That the three great Pyramids of Gizeh were erected by Chufu, Schafra, and Menkeres, the Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus of Herodotus, we now know with as much certainty as that we owe the Pantheon to Agrippa, and the Coliseum to the Flavian Emperors. We also know with equal certainty that they were built between five and six thousand years ago. From these Pyramids to the Faioum extends along the edge of the desert a region of Pyramids, and of circumjacent Necropoleis. Not far from an hundred Pyramids have been already noted. These were the tombs of royalty. The uncrowned members of the royal family, the ministers of state, the priests, and the other great men of the dynasties of the Old Monarchy, lie buried around. Their tombs, excavated and built in the rock, are innumerable. Some of them reaching seventy feet, or more, back into the mountain (the tombs of the New Monarchy at Thebes were several times as large), are constructed of enormous pieces of polished granite, most exquisitely fitted together. Some are covered with sculptures and paintings, traced with much freedom, and a grand and pleasing simplicity. They describe the offices, occupations, and possessions, and the religious ideas and practices of those for whom they were constructed. Great was the antiquity of Thebes before European history begins to dawn. It was declining before the foundations of Rome were laid. Its palmy days ante-dated that event by as long a period as separates us from the first Crusade. But the building of the great Pyramids of Gizeh preceded the earliest traditions of Thebes by a thousand years. In this Pyramid region, and its Necropoleis, we have a chapter in the history of our race, the importance of which every one can comprehend. It is a history which, while in the main it omits events, gives us fuller, and more genuine and authentic materials than any written history could give, for a complete understanding of the everyday life, and arts of the people. And the time for which it gives us this information is so remote, that there is no contemporary history of any other people, which we can compare with it, or with which we can in any way bring it into connexion. It has nowhere any points of contact. It is a rich stream of history that runs through a barren waste of early time, like the Nile itself through the Libyan Desert, with a complete absence of affluents. Having, then, made out the position of this epoch with respect to general history, the next point is to ascertain as distinctly as we can what were the arts, the knowledge, the manners, the customs of the period, that is of those who were buried in these Pyramids and Necropoleis. When they lived, and what they were, give to them their historic interest and importance.