inced both Cheops and Chephren, that unless
these kings gave up idolatry, the purpose, whatever it was, which the
pyramid was erected to promote, would not be fulfilled. The mere fact
that the Great Pyramid was built either directly at the suggestion of
these visitors, or because they had persuaded Cheops of the truth of
some important doctrine, shows that they must have gained great
influence over his mind. Rather we may say that he must have been so
convinced of their knowledge and power as to have accepted with
unquestioning confidence all that they told him respecting the
particular subject over which they seemed to possess so perfect a
mastery.

But having formed the opinion, on grounds sufficiently assured, that the
strangers who visited Egypt and superintended the building of the Great
Pyramid were kinsmen of the patriarch Abraham, it is not very difficult
to decide what was the subject respecting which they had such exact
information. They or their parents had come from the land of the
Chaldaeans, and they were doubtless learned in all the wisdom of their
Chaldaean kinsmen. They were masters, in fact, of the astronomy of their
day, a science for which the Chaldaeans had shown from the earliest ages
the most remarkable aptitude. What the actual extent of their
astronomical knowledge may have been it would be difficult to say. But
it is certain, from the exact knowledge which later Chaldaeans possessed
respecting long astronomical cycles, that astronomical observations must
have been carried on continuously by that people for many hundreds of
years. It is highly probable that the astronomical knowledge of the
Chaldaeans in the days of Terah and Abraham was much more accurate than
that possessed by the Greeks even after the time of Hipparchus.[24] We
see indeed, in the accurate astronomical adjustment of the Great
Pyramid, that the architects must have been skilful astronomers and
mathematicians; and I may note here, in passing, how strongly this
circumstance confirms the opinion that the visitors were kinsmen of
Terah and Abraham. All we know from Herodotus and Manetho, all the
evidence from the circumstances connected with the religion of the
pyramid-kings, and the astronomical evidence given by the pyramids
themselves, tends to assure us that members of that particular branch of
the Chaldaean family which went out from Ur of the Chaldees because they
would not worship the gods of the Chaldaeans, extended their w