The pyramids of Gizeh are the imperishable record of the fourth dynasty. Khufu, Khaf-Ra and Men-ka-Ra, the Kheops, Khephrên and Mykerinos of Herodotos, were the builders of the three vast sepulchres which, by their size and nearness to Cairo, have so long been an object of pilgrimage to the traveller. The huge granite blocks of the Great Pyramid of Khufu have been cut and fitted together with a marvellous exactitude. Professor Petrie found that the joints of the casing-stones, with an area of some thirty-five square feet each, were not only worked with an accuracy equal to that of the modern optician, but were even cemented throughout. “Though the stones were brought as close as 1/500 inch, or, in fact, into contact, and the mean opening of the joint was 1/50 inch, yet the builders managed to fill the joint with cement, despite the great area of it and the weight of the stone to be moved—some sixteen tons. To merely place such stones in exact contact at the sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement in the joints seems almost impossible.”(2) Professor Petrie believes that the stones were cut with tubular drills fitted with jewel points—a mode of cutting stone which it was left to the nineteenth century to re-discover. The lines marked upon the stone by the drills can still be observed, and there is evidence that not only the tool but the stone also was rotated. The great pressure needed for driving the drills and saws with the requisite rapidity through the blocks of granite and diorite is indeed surprising. It brings before us the high mechanical knowledge attained by the Egyptians in the fourth millennium before our era even more forcibly than the heights to which the blocks were raised. The machinery, however, with which this latter work was effected is still unknown. The sculptured and painted walls of the tombs which surround the pyramids of Gizeh tell us something about the life and civilisation of the period. The government was a highly organised bureaucracy, under a king who was already regarded as the representative of the Sun-god upon earth. The land was inhabited by an industrious people, mainly agricultural, who lived in peace and plenty. Arts and crafts of all kinds were cultivated, including that of making glass. The art of the sculptor had reached a high perfection. One of the most striking statues in the world is that of Khaf-Ra seated on his imperial throne, which is now in the Museum of Gizeh. The figure of the king is more than life-size; above his head the imperial hawk stretches forth its wings, and on the king’s face, though the features bear the unmistakable impress of a portrait, there rests an aspect of divine calm. And yet this statue, with its living portraiture and exquisite finish, is carved out of a dioritic rock, the hardest of hard stone.