alexander the great, after having extended his conquest to the indies, returned to babylon and there died in the thirty-third year of his age. byron, who died at this age, pronounces it fatal to genius. we will not class our savior with men of genius, as it would not be a just comparison to his superior talent or grace, but, if what byron says about the turn of genius be true, there can be little argument against him when these specimens can be taken into consideration. after this great man’s death at babylon, his empire was divided among the next great men of the earth, and the egyptian division fell to the ptolemies. they were a great family of the upper part of the nile, perhaps the thebiad, and are known to us as ptolemy 1st, 2d and 3d, &c. these kings were very learned, for they possessed the library of alexandria, and which caliph omar burned containing 700,000 volumes of manuscript. for six months they burnt books instead of wood to heat the water they bathed in. the word ptolemy means a class of kings. the emperors of rome were known successively as c?sars. the persians as darius, just as the louises of france were under the designation of one, two, and three. these titles of the throne originated with the great and kingly family of pharaohs. pharaoh hophra is the famous pharaoh that we are acquainted with in the scriptures. pharaoh necko is another celebrated pharaoh. the present cairo of egypt, was then the capitol of the greatest kings of the the earth, the pharaohs. it is still a magnificent city for its age. its population is variously estimated to be from 175 to 300,000. some as fine edifices are found here as in any part of the east. it was the memphis of old. here it was that pharaoh dwelt when he marched in pursuit of moses, when the cloud stood between them; here it is he is, to day, a mummy, if he was not embalmed in the red sea, but distinguished not; here it is the famine raged furiously and men sold themselves for food to joseph; here it was that moses had the power to turn ashes into dust, that flew over the land with the rapidity of a lightning flash, and infested the body of man with boils, and still the king loved the spot too well to give up one single foot of his powerful sway. here it was that greece and italy were schooled in all that they excelled; here it was that moses obtained his fundamental rules of governing nations of people, for he was “learned in all the learning of the egyptians,” and where was more? and here it is some one thing is found that all the savans’ talent cannot conjecture the design of its structure, i mean the pyramids. i was there to day, and gazed upward 470 odd feet in the air at its top. i say it because it is only necessary to see one to be confounded and awe struck. it is a spacious mass of solid layers of stone, one upon the other, and each from 25 to 32 feet in length.
what the great kings of egypt had such a tremendous mass of stone so systematically put together for, is a mystery to all the learning of our time, and still we know it must have been for no ordinary freak of talent, intelligence and power, such a structure was reared. the old historians tell us it took twenty years to build one, with a force of 100,000 hands. these one hundred thousand men were relieved every three months by another hundred thousand. these stones were hewn from the mountains in the desert. it took ten years to make a causeway on which to bring these immense stones to the building. each stone was originally adorned with engravings of animals, but now there is no vestige of them. the two largest in egypt, and perhaps in the world, are these two here before cairo. my dragoman insisted on my crawling in and seeing the wonders, but i could make nothing out of its hollow. it was lined with leather winged bats. if they were the sepulchre of kings, their bodies are long gone, though secure they might have been. in going to these pyramids, one walks over a pavement of dead bodies. i sunk in the sand, one hundred yards from the pyramid of cheops, and my foot caught in the ribs of a buried man, which i afterwards learned to be a mummy. oh, mummy! when the side of the mountains was filled with the dead in old times, it was usual to take out the oldest corpse and put them beneath the earth, and in consequence, the whole plain, from the pyramids to cairo, some six or seven miles, is macadamized with dead egyptians, perhaps some kings and queens. i find that pachas are reverenced here according to their wealth. if you ask an egyptian whether said pacha is a great man or not, he compares him to pachas of a like means. the pacha has all the learned men of the land around him. they now, as of old, carry their inkhorn tied to their waistband. no king, perhaps, of the earth is so absolute in will over his people as the present pacha of the turkisk empire. the kings of old time, no doubt, were more powerful in their absolute sway. when thebes had one hundred gates undecayed, she could send to war, two millions of men. such were egyptian kings of olden time, though black.
