easurers placed within these three
pyramids to guard their contents, and (like all or most of what I have
already quoted) was a work of imagination. Ibn Abd Alkohm, in fact, was
a romancist of the first water.

Perhaps the strongest argument against the theory that the pyramids were
intended as strongholds for the concealment of treasure, resides in the
fact that, search being made, no treasure has been discovered. When the
workmen employed by Caliph Al Mamoun, after encountering manifold
difficulties, at length broke their way into the great ascending passage
leading to the so-called King's Chamber, they found 'a right noble
apartment, thirty-four feet long, seventeen broad, and nineteen high, of
polished red granite throughout, walls, floor, and ceiling, in blocks
squared and true, and put together with such exquisite skill that the
joints are barely discernible to the closest inspection. But where is
the treasure--the silver and the gold, the jewels, medicines, and
arms?--These fanatics look wildly around them, but can see nothing, not
a single _dirhem_ anywhere. They trim their torches, and carry them
again and again to every part of that red-walled, flinty hall, but
without any better success. Nought but pure polished red granite, in
mighty slabs, looks upon them from every side. The room is clean,
garnished too, as it were, and, according to the ideas of its founders,
complete and perfectly ready for its visitors so long expected, so long
delayed. But the gross minds who occupy it now, find it all barren, and
declare that there is nothing whatever for them in the whole extent of
the apartment from one end to another; nothing except an empty stone
chest without a lid.'

It is, however, to be noted that we have no means of learning what had
happened between the time when the pyramid was built and when Caliph Al
Mamoun's workmen broke their way into the King's Chamber. The place
may, after all, have contained treasures of some kind; nor, indeed, is
it incompatible with other theories of the pyramid to suppose that it
was used as a safe receptacle for treasures. It is certain, however,
that this cannot have been the special purpose for which the pyramids
were designed. We should find in such a purpose no explanation whatever
of any of the most stringent difficulties encountered in dealing with
other theories. There could be no reason why strangers from the East
should be at special pains to instruct an Egyptian monar