them for tools and building purposes as early as the time of the IVth Dynasty, about 3500 B.C.  Certainly dated examples of its use occur under the IVth, VIth, and XIIIth Dynasties.  Why this knowledge was not communicated to Europe before about 1000 B.C. we cannot say, nor are Egyptologists called upon to find the reason.  So the Great Pyramid has played an interesting part in the settlement of a very important question.

It was supposed by Prof.  Petrie that the piece of iron from the Great Pyramid had been part of some arrangement employed for raising the stones into position.  Herodotus speaks of the machines, which were used to raise the stones, as made of little pieces of wood.  The generally accepted explanation of his meaning used to be that a small crane or similar wooden machine was used for hoisting the stone by means of pulley and rope; but M. Legrain, the director of the works of restoration in the Great Temple of Karnak, has explained it differently.  Among the “foundation deposits” of the XVIIIth Dynasty at Der el-Bahari and elsewhere, beside the little plaques with the king’s name and the model hoes and vases, was usually found an enigmatic wooden object like a small cradle, with two sides made of semicircular pieces of wood, joined along the curved portion by round wooden bars.  M. Legrain has now explained this as a model of the machine used to raise heavy stones from tier to tier of a pyramid or other building, and illustrations of the method of its use may be found in Choisy’s Art de Batir chez les anciens Egyptiens.  There is little doubt that this primitive machine is that to which Herodotus refers as having been used in the erection of the pyramids.

The later historian, Diodorus, also tells us that great mounds or ramps of earth were used as well, and that the stones were dragged up these to the requisite height.  There is no doubt that this statement also is correct.  We know that the Egyptians did build in this very way, and the system has been revived by M. Legrain for his work at Karnak, where still exist the remains of the actual mounds and ramps by which the great western pylon was erected in Ptolemaic times.  Work carried on in this way is slow and expensive, but it is eminently suited to the country and understood by the people.  If they wish to put a great stone architrave weighing many tons across the top of two columns, they do not hoist it up into position; they rear a great ramp or embankment of earth against the two pillars, half-burying them in the process, then drag the architrave up the ramp by means of ropes and men, and put it into position.  Then the ramp is cleared away.  This is the ancient system which is now followed at Karnak, and it is the system by which, with the further aid of the wooden machines, the Great Pyramid and its compeers were erected in the days of the IVth Dynasty. Plus cela change, plus c’est la meme chose.