Chapter XII
I come now, with the same view, to consider the destination of their famous “Pyramids.”187 In this pursuit the first thing that strikes us is the uniform precision and systematic design apparent in their architecture. They all have their sides accurately adapted to the four cardinal points, as the four apertures near the summit of most of ours indicate a similar regard to fidelity to the compass. In six of them which have been opened, the principal passage preserves the same inclination of 26° to the horizon, being directed towards the polar star. And I doubt not, were the ground within and around all of ours sufficiently explored, there would be found, in some at least, regular vistas to correspond with this description. Their obliquity too being so adjusted as to make the north side coincide with the obliquity of the sun’s rays at the summer’s solstice, has, combined with the former particulars, led some to suppose they were solely intended for astronomical uses; and certainly, if not altogether true, it bespeaks, at all events, an intimate acquaintance with astronomical rules,188 as well as a due regard to the principles of geometry.189
No one, I believe, has ever questioned the latter fact. Some, induced thereby, have thought them to be erected for the purpose of establishing the exact measure of the cubit; of which they happen to contain both in breadth and height a certain number of multiples. But as they were evidently constructed by persons well versed in all the niceties of exact measurement, and who consequently had no occasion for such colossal reference to refresh their memories, like the Lancasterian apparatus, it is ridiculous to suppose them erected with this view, nor should I have alluded to it but to expose its weakness. Others have fancied them intended for sepulchres; and as the Egyptians, taught by their ancient Chaldean victors, connected astronomy with their funereal and religious ceremonies, they seem not in this to be far astray, if we but extend the application to their sacred bulls and other animals, and not merely to their kings, as Herodotus would have us suppose.
The immense sarcophagus lying in the interior of the first or Great Pyramid, with the bone found by the Earl of Munster190 in the second, must put this question beyond the possibility of doubt; as Sir Everard Home, after a laborious examination of the properties of this relic, found it accurately to agree with the lower extremity of the thigh-bone of an ox, while it corresponded with that of no other animal.
In conformity with this conclusion were the discoveries of Belzoni some time before, in Upper Egypt, which abounds in specimens of the most splendid antiquities, in a catacomb amongst which, called “Bîban el Moluk,” that is “the gates of the king”—meaning thereby the universal king of the ancients, the generating principle of vegetation and life, of which Apis and Mnevis, Osiris and Typhon, were but the representatives among the Egyptians, as other nations had adopted equivalent forms and names, according to the genius of their climes and languages—I mean the Sun—well, in one of the numerous chambers of this catacomb, Belzoni discovered an exquisitely beautiful sarcophagus of alabaster, 9 feet 5 inches long, by 3 feet 9 inches wide, and 2 feet 1 inch high, covered within and without with hieroglyphics, and figures in intaglio, nearly in a perfect state, sounding like a bell, and as transparent as glass: from the extraordinary magnificence of which, he conceives, it must have been the depository of the remains of Apis; in which idea he is the more confirmed by having found the carcass of a bull embalmed with asphaltum, in the innermost chamber.
The passage in Herodotus, to which I before referred, appears to throw some light on the intricate subject which we are now pursuing. In lib. ii. p. 124, etc., “the father of historians” tells us that the two kings, who succeeded each other on the throne of Egypt, after the happy reign of Rhampsinitus and his predecessors, and to whom the building of those pyramids was reputedly ascribed, had shown themselves indeed brothers, not more by affinity of blood than by the similar outlines of their cruelty and intolerance. No species of oppression was by them left unattempted; no extreme of rigour or rapacious plunder by them unenforced: but what peculiarly characterised the hardship of their tyranny was the restraint they put upon the religion and pious exercises of their subjects; closing the portals of the temples where they were wont to adore, and preventing the oblation of their usual sacrifices.
Though Herodotus has been justly honoured with the designation of “Father of Historians,” he has also, perhaps, not so very justly been called “the Father of Errors”; and, as he himself admitted his incapability of obtaining any satisfactory insight into the original of those structures, may we not fairly conclude that, in the extract now cited, he either confounds those princes with the foreign dynasty which we have already established, or else, from the ignorance superinduced to obliterate their memory, mistakes the erection of some of the minor and later ones, which this “par nobile fratrum” may, indeed, have devised, in imitation of the three “mountains” built by the Uksi. What he states, however, is of value, as it points to a previous form of worship, and a system of government by an alien house. The prohibition of sacrifices and the closing the temple doors make this as clear as words can delineate anything. All we want, then, is to be informed what the particular temples alluded to were: and that they were the pyramids, will, I think, be conceded by everyone who has carefully perused the arguments here set down, and who has not his judgment warped by favourite plans of literary systems and speculative hypotheses.
This conclusion receives additional force from the conversation which Wilford, in his “Dissertation upon Egypt and the Nile,”191 tells us he had with several learned Brahmins, when, upon describing to them the form and bearings of the great Egyptian pyramid, one of them asked if it had not a communication under ground with the river Cali? Being answered that such communication was spoken of as having once existed, and that a well was still to be seen, they unanimously agreed that it was a temple appropriated to the worship of Padma-devi, and that the supposed tomb was a trough, which, on certain festivals, her priests used to fill with the sacred water and lotos-flowers.
Mr. Davison, British Consul to Algiers, when accompanying Mr. Wortley Montague to Egypt, in 1763, discovered here a chamber, before unnoticed, and descended, to a depth of 155 feet, the three successive reservoirs. The principal oblique passage has, since then, been traced by the very enterprising master of a merchant vessel, Captain Caviglia, 200 feet farther down than by any former explorer, and found to communicate with the bottom of the well, which is now filled with rubbish. A circulation of air being thus procured, he was emboldened to proceed 28 feet farther, which brought him to a spacious hall, 66 feet by 27 feet, unequal in altitude, and directly under the centre of the pyramid. In no instance yet recorded has any appearance presented itself of human remains within those apartments, nor indeed was there any possibility of conveying such thither, unless placed there before the erection of the pile itself; for the extremities of the gallery, which leads into the great chamber, are so narrow and circumscribed, that it is with difficulty one can effect an entrance into it, even by creeping upon his belly.
The symbolical anatomy prefigured in this contrivance, and which equally exhibits itself in all the temples of the ancients, as well under as over ground, is such as almost to have tempted me to make this the occasion on which I should uncover another secret of their mystic code. But a more concentrated opportunity will occur as we advance, and for which this intimation will answer as a prelude; meanwhile, I would have the reader soberly to bethink himself, what possible use could dead bodies have of wells of water? Is not such the type, as it is also the accompaniment, of life and activity? And does not this, of itself, subvert the absurdity of those temples having been erected as mere mausoleums for kings?
I have already hinted my confident belief that if the ground all, within, and around our pyramids were sufficiently examined, there would not be wanting indications of subterraneous passages. I am the more confirmed in this, my belief, from the appearances that presented themselves on the demolition of that at Downpatrick, in 1790, “to make room for the rebuilding of that part of the old cathedral next which it stood, and from which it was distant about forty feet. When the tower was thrown down,” continues Dubourdieu, in his Statistical Survey of the county, “and cleared away to the foundation, another foundation was discovered under it, and running directly across the site of the tower, which appeared to be a continuation of the church wall, which, at some period prior to the building of the tower, seemed to have extended considerably beyond it.” With great deference, however, to the authority of so respectable a writer, I hesitate not to proclaim that the second foundation so discovered was not a “continuation of the church wall,” but the remnant of some pagan structure, appertaining to the tower itself—in fact a Vihâr, or college for its priests—or else the vestige of some larger temple, and connected therewith, previously existing on the same locality.
That this announcement is correct will be apparent, from the superiority of masonic skill exhibited in this foundation, as well as in its having been upon a larger scale and ampler dimensions than what the Christian “cathedral” had ever occupied; “in the walls of which,” says my authority, “there are many pieces of cut stone that have evidently been used in some former building. The same circumstance may also be observed in several of the ruined churches at Clonmacnoise.”192
Nor ought this relic of an ancient pagan edifice to excite our surprise, when we are told that the temple of the “Syrian goddess,” which existed in the days of Lucian, was not that which was originally erected by Deucalion, but one built many ages after, on the same site, by Attis, Bacchus, or Semiramis.
With the church, therefore, or other Christian edifice, this “foundation” had no relation. St. Patrick was the first who erected one in that vicinity, to which he gave the name of Sgibol Phadruig, or Patrick’s Granary; having been built on the identical spot on which Dichu, son of Trichem, of the tribe of the Dalfiatachs, and lord of the territory of Lecale, had a granary constructed to preserve his corn, before that his gratitude for the saint, by whom he was just converted, induced him to consecrate the place where that event occurred, by raising thereon a house to the God of nature and of harvests.
Its situation, be it observed, was “two miles from the city of Down”;193 different, therefore, from that of the cathedral, as was also its form: having been built from north to south, at the solicitation of Dichu himself, agreeably to the plan of the former storehouse.
This took place in 433-34; and though, for concession’ sake, I may admit,—what yet is far from being my conviction,—that some of our Round Towers may have been erected subsequently to the Christian era, yet positive I must be that no one of them was after the successful mission of the Apostle of Ireland; and the explosion of the doctrines with which even the most modern of them may happen to be associated,—while the majority, and the real ones, I shall prove, belong to an infinitely earlier date.
As a further inducement to explore for cavities beneath, and connected with, our Round Towers, I beg leave to bring under review what Maundrel relates of two Round Pillars, which he met with in his journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem, on the sea-coast, a little to the south of Aradus, in the neighbourhood of Tripoli. He describes one of them as thirty-three feet high, composed of a pedestal, ten high and fifteen square, surmounted with a tall cylindrical stone, and capped with another in the form of a pyramid. The second was not quite so high—thirty feet two inches—its pedestal, which was supported by four lions, rudely carved at each corner, was in height six feet, being sixteen feet six inches square; the superstructure upon which was one single stone cut in the shape of a hemisphere. Each of these pillars, of which he gives accurate drawings, has under it several catacombs or sepulchral chambers, the entrances to which lie on the south side. He pronounces a third which he met with, as “a very ancient structure, and probably a place of sepulchre.”194
With the opinion of this judicious traveller I altogether concur, provided only, as said before, in reference to the pyramids, that the application be extended to the sacred bulls and crocodiles, serpents, dragons, and heifers, with the whole train of bestial divinities, which both Indians and Egyptians, and all the other polished nations of antiquity, thought proper to adopt as objects of their regard, and treat with the homage—though only commemorative, as they will tell you—of the One Great Supreme.195
This extension of the use will at once afford a solution of the otherwise unaccountable and unnecessary size of those cavities, and is further supported by Savary’s remark, made on occasion of his searching for the Egyptian Labyrinth, viz. that “amidst the ruins of the towns of Caroun, the attention is particularly fixed by several narrow, low, and very long cells, which seem to have had no other use than that of containing the bodies of the sacred crocodiles; these remains can only correspond with the labyrinth.” While Herodotus’s declaration, of his not being allowed to enter its vaults, on the score of their “containing within them the bodies of the fifteen kings, together with the sacred crocodiles,” should afford it a determination no longer liable to doubt.
Archer, also, when mentioning a very ancient Hindoo temple, at the south end of the fort of Gualior, resembling in shape those on the Coromandel coast, and decorated with much carving, says that “there was a subterranean communication with the plain at the north end, but the passage has been so long neglected as to be impassable.”
Am I not justified, therefore, in the conviction, from what I have already intimated, as to the complicated design of those sacred piles, that our Round Towers would be found similarly furnished with subterranean chambers? I do respectfully urge that such is my firm belief, and that it would be well worth the while of the learned community to investigate the accuracy of the surmise here put forward.