In course of time the first Republic of France sent a traveller into Upper and Lower Egypt, and the inhabitants of the land of Egypt had so far forgotten the events of the past that they showed him an enclosed space as the granaries of Joseph. The traveller says: “You see at ancient Cairo the granaries of Joseph, if the name of granaries can with propriety be given to a vast space of ground surrounded with walls twenty feet in height, and divided into a sort of courts which have no roof, or any other covering whatever, in which are deposited the grains brought out of Upper Egypt for the revenue, where they are the food of a multitude of birds, and the receptacle of their ordure. The walls of this enclosure are of a bad construction; they have nothing in their appearance which announces an ancient building, and the love of the marvellous alone could have attributed its elevation to the patriarch Joseph.”[18] The French Government gained nothing, and its attention was diverted from the Storehouses of the King. Since that time many explorers have gone to the Pyramids, and spent princely fortunes in trying to solve the mystery as to what they were and who built them. But the Arabs are too cunning and too indolent to tell the truth; for they know from experience that, if the truth were known, they would be made to assist in repairing the Storehouses of the King, just as many of the people were set to cut the Suez Canal, when the French discovered an old undertaking of the reign of Necho, which had been left unfinished because the oracle declared that the king was making the canal for a barbarian. Wherefore the Arabs reckon that, ignoring all knowledge, they gain a good livelihood as guides, by taking travellers to the Pyramids, which is little trouble to them, but brings them “plenty backsheesh.” CHAPTER III. TOWER OF BABEL—THE MODEL. The Pyramids were, without doubt, copied from and built after the model of the Tower of Babel. At the time that Joseph was entrusted by Pharaoh with the task of making provision against the approaching famine that he predicted would take place, the building of the City and Tower of Babel by Nimrod the son of Cush, the son of Ham, the son of Noah, and the confusion of tongues that followed, were of comparatively recent date. Abraham’s father Terah was in the service of King Nimrod during their erection. We are told in the Scriptures that “the whole earth was of one language and of one speech. And it came to pass, as they journeyed from the east, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and they dwelt there. And they said one to another, Go to, let us make brick, and burn them thoroughly. And they had brick for stone, and slime had they for mortar. And they said, Go to, let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”[19]