e stones were brought as
close as [--] inch, or, in fact, into contact, and the mean
opening of the joint was but [--] inch, yet the builders
managed to fill the joint with cement, despite the great
area of it, and the weight of the stone to be moved--some 16
tons. To merely place such stones in exact contact at the
sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement in the
joint seems almost impossible."

The long low flat mass which the finished tomb presented to the eye
is wanting in grace, but it has the characteristics of strength and
indestructibility well suited to an "eternal house." The facade,
however, was not wanting in a certain graceful severity: the play of
light and shade distributed over its surface by the stelae, niches, and
deep-set doorways, varied its aspect in the course of the day, without
lessening the impression of its majesty and serenity which nothing
could disturb. The pyramids themselves are not, as we might imagine,
the coarse and ill-considered reproduction of a mathematical figure
disproportionately enlarged. The architect who made an estimate for that
of Kheops, must have carefully thought out the relative value of the
elements contained in the problem which had to be solved--the vertical
height of the summit, the length of the sides on the ground line,
the angle of pitch, the inclination of the lateral faces to one
another--before he discovered the exact proportions and the arrangement
of lines which render his monument a true work of art, and not merely a
costly and mechanical arrangement of stones.*

* Cf. Borchardt's article, _Wie wurden die Boschungen der
Pyramiden bestimmt?_ in which the author--an architect by
profession as well as an Egyptologist--interprets the
theories and problems of the _Rhind mathematical Papyrus_ in
a new manner, comparing the result with his own
calculations, made from measurements of pyramids still
standing, and in which he shows, by an examination of the
diagrams discovered on the wall of a mastaba at Medum, that
the Egyptian contractors of the Memphite period were, at
that early date, applying the rules and methods of procedure
which we find set forth in the Papyri of Theban times.

The impressions which he desired to excite, have been felt by all who
came after him when brought face to face with the pyramids. From a great
distance they appear like mountain-pe