DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4393#0029
CAIRO AND THE GREAT PYRAMID. 11
they come from Alexandria; and it is not impressive. It
does not take one's breath away, for instance, like a first
sight of the Alps from the high level of the Neufchatel
line, or the outline of the Acropolis at Athens as one first
recognizes it from the sea. The well-known triangular
forms look small and shadowy, and are too familiar to be
in any way startling. And the same, I think, is true of
every distant view of them—that is, of every view which is
too distant to afford the means of scaling them against
other objects. It is only in approaching them, and ob-
serving how they grow with every foot of the road, that
one begins to feel they are not so familiar after all.
But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and
the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform
gained, and the great pyramid in all its unexpected bulk
and majesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as
sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and
the horizon. It shuts out all the other pyramids. It shuts
out everything but the sense of awe and wonder.
Now, too, one discovers that it was with the forms of
the pyramids, and only their forms, that one had been ac-
quainted all these years past. Of their surface, their color,
their relative position, their number (to say nothing of
their size), one had hitherto entertained no kind of
definite idea. The. most careful study of plans and
measurements, the clearest photographs, the most elabo-
rate descriptions, had done little or nothing, after all, to
make one know the place beforehand. This undulating
table-land of sand and rock, pitted with open graves and
cumbered with mounds of shapeless masonry, is wholly
unlike the desert of our dreams. The pyramids of Cheops
and Chephren are bigger than we had expected; the pyra-
mid of Mycerinusis smaller. Here, too, are nine pyramids,
instead of three. They are all entered in the plans and
mentioned in the guide-books; but, somehow, one is un-
prepared to find them there, and cannot help looking upon
them as intruders. These six extra pyramids are small
•and greatly dilapidated. One, indeed, is little more than
a big cairn.
Even the great pyramid puzzles us with an unexpected
sense of unlikeness. We all know and have known from
childhood, that it was stripped of its outer blocks some
five hundred years ago to build Arab mosques and palaces;
they come from Alexandria; and it is not impressive. It
does not take one's breath away, for instance, like a first
sight of the Alps from the high level of the Neufchatel
line, or the outline of the Acropolis at Athens as one first
recognizes it from the sea. The well-known triangular
forms look small and shadowy, and are too familiar to be
in any way startling. And the same, I think, is true of
every distant view of them—that is, of every view which is
too distant to afford the means of scaling them against
other objects. It is only in approaching them, and ob-
serving how they grow with every foot of the road, that
one begins to feel they are not so familiar after all.
But when at last the edge of the desert is reached, and
the long sand-slope climbed, and the rocky platform
gained, and the great pyramid in all its unexpected bulk
and majesty towers close above one's head, the effect is as
sudden as it is overwhelming. It shuts out the sky and
the horizon. It shuts out all the other pyramids. It shuts
out everything but the sense of awe and wonder.
Now, too, one discovers that it was with the forms of
the pyramids, and only their forms, that one had been ac-
quainted all these years past. Of their surface, their color,
their relative position, their number (to say nothing of
their size), one had hitherto entertained no kind of
definite idea. The. most careful study of plans and
measurements, the clearest photographs, the most elabo-
rate descriptions, had done little or nothing, after all, to
make one know the place beforehand. This undulating
table-land of sand and rock, pitted with open graves and
cumbered with mounds of shapeless masonry, is wholly
unlike the desert of our dreams. The pyramids of Cheops
and Chephren are bigger than we had expected; the pyra-
mid of Mycerinusis smaller. Here, too, are nine pyramids,
instead of three. They are all entered in the plans and
mentioned in the guide-books; but, somehow, one is un-
prepared to find them there, and cannot help looking upon
them as intruders. These six extra pyramids are small
•and greatly dilapidated. One, indeed, is little more than
a big cairn.
Even the great pyramid puzzles us with an unexpected
sense of unlikeness. We all know and have known from
childhood, that it was stripped of its outer blocks some
five hundred years ago to build Arab mosques and palaces;