You probably know, roughly, the shape of a pyramid. The largest now standing is the Great Pyramid, or the Pyramid of Cheops, near Gizeh. Its base, or lowest and largest part, covers 13 acres, and its top is 150 feet higher than the top of St. Paul's Cathedral. A space of 13 acres measures about 250 yards each way and well over half a mile round. Ask somebody to show you a piece of ground, near where you live, that is about the size of 13 acres. Then remember that 150 feet is 50 yards, or more than the length of two cricket pitches, and imagine St. Paul's dome all that higher. With that idea for the height, and with an idea of the size of the piece of ground for the size of the base, you may perhaps form some kind of idea of the immense appearance of this pyramid rising out of the desert in the clear Egyptian air. And the purpose of all this vast construction is to make a covering over two little burial chambers in the middle of it all, in which were laid, thousands of years ago, the mummied bodies of King Cheops and of the queen who was his wife. This is certainly the biggest pyramid now standing, and probably the largest ever built; but there are many pyramids to which reference is made in the inscriptions or writings which have entirely disappeared. Probably their materials have been used for other {43} buildings, and sand-storms from the desert have helped to cover their foundations. [Sidenote: Temples] A temple, in which the pious people might worship, was often connected with the pyramid. When this was so, the temple always seems to have been placed to the east of the burial pyramid, so that the worshippers should look towards the body and to the west. It was towards the west of the burial chamber that a passage was made, with a door of exit for the soul to go out into the under-world. We have to remember that even in life the Egyptian king was regarded as a kind of god. It is difficult for us to find our way back into the thoughts of these ancient people, who saw far less difference than we know that we are obliged to see between the human nature and the divine; but we must try to get back into their thoughts, if we want to understand them. And this, and a great deal more that I have written in this chapter and in the one before, is true not of the early Egyptians only, but of early man all the world over. I shall not keep you nearly so long in my description of what went on in the old days along the Euphrates and Tigris and elsewhere, because a good deal of what I am telling you now about these old Egyptians applies to dwellers in those other places.