DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.12249#0224
188 THEORIES EXPLANATORY OE EGYPTIAN SEPULTURE.
when failing strength foretold him his end drew nigh,
the outlines of the growing pyramid were kept in
correspondent approach to completion.* And this is
alleged to have heen the guiding principle which deter-
mined the size, as if the relations betwen life and death
were commonly regulated by so nicely graduated a
scale,—as if the duration of the former were invariably
to be estimated according to present vigour, which was
always sapped only by a gradual and forewarning decay,
—as if mortal man either could or Avould arrive at a
reasonably just conclusion as to the length of days in
store for him. Yet, in the present case, it Avould be
necessary to assume this, not only to give validity to
the alleged general rule, but, prominently, with a view
to the special circumstance of the close juxtaposition
of many of the pyramids, particularly the smaller
ones.f The builders of these would require to be sup-
posed to have possessed enough prescience to know the
given and very limited term of life awaiting them, or
they would not have selected sites whereon any con-
siderable expansion of their tombs would have been
impossible, by reason of the close proximity of similar
monuments.
* Lepsius's Letters from Egypt, p. G5, and his paper Ueher den
Bau der Pyramiden.
f Those who may not have seen the Held of pyramids at Gcezeh
will And their relative positions in the plan affixed to Wilkinson's Map
of Thebes, and inserted on a smaller scale in his Handbook for Egypt,
1858, p. 1G5. The same careful observer has pointed to their mutual
proximity as an objection to Dr. Lepsius's hypothesis. Note to Kaw-
liason's Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 203.
when failing strength foretold him his end drew nigh,
the outlines of the growing pyramid were kept in
correspondent approach to completion.* And this is
alleged to have heen the guiding principle which deter-
mined the size, as if the relations betwen life and death
were commonly regulated by so nicely graduated a
scale,—as if the duration of the former were invariably
to be estimated according to present vigour, which was
always sapped only by a gradual and forewarning decay,
—as if mortal man either could or Avould arrive at a
reasonably just conclusion as to the length of days in
store for him. Yet, in the present case, it Avould be
necessary to assume this, not only to give validity to
the alleged general rule, but, prominently, with a view
to the special circumstance of the close juxtaposition
of many of the pyramids, particularly the smaller
ones.f The builders of these would require to be sup-
posed to have possessed enough prescience to know the
given and very limited term of life awaiting them, or
they would not have selected sites whereon any con-
siderable expansion of their tombs would have been
impossible, by reason of the close proximity of similar
monuments.
* Lepsius's Letters from Egypt, p. G5, and his paper Ueher den
Bau der Pyramiden.
f Those who may not have seen the Held of pyramids at Gcezeh
will And their relative positions in the plan affixed to Wilkinson's Map
of Thebes, and inserted on a smaller scale in his Handbook for Egypt,
1858, p. 1G5. The same careful observer has pointed to their mutual
proximity as an objection to Dr. Lepsius's hypothesis. Note to Kaw-
liason's Herodotus, vol. ii. p. 203.