so long as they could exalt themselves,
did not care how much they oppressed their people. There was not even
the poor apology for their conduct that their oppression fell on slaves,
or foreigners, or prisoners of war. Egypt was not yet a conquering
power; prisoners of war were few, slaves not very common. The labourers
whom the pyramid builders employed were their own free subjects whom
they impressed into the heavy service.

It is by a just Nemesis that the kings have in a great measure failed to
secure the ends at which they aimed, and in hope of which they steeled
their hearts against their subjects' cries. They have indeed handed down
their names to a remote age: but it is as tyrants and oppressors. They
are world-famous, or rather world-infamous. But that preservation of
their corporeal frame which they especially sought, is exactly what they
have missed attaining.

Let not a monument give you or me hopes,
Since not a pinch of dust remains of Cheops,

says the doggerel of the satiric Byron; and it is the absolute fact
that while thousands of mummies buried in common graves remain untouched
even to the present day, the very grandeur of the pyramid builders'
tombs attracted attention to them, caused the monuments to be opened,
the sarcophagi to be rifled, and the remains inclosed in them to be
dispersed to the four winds of heaven.

Still, whatever gloomy associations attach to the pyramids in respect of
the sufferings caused by their erection, as monuments they must always
challenge a certain amount of admiration. A great authority declares:
"No one can possibly examine the interior of the Great Pyramid without
being struck with astonishment at the wonderful mechanical skill
displayed in its construction. The immense blocks of granite brought
from Syene, a distance of five hundred miles, polished like glass, and
so fitted that the joints can scarcely be detected! Nothing can be more
wonderful than the extraordinary amount of knowledge displayed in the
construction of the discharging chambers over the roof of the principal
apartment, in the alignment of the sloping galleries, in the provision
of the ventilating shafts, and in all the wonderful contrivances of the
structure. All these, too, are carried out with such precision that,
notwithstanding the immense superincumbent weight, no settlement in any
part can be detected to an appreciable fraction of an inch. Nothing more
perfect mechanically has ever b