It is worth noticing, by the way, that Mandeville was one of the last who saw the original inscriptions on the Great Pyramid. The construction of Sultan Hassan’s Mosk, the materials for which were supplied by the outer flakes of this Pyramid, was completed about the middle of the fourteenth century. Mandeville was in Egypt immediately before its commencement, and mentions the inscriptions. Notices of them are also to be found in several Arabian and other writers of earlier date. These were what Herodotus saw, and refers to. Some others, both in Greek and Latin, had been added during the period of Ptolemaic and Cæsarian domination. When the Father of History saw, and had them interpreted to him, they were more than 2,000 years old. The knight of St. Albans, 1,700 years later, looked upon them in blank ignorance. Here we have brought together, as it were, in a single canvas, the primæval Egyptian, the inquisitive Greek, and the adventurous Englishman. What would not one now give to behold such inscriptions, on such a building, and with such a history? They had stood for nearly 4,000 years; and were capable, probably, of standing 4,000 years more: at all events, at this day, we might, certainly, be reading what Cheops had inscribed, and Herodotus and Mandeville had seen, if (we need not say anything about Sultan Hassan) Mohamed had been less of an ignorant barbarian. What destroyed these inscriptions, just as it had overthrown a civilization it was incapable of reconstructing, was the grand and luminous formula that ‘God is God, and Mohamed his Prophet.’ This, which the true believer takes for a summary of all knowledge, is, in fact, nothing but the profession and apotheosis of all ignorance. It does excellently well for Mecca, and still better for Timbuctoo. But, however, as it is the summary of all knowledge, those who utter it have attained (how easy then is the achievement) the highest point man can reach. They can have on intellectual sympathy, or moral connexion with the ages that preceded its announcement. So also the ages that are to come (why there should be such ages does not appear) can never be, in anything, one step in advance of them. God can never be anything but God, and he never can have any prophet but Mohamed: that is to say, men must never conceive the idea of God otherwise than as Mohamed conceived it. This was what destroyed the inscriptions Cheops had placed on the Great Pyramid, and turned it into a quarry for Mosks and palaces at Cairo.