opted by Professor Piazzi Smyth
and others, in our own time, and first suggested by John Taylor.
'Whereas other writers,' says Smyth, 'have generally esteemed that the
mysterious persons who directed the building of the Great Pyramid (and
to whom the Egyptians, in their traditions, and for ages afterwards,
gave an immoral and even abominable character) must therefore have been
very bad indeed, so that the world at large has always been fond of
standing on, kicking, and insulting that dead lion, whom they really
knew not; he, Mr. John Taylor, seeing how religiously bad the Egyptians
themselves were, was led to conclude, on the contrary, that those _they_
hated (and could never sufficiently abuse) might, perhaps, have been
pre-eminently good; or were, at all events, of _different religious
faith_ from themselves.' 'Combining this with certain unmistakable
historical facts,' Mr. Taylor deduced reasons for believing that the
directors of the building designed to record in its proportions, and in
its interior features, certain important religious and scientific
truths, not for the people then living, but for men who were to come
4000 years or so after.

I have already considered at length (see the preceding Essay) the
evidence on which this strange theory rests. But there are certain
matters connecting it with the above narrative which must here be
noticed. The mention of the shepherd Philition, who fed his flocks about
the place where the Great Pyramid was built, is a singular feature of
Herodotus's narrative. It reads like some strange misinterpretation of
the story related to him by the Egyptian priests. It is obvious that if
the word Philition did not represent a people, but a person, this
person must have been very eminent and distinguished--a shepherd-king,
not a mere shepherd. Rawlinson, in a note on this portion of the
narrative of Herodotus, suggests that Philitis was probably a
shepherd-prince from Palestine, perhaps of Philistine descent, 'but so
powerful and domineering, that it may be traditions of his oppressions
in that earlier age which, mixed up afterwards in the minds of later
Egyptians with the evils inflicted on their country by the subsequent
shepherds of better known dynasties, lent so much fear to their
religious hate of Shepherd times and that name.' Smyth, somewhat
modifying this view, and considering certain remarks of Manetho
respecting an alleged invasion of Egypt by shepherd-kings, 'men of an
ig