ones on top of the graves. These little mounds
gradually grew in size, because the rich people built higher mounds than
the poor and there was a good deal of competition to see who could make
the highest hill of stones. The record was made by King Khufu, whom the
Greeks called Cheops and who lived thirty centuries before our era. His
mound, which the Greeks called a pyramid (because the Egyptian word for
high was pir-em-us) was over five hundred feet high.

It covered more than thirteen acres of desert which is three times as
much space as that occupied by the church of St. Peter, the largest
edifice of the Christian world.

During twenty years, over a hundred thousand men were busy carrying the
necessary stones from the other side of the river--ferrying them across
the Nile (how they ever managed to do this, we do not understand),
dragging them in many instances a long distance across the desert and
finally hoisting them into their correct position. But so well did
the King's architects and engineers perform their task that the narrow
passage-way which leads to the royal tomb in the heart of the stone
monster has never yet been pushed out of shape by the weight of those
thousands of tons of stone which press upon it from all sides.

THE STORY OF EGYPT

THE RISE AND FALL OF EGYPT

THE river Nile was a kind friend but occasionally it was a hard
taskmaster. It taught the people who lived along its banks the noble art
of "team-work." They depended upon each other to build their irrigation
trenches and keep their dikes in repair. In this way they learned how
to get along with their neighbours and their mutual-benefit-association
quite easily developed into an organised state.

Then one man grew more powerful than most of his neighbours and he
became the leader of the community and their commander-in-chief when the
envious neighbours of western Asia invaded the prosperous valley. In
due course of time he became their King and ruled all the land from the
Mediterranean to the mountains of the west.

But these political adventures of the old Pharaohs (the word meant
"the Man who lived in the Big House") rarely interested the patient and
toiling peasant of the grain fields. Provided he was not obliged to pay
more taxes to his King than he thought just, he accepted the rule of
Pharaoh as he accepted the rule of Mighty Osiris.

It was different however when a foreign invader came and robbed him of
his possessions.