Note 19 — LETTER VII.
Reading edition
An essay “On the Construction of the Pyramids” was transmitted by me to the Royal Academy of Sciences, and printed, in accordance with a decree of the 3rd of August of the same year.—See the Monthly Report of the Academy in 1843, pp. 177-203, with three plates. [The following summary of Dr. Lepsius’ discovery, obtained from various sources, may not be unacceptable to the reader. At the commencement of each reign, the rock chamber, destined for the monarch’s grave, was excavated, and one course of masonry erected above it. If the king died in the first year of his reign, a casing was put upon it and a pyramid formed; but if the king did not die, another course of stone was added above and two of the same height and thickness on each side: thus in process of time the building assumed the form of a series of regular steps. These were cased over with stone, all the angles filled up, and stones placed for steps. Then, as Herodotus long since informed us (Euterpe, c. cxxv), the pyramid was finished from the top downward, by all the edges being cut away, and a perfect triangle only left.—See, in addition to Lepsius himself, Letronne, Dicuil, pp. 90-115, 1814; Athenæum, Bonomi, 16th Sept. 1843; J. W. Wild, 15th June, 1844. Wilkinson’s Materia Hieroglyphica, Malta, 1830, p. 14; and last, though not least, Gliddon’s Otia Egyptiaca, Lecture IV. Ethnological Journal, No. VII. p. 294.—K. R. H. M.]