have been
built--a period more remote than Scripture ascribes to the Flood itself,
according to our received chronology. These were the tombs of the Memphian
kings, who believed in the immortality of the soul, and its final reunion
with the body after various forms of transmigration. Hence the solicitude
to preserve the body in some enduring monument, and by elaborate
embalment. What more durable monument than these great masses of granite,
built to defy the ravages of time, and the spoliations of conquerors! The
largest of these pyramids, towering above other pyramids, and the lesser
sepulchres of the rich, was built upon a square of 756 feet, and the
height of it was 489 feet 9 inches, covering an area of 571,536 feet, or
more than thirteen acres. The whole mass contained 90,000,000 cubic feet
of masonry, weighing 6,316,000 tons. Nearly in the centre of this pile of
stone, reached by a narrow passage, were the chambers where the royal
sarcophagi were deposited. At whatever period these vast monuments were
actually built, they at least go back into remote antiquity, and probably
before the time of Abram.

(M72) The first great name of the early Egyptian kings was Sesertesen, or
Osirtasin I., the founder of the twelfth dynasty of kings, B.C. 2080. He
was a great conqueror, and tradition confounds him with the Sesostris of
the Greeks, which gathered up stories about him as the Middle Ages did of
Charlemagne and his paladins. The real Sesostris was Ramenes the Great, of
the nineteenth dynasty. By the kings of this dynasty (the twelfth)
Ethiopia was conquered, the Labyrinth was built, and Lake Moevis dug, to
control the inundations. Under them Thebes became a great city. The
dynasty lasted 100 years, but became subject to the Shepherd kings. These
early Egyptian monarchs wore fond of peace, and their subjects enjoyed
repose and prosperity.

(M73) The Shepherd kings, who ruled 400 years, were supposed by Manetho to
be Arabs, but leaves us to infer that they were Phoenicians--as is
probable--a roving body of conquerors, who easily subdued the peaceful
Egyptians. They have left no monumental history. They were alien to the
conquered race in language and habits, and probably settled in Lower Egypt
where the land was most fertile, and where conquests would be most easily
retained.

It was under their rule that Abram probably visited Egypt when driven by a
famine from Canaan. And they were not expelled till the time of Joseph,