of ancient Egypt cannot as yet be fixed with exact accuracy, but
the disagreements between the various students of the subject
need give us little concern. For our present purpose it does not
in the least matter whether the pyramids were built three
thousand or four thousand years before the beginning of our era.
It suffices that they date back to a period long antecedent to
the beginnings of civilization in Western Europe. They prove that
the Egyptian of that early day had attained a knowledge of
practical mechanics which, even from the twentieth-century point
of view, is not to be spoken of lightly. It has sometimes been
suggested that these mighty pyramids, built as they are of great
blocks of stone, speak for an almost miraculous knowledge on the
part of their builders; but a saner view of the conditions gives
no warrant for this thought. Diodoras, the Sicilian, in his
famous World's History, written about the beginning of our era,
explains the building of the pyramids by suggesting that great
quantities of earth were piled against the side of the rising
structure to form an inclined plane up which the blocks of stone
were dragged. He gives us certain figures, based, doubtless, on
reports made to him by Egyptian priests, who in turn drew upon
the traditions of their country, perhaps even upon written
records no longer preserved. He says that one hundred and twenty
thousand men were employed in the construction of the largest
pyramid, and that, notwithstanding the size of this host of
workers, the task occupied twenty years. We must not place too
much dependence upon such figures as these, for the ancient
historians are notoriously given to exaggeration in recording
numbers; yet we need not doubt that the report given by Diodorus
is substantially accurate in its main outlines as to the method
through which the pyramids were constructed. A host of men
putting their added weight and strength to the task, with the aid
of ropes, pulleys, rollers, and levers, and utilizing the
principle of the inclined plane, could undoubtedly move and
elevate and place in position the largest blocks that enter into
the pyramids or--what seems even more wonderful--the most
gigantic obelisks, without the aid of any other kind of mechanism
or of any more occult power. The same hands could, as Diodorus
suggests, remove all trace of the debris of construction and
leave the pyramids and obelisks standing in weird isolation, as
if sprung into being through a miracle.


ASTRONOMICAL SCIENCE

It has been necessary to bear in mind these phases of practical
civilization because much that we know of the purely scientific
attainments of the Egyptians is based upon modern observation of
their pyramids and temples. It was early observed, for example,
that the pyramids are obviously oriented as regards the direction
in which they face, in strict accordance with some astronomical
principle. Early in the nineteenth century the Frenchman Biot
made interesting studies in regard to this subject, and a hundred
years later, in our own time, Sir Joseph Norman Lockyer,
following up the work of various intermediary observers, has
given the subject much attention, making it the central theme of
his work on The Dawn of Astronomy.[1] Lockyer's researches make
it clear that in the main the temples of Egypt were oriented with
reference to the point at which the sun rises on the day of the
summer solstice. The time of the solstice had peculiar interest
for the Egyptians, because it corresponded rather closely with
the time of the rising of the Nile. The floods of that river
appear with very great regularity; the on-rushing tide reaches
the region of Heliopolis and Memphis almost precisely on the day
of the summer solstice. The time varies at different stages of
the river's course, but as the civilization of the early
dynasties centred at Memphis, observations made at this place had
widest vogue.

Considering the all-essential character of the Nile
floods-without which civilization would be impossible in
Egypt--it is not strange that the time of their appearance should
be taken as marking the beginning of a new year. The fact that
their coming coincides with the solstice makes such a division of
the calendar perfectly natural. In point of fact, from the
earliest periods of which records have come down to us, the new
year of the Egyptians dates from the summer solstice. It is
certain that from the earliest historical periods the Egyptians
were aware of the approximate length of the year. It would be
strange were it otherwise, considering the ease with which a
record of days could be kept from Nile flood to Nile flood, or
from solstice to solstice. But this, of course, applies only to
an approximate count. There is some reason to believe that in the
earliest period the Egyptians made this count only 360 days. The
fact that their year was divided into twelve months of thirty
days each lends color to this belief; but, in any event, the
mistake was discovered in due time and a partial remedy was
applied through the interpolation of a "little month" of five
days between the end of the twelfth month and the new year. This
nearly but not quite remedied the matter. What it obviously
failed to do was to take account of that additional quarter of a
day which really rounds out the actual year.

It would have been a vastly convenient thing for humanity had it
chanced that the earth had so accommodated its rotary motion with
its speed of transit about the sun as to make its annual flight
in precisely 360 days. Twelve lunar months of thirty days each
would then have coincided exactly with the solar year, and most
of the complexities of the calendar, which have so puzzled
historical students, would have been avoided; but, on the other
hand, perhaps this very simplicity would have proved detrimental


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