his purpose that for ages
afterwards his name was held in utter detestation, cannot have been
solely or even chiefly influenced by religious motives. It affords an
ample explanation of the behaviour of Cheops, in closing the temples and
forsaking the religion of his country, to suppose that the advantages
which he hoped to secure by building the pyramid depended in some way on
his adopting this course. The visitors from the East may have refused to
give their assistance on any other terms, or may have assured him that
the expected benefit could not be obtained if the pyramid were erected
by idolaters. It is certain, in any case, that they were opposed to
idolatry; and we have thus some means of inferring who they were and
whence they came. We know that one particular branch of one particular
race in the East was characterised by a most marked hatred of idolatry
in all its forms. Terah and his family, or, probably, a sect or division
of the Chaldaean people, went forth from Ur of the Chaldees, to go into
the land of Canaan--and the reason why they went forth we learn from a
book of considerable historical interest (the book of Judith) to have
been because 'they would not worship the gods of their fathers who were
in the land of the Chaldaeans.' The Bible record shows that members of
this branch of the Chaldaean people visited Egypt from time to time. They
were shepherds, too, which accords well with the account of Herodotus
above quoted. We can well understand that persons of this family would
have resisted all endeavours to secure their acquiescence in any scheme
associated with idolatrous rites. Neither promises nor threats would
have had much influence on them. It was a distinguished member of the
family, the patriarch Abraham, who said: 'I have lift up mine hand unto
the Lord, the most high God, the possessor of heaven and earth, that I
will not take from a thread even to a shoe-latchet, and that I will not
take anything that is thine, lest thou shouldest say, I have made Abram
rich.' Vain would all the promises and all the threats of Cheops have
been to men of this spirit. Such men might help him in his plans,
suggested, as the history shows, by teachings of their own, but it must
be on their own conditions, and those conditions would most certainly
include the utter rejection of idolatrous worship by the king in whose
behalf they worked, as well as by all who shared in their labours. It
seems probable that they conv