There is no longer any doubt that all the pyramids, from the first imperfect conception of the form in the Step-Pyramid of Saqqara, through the giants of Gizeh, down to the crumbling heaps of brickwork which are all that remain of some of the later fabrics, were built simply and solely as tombs, and that their one object was to render the resting-place of their royal tenant as secure as precautions could make it from the attacks of dynastic enemies or mere robbers. The pyramid was just one pathetic expression of that marvellously persistent passion which gave us the tomb-chambers of Abydos, with their storerooms for the supply of the dead king’s wants in the Underworld, the Mummy with all its wonderful elaboration of means for preserving the shape and likeness of the dead man, the Funerary Statue, with its amazingly lifelike portrait of the man whose place it was designed to take when time had reduced the mummy to dust, and the soul still craved a recognisable dwelling-place, and the long, rock-hewn galleries of the Valley of the Kings, with their pictured representations of all that could help their owner through the dangers and difficulties of the long journey to the Egyptian Fields of Contentment. No race has ever been so possessed by any religious idea as was the ancient Egyptian by the faith that it was possible to secure immortal life for humanity beyond the gates of death, possible, but difficult to the last degree, and needing all the effort which could be given to secure so great and so difficult an end; and the Great Pyramid is just the most colossal seal ever put on that creed, expressing, as nothing else ever could, both the intensity of the conviction and the consciousness of the extreme difficulty of its attainment in actual fact. The Egyptian Pharaoh built his pyramid as the expression of his faith in life everlasting; he built it as huge and as massy as he could, as the expression of his consciousness of the numberless difficulties and dangers which compassed the road which led to the attainment of immortality, and of his determination that, so far as human effort could secure it, he would be secured against everything which might prejudice his chance of winning eternity.