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. VIII.] PYRAMIDS AND THE SHEPHERDS. 505

an exaggerated account of the power of the Jewish
tribes in Egypt; but at all events the story of their
inroads into that country, as given by Josephus,
one of the copyists of Manetho, bears the evident
stamp of anachronism, and in some parts of pure
invention.

Whatever may have been the motive of the mys-
terious secrecy observed by the priesthood respect-
ing the original object of the pyramids, it does not
appear at all probable they were the work of
foreigners, or of a tyrant at variance with the
priests of the established religion of the country :
much less that they were accidentally made to cor-
respond with the four cardinal points, with their
faces of a certain angle, which, in other pyramids
to the southward, seems to increase in proportion
to the decrease of their latitude; nor would priests
and grandees of succeeding ages have felt so
anxious to have their tombs in the vicinity of monu-
ments, that, according to the too credulous Herodo-
tus, were solely memorials of their country's oppres-
sion. For my own part, I consider them purely
Egyptian, and totally inconsistent with the notions
of those Arab tribes, called Shepherds by Manetho,
whose invasion probably dated after their erection,
and whose expulsion must at least have preceded
the accession of the first Osirtesen; though that of
the Jews, with whom they have been confounded,
appears to have happened during the time of the
eighteenth dynasty.