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Excerpt from The Mechanical Triumphs of the Ancient Egyptians As a result of three visits to Egypt it has been my experience that, notwithstanding the ulti mate paramount interest of travellers in the manners and customs of the ancient Egyptians and the nature of their stupendous monuments, the question most frequently asked with regard to the latter is not why did they create them, but how. How did they transport these great stones, and how did they lift them to the posi tions in which they are now found In many cases the cause of this very practical inquiry is, perhaps, not far to seek, for this is a mechanical age, and it is probable that fifty per cent. Of the people who visit Egypt to-day owe that privi lege to the means derived from some applica tion of the mechanic arts. With them the idea is instinctive but, indeed, with everybody it may be said that it is the physical problem which first attracts the mind, and not the aesthetic, or the ethnographic, or the religious. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.