So far as the fulfilment of the object for which they were erected is concerned, the Pyramids of Gizeh are no more than a melancholy monument of the vanity of human wishes, and an illustration of how human cupidity or malice will in the long run break through the most elaborate system of defence. Professor Petrie has suggested that Sir Thomas Browne was in the wrong when he wrote that “to be but pyramidally extant is a fallacy of duration,” and comments upon that characteristic utterance: “Khufu has provided the grandest monument that any man ever had, and is by this means better remembered than any other Eastern king throughout history.” That is so; and yet one cannot help remembering that this was not at all Khufu’s object in the rearing of his vast mausoleum. It was not to keep his memory green, but to keep his body intact that the greatest builder of the world raised the Great Pyramid, and in that simple object he utterly failed, as did all his brother pyramid-builders great and small. The evidence shows that not in one single case has greed or hatred failed to overcome all the obstacles placed in their way by royal power. Every pyramid known has been rifled in ancient times, probably not long after its builder was laid to rest in his stately tomb, and the duration of the mass of senseless stone, which bids fair to be as long as that of the everlasting hills, only mocks the hopes with which it was reared. The pyramid remains; but the jewel for whose sake so costly a casket was devised is long ages since “blown about the desert dust.”