Prof.  Petrie, however, who examined the Griza pyramids in 1881, and carefully measured them all up and finally settled their trigonometrical relation, came to the conclusion that Lepsius’s theory was entirely erroneous, and that every pyramid was built and now stands as it was originally planned.  Dr.

[Illustration:  111.jpg THE PYRAMIDS OF GIZA DURING THE INUNDATION.]

Borchardt, however, who is an architect by profession, has examined the pyramids again, and has come to the conclusion that Prof.  Petrie’s statement is not correct, and that there is an element of truth in Lepsius’s hypothesis.  He has shown that several of the pyramids, notably the First and Second at Giza, show unmistakable signs of a modified, altered, and enlarged plan; in fact, long-lived kings like Khufu seem to have added considerably to their pyramids and even to have entirely remodelled them on a larger scale.  This has certainly been the case with the Great Pyramid.  We can, then, accept Lepsius’s theory as modified by Dr. Borchardt.

Another interesting point has arisen in connection with the Great Pyramid.  Considerable difference of opinion has always existed between Egyptologists and the professors of European archaeology with regard to the antiquity of the knowledge of iron in Egypt.  The majority of the Egyptologists have always maintained, on the authority of the inscriptions, that iron was known to the ancient Egyptians from the earliest period.  They argued that the word for a certain metal in old Egyptian was the same as the Coptic word for “iron.”  They stated that in the most ancient religious texts the Egyptians spoke of the firmament of heaven as made of this metal, and they came to the conclusion that it was because this metal was blue in colour, the hue of iron or steel; and they further pointed out that some of the weapons in the tomb-paintings were painted blue and others red, some being of iron, that is to say, others of copper or bronze.  Finally they brought forward as incontrovertible evidence an actual fragment of worked iron, which had been found between two of the inner blocks, down one of the air-shafts, in the Great Pyramid.  Here was an actual piece of iron of the time of the IVth Dynasty, about 3500 B.C.

This conclusion was never accepted by the students of the development of the use of metal in prehistoric Europe, when they came to know of it.  No doubt their incredulity was partly due to want of appreciation of the Egyptological evidence, partly to disinclination to accept a conclusion which did not at all agree with the knowledge they had derived from their own study of prehistoric Europe.  In Southern Europe it was quite certain that iron did not come into use till about 1000 B.C.; in Central Europe, where the discoveries at Hallstatt in the Salzkammergut exhibit the transition from the Age of Bronze to that of Iron, about 800 B.C.  The exclusively Iron Age culture of La Tene cannot be dated earlier than the eighth