But no monuments have ever excited so much curiosity and wonder as the Pyramids, not in consequence of any particular beauty or ingenuity in their construction, but because of their immense size and unknown age.  None but sacerdotal monarchs would ever have erected them; none but a fanatical people would ever have toiled upon them.  We do not know for what purpose they were raised, unless as sepulchres for kings.  They are supposed to have been built at a remote antiquity, between two thousand and three thousand years before Christ.  Lepsius thought that the oldest of these Pyramids were built more than three thousand years before Christ.  The Pyramid of Cheops, at Memphis, covers a square whose side is seven hundred and sixty-eight feet, and rises into the air nearly five hundred feet.  It is a solid mass of stone, which has suffered less from time than the mountains near it.  Possibly it stands over an immense substructure, in which may yet be found the lore of ancient Egypt; it may even prove to be the famous labyrinth of which Herodotus speaks, built by the twelve kings of Egypt.  According to this author, one hundred thousand men worked on this monument for forty years.

The palaces of the kings are mere imitations of the temples, their only difference of architecture being that their rooms are larger and in greater numbers.  Some think that the famous labyrinth was a collective palace of many rulers.

Of Babylonian architecture we know little beyond what the Hebrew Scriptures and ancient authors tell us.  But though nothing survives of ancient magnificence, we know that a city whose walls, according to Herodotus, were eighty-seven feet in thickness, three hundred and thirty-seven in height, and sixty miles in circumference, and in which were one hundred gates of brass, must have had considerable architectural splendor.  This account of Babylon, however, is probably exaggerated, especially as to the height of the walls.  The tower of Belus, the Palace of Nebuchadnezzar, and the Obelisk of Semiramis were probably wonderful structures, certainly in size, which is one of the conditions of architectural effect.

The Tyrians must have carried architecture to considerable perfection, since the Temple of Solomon, one of the most magnificent in the ancient world, was probably built by artists from Tyre.  It was not remarkable for size,—­it was, indeed, very small,—­but it had great splendor of decoration.  It was of quadrangular outline, erected upon a solid platform of stone, and bearing a striking resemblance to the oldest Greek temples, like those of Aegina and Paestum.  The portico of the Temple as rebuilt by Herod was one hundred and eighty feet high, and the Temple itself was entered by nine gates, thickly coated with silver and gold.  The inner sanctuary was covered on all sides with plates of gold, and was dazzling to the eye.  The various courts and porticos and palaces with which it was surrounded gave to it a very imposing effect.