I Felt Exceedingly Glad That I Had Not Made The Rascal A Present.

I visited the very ancient Pyramids of Aboukir and Sakkara.

There are many of these, and of various shapes and sizes, and it struck me that, taken together, they might be considered as showing the progress and perfection (such as it is) of pyramidical architecture. One of the Pyramids at Sakkara is almost a rival for the full-grown monster at Ghizeh; others are scarcely more than vast heaps of brick and stone: these last suggested to me the idea that after all the Pyramid is nothing more nor less than a variety of the sepulchral mound so common in most countries (including, I believe, Hindustan, from whence the Egyptians are supposed to have come). Men accustomed to raise these structures for their dead kings or conquerors would carry the usage with them in their migrations, but arriving in Egypt, and seeing the impossibility of finding earth sufficiently tenacious for a mound, they would approximate as nearly as might be to their ancient custom by raising up a round heap of stones - in short, conical pyramids. Of these there are several at Sakkara, and the materials of some are thrown together without any order or regularity. The transition from this simple form to that of the square angular pyramid was easy and natural, and it seemed to me that the gradations through which the style passed from infancy up to its mature enormity could plainly be traced at Sakkara.

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