall on northern side of Second Pyramid. 23. Summit of Second Pyramid, showing the casing stones in situ. 24. The Third Pyramid, from sand hollows to the south east. 25. Granite casing stones, in situ, on northern side of Third Pyramid. 26. The Great Sphinx and the Third Pyramid in the dis tance. 27. The Great Sphinx and sand-hills. 28. Excavation of King Shafre's temple-tomb, viewed from above and from the south-east, showing its position with respect to the Sphinx and Great Pyramid. 29. Excavated door on west of King Shafre's Tomb, now fast filling in with sand. 30. Interior hall of King Shafre's Tomb, with square granite pillars and granite walls. 31. East Tombs, or the tombs in the eastern cliff of pyramid hill. 32. Close view of one of said Tombs. 33. Close view of another, with hieroglyphics. 34. Travellers arriving to see the Pyramid, and pestered with Arabs; an instantaneous view. 35. A Hawk on the wing; instantaneous view. 36. Travellers leaving the Pyramid under a hot sun, with Arabs running after them for baksheesh; instantaneous view. Address of the President, FREDERICK HALLARD, Esq., Advocate, on leaving the Chair, delivered at the meeting of the Society, held on the 26th November 1866. GENTLEMEN,-Were I to follow the example set me by most of my predecessors in this Chair, I should endeavour to recount this evening the discoveries of science, the achievements of industrial enterprise, which have taken place during the last twelve months. In my hands, I fear, such an attempt would prove a failure. You would not care to hear, nor would I care to utter, feeble echoes of the full and weighty words recently spoken at Nottingham.* I shall, therefore, leave undone what I could not hope to do otherwise than imperfectly or inaccurately. Yet it would not be a fitting thing, on this first evening of a new Session, that your President should receive you in this hall with nothing beyond simple words of welcome, however sincere. Not a worker myself in the field, either of pure science or of science industrially applied, I may, without presumption, take my place among that ever-growing crowd of intelligent and sympathising on-lookers, who are themselves a sure and hopeful sign of an ever-increasing civilisation. My position here would be the merest blunder, if there were no common ground on which I could meet you to-night. Time was when that common ground between spectator and actor in the field of science did not exist. You have now a public who can appreciate, who can applaud, who can * By W. R. Grove, Q.C., F.R.S., President of the British Association 1866-67. |