hat it was a tomb, or great sepulchral Pyramid, similar in every
respect to those now standing by the banks of the Nile, from Dashour to
Gizeh, each consisting of a great central chamber containing one or more
sarcophagi, entered by a long stone-covered passage. The external
aperture was concealed, and the whole covered with a great mound of
stones or earth in a conical form. The early Egyptians, and the
Mexicans also, possessing greater art and better tools than the
primitive Irish, carved, smoothed, and cemented their great pyramids;
_but the type and purpose is all the same_.... How far anterior to the
Christian era its date should be placed would be a matter of
speculation; it may be of an age coeval, or even anterior, to its
brethren on the Nile."

Other pyramidal barrows at Maeshowe, Gavr Inis, etc., were referred to
and illustrated; showing that a gigantic sepulchral cairn was in its
mass an unbuilt pyramid; or, in other words, that a pyramid was a built
cairn.

SEPULCHRAL CHARACTER, ETC., OF THE EGYPTIAN PYRAMIDS.

All authors, from the Father of History downwards, have generally agreed
in considering the pyramids of Egypt as magnificent and regal
sepulchres; and the sarcophagi, etc., of the dead have been found in
them when first opened for the purposes of plunder or curiosity. The
pyramidal sepulchral mounds on the banks of the Boyne were opened and
rifled in the ninth century by the invading Dane, as told in different
old Irish annals; and the Pyramids of Gizeh, etc., were reputedly broken
into and harried in the same century by the Arabian Caliph, Al
Mamoon,--the entrances and galleries blocked up by stones being forced
and turned, and in some parts the solid masonry perforated. The largest
of the Pyramids of Gizeh--or "the Great Pyramid," as it is generally
termed--is now totally deprived of the external polished limestone
coating which covered it at the time of Herodotus's visit, some
twenty-two centuries ago; and "now" (writes Mr. Smyth) "is so injured as
to be, in the eyes of some passing travellers, little better than a
heap of stones." But all the internal built core of the magnificent
structure remains, and contains in its interior (besides a rock chamber
below) two higher built chambers or crypts above--the so-called King's
Chamber and Queen's chamber--with galleries and apartments leading to
them. The walls of these galleries and upper chambers are built with
granite and limestone masonry of a