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Excerpt from The Pyramids of Giza Everyone who comes to Egypt has heard of the pyramids, but comparatively few know more about them than that they are tall and pointed, and, in a vague way, that they are very old. Some people have an idea that they were the buildings that the Children of Israel built for Pharaoh under the lash of Egyptian overseers, and it surprises many when they come to realise that the pyramids had been standing for more than a thousand years before the Children of Israel ever saw Egypt. Truly the pyramids are worth seeing beyond most sights that men travel far to see; they are the oldest structures of stone in all the world and they are among the great things which cannot be hackneyed or belittled by the crowds that go to look at them: electric trams and picnic parties round about their base may seem incongruous and vulgar, but let us move but a few yards away into the solitude of the desert and we cannot but feel the solemn majesty of these mighty tombs which have looked down on so many generations of mankind. For they are tombs, the greatest tombs in the world; tombs of kings who believed themselves gods and, nearly 5000 years ago, prepared for themselves a resting place that they thought fitting for them. Great kings and wealthy they must have been to have possessed such vast sums as the Pyramids must have cost. How did they get their wealth? Why are their tombs here at Giza? Why did they want to build such tombs at all? 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,