Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

Chap. VI.] FOUND ON THE PYRAMIDS. 327

mental, could scarcely have been used for such
a purpose. His " figures of animals" on the
causeway appear to allude more particularly to
hieroglyphics; but as the exteriors, both of the
causeway and the pyramids, are lost, we cannot
now decide this question. At all events, we may be
certain that the stones, mentioned by some writers,
in the walls of the adjacent tombs, were not taken
from the pyramids; nor is any one of them anterior
in date to the great pyramid, since their position
is evidently regulated by the direction of that
monument. In the hieroglyphic inscriptions of
the tombs, the names of the kings are of very great
antiquity, long before the accession of the sixteenth
dynasty; and we may trace, in one instance, a name
very much resembling that of Suphis, the supposed
founder of the Great Pyramid. Some of the royal
ovals are preceded by the title of priest instead of
king, which occurs again in some of the oldest
tombs in Upper Egypt; and this fact alone would
suffice to prove their great antiquity, and conse-
quently a fortiori that of the pyramids themselves*.
I do not pretend to explain or decide the real
object for which these stupendous monuments were
constructed, but feel persuaded that they may have

* Contrary to the opinion of some, who suppose from the pyra-
mids not being mentioned in the Bible, or in Homer, that they
did not exist before the Exodus, or in the time of the poet. The
presence of the name of Remeses the Great (who preceded the
Trojan war) in a very secondary position, sufficiently answers the
latter objection.