=Memphis and the Pyramids.=--Memphis, built by the first king of
Egypt, was protected by an enormous dike. The village has existed for
more than five thousand years; but since the thirteenth century the
inhabitants have taken the stones of its ruins to build the houses of
Cairo; what these people left the Nile recaptured. The Pyramids, not
far from Memphis, are contemporaneous with the old empire; they are
the tombs of three kings of the fourth dynasty. The greatest of the
pyramids, 480 feet high, required the labor of 100,000 men for thirty
years.[11] To raise the stones for it they built gradually ascending
platforms which were removed when the structure was completed.
=Egyptian Civilization.=--The statues, paintings, and instruments
which are taken from the tombs of this epoch give evidence of an
already civilized people. When all the other eminent nations of
antiquity--the Hindoos, Persians, Jews, Greeks, Romans--were still in
a savage state, 3,500 years before our era, the Egyptians had known
for a long time how to cultivate the soil, to weave cloths, to work
metals, to paint, sculpture, and to write; they had an organized
religion, a king, and an administration.
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