Even four or five thousand years before our era, men were too sagacious to reckon upon the piety or gratitude of an heir. For the closing and final sealing up of the pyramid, its builder and destined inhabitant was obliged to depend upon his survivors, he could not do it himself. Moreover, the external completion, which, in the case of the greater monuments, must have been a long and costly matter, had to be entrusted to the same hands. The reigning king, so long as he was not too sternly reminded of the end by disease or the infirmities of age, must have felt great reluctance to order the cessation of the work which had gone on under his own eye for so many years, or to arrest that course of development which, after being a continual source of pride and pleasure to himself, might end in giving him a monument surpassing those of his famous predecessors. He was, therefore, very likely to be surprised by death with his tomb still unfinished, with the final cope-stone still upon the ground, or, even when that had been put in place so as to show the total height, with the casing of polished stone which was destined to hide the inner courses of the masonry and the entrances, still incomplete. Upon two-thirds or three-quarters of each face, his pyramid would still present the aspect which necessarily belonged to it during the period of its construction; an aspect which has again distinguished the great pyramid since it was despoiled of its casing. As each course was set back from that upon which it was placed, the final _ensemble_ looked like an enormous staircase with steps gradually diminishing in length as they neared the summit. There were many of the Egyptian princes who from want of patience or zeal, or from some other motive, failed to carry on the enterprise of their predecessors to its destined conclusion. We are ignorant as to the condition of the three great pyramids of Gizeh at the death of their projectors. But they appear to have been finished in most of their details with a care which would seem to indicate that Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, must have been there to overlook the smallest details of their execution. Other pyramids, on the other hand, seem to have been left in a comparatively imperfect state.