Does This Solve the Mystery of the Pyramids?

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXV, Issue VI, 11 August 1900, Page 267

Does This Solve the Mystery of the Pyramids?

For centuries Egyptologists and archaeologists have licen trying’ to find out the exact significance of the great pyramids of Egypt. Now at last the problem seems to Im- solved. This statement is-especially true in regard to the pyramids of Gizeh. otherwise known as the Cheops or Chufru pyramid. Hitherto it lias been supposed t hat this immense structure was designed as the mausoleum of its royal founder, but ample evidence is now forthcoming that it was primarily designed to serve as a temple in which candidates for initiation into the higher mysteries of the Egyptians might perform the requisite rights. Many years ago the question was asked: If the pyramid of Gizeli is merely a royal mausoleum, why does it contain so many stately halls and corridors, and why was a secret chamber constructed under ground since the lipper chambers would have sufficed as a vault for the remains of the great king? On the other baud, if it was ever anything else than a burial place, why is an immense granite sarcophagus the most conspicuous object in it? There is an Arabian tradition that the pyramids were built before the flood in order that the intellectual treasures of Egypt might be preserved in them, and during recent years more than one scientist has expressed, though somewhat guardedly, the opinion that the secret chambers might ben used for purposes of initiation. A key to this entire mystery has now been found in that wonderful

work. "The Book of the Dead." which Richard Lcpsius. a distinguished German Egyptologist, discovered some years ago in the tomb of a priest named Auf Ankh, the original papyrus of which is now preserved in Turin. Scholars who examined it soon alter it was discovered sa-d ibat it was ai< « xposition, more or less fantastic, «>f the life led by Egyptians after death. The god Thoth was believed to le the author, and. according to Ebeis, the book tells us much about the God idea of the Egyptians as will as altoiii their dogmas, their interpretations, tin it mythology, their morals and their faith in immortality. A copy of the work, it is sail!, was placed in the graves of those who died, ami portions of it were inscribed on many tombs, with the object of pointing cut to the dead the right road through th ’ other world ami of keeping ever in their memory the “right word," which alone could ,-eive them as a weapon. A recent and a more thorough examination of this book, however, shows that it is far more than “a strange collection of religious and magical texts,” or than a mere exposition of the views of Egyptians in regard to a future life, and that Lepsius erred somewhat in entitling it "The Book of the Dead.” Instead of being a book of instruction for the dead, it is. we are told, an authoritative textbook for those intended to be initiated info the higher mysteries of the Egyptians. That the pyramid of Gizeh was used for the purpose of initiating can.lidales in this manner is very evident, to those who have studied “The Book of the Dead" under the new light that has been thrown on it.