Page 58 - آثار مصر الفرعونية الجزء الأول

measurements against the metric system. Thus, the Great
Pyramid of Khufu became a star in the arsenal of 19th century
Christianity, and at least for a time, helped arrest the expansion
of the metric system of measurement. But perhaps more
importantly, Taylor and Smyth helped create a mystic association
with the Pyramid Khufu that spawned imaginative ideas that
continue to this day.

When one visits the Pyramid of Khufu, one is actually
walking in the footsteps of the famous, both of the modern and
ancient world. Alexandria the Great stood before it, just as
modern visitors, and swore to build for his father, the
Macedonian king Philip II, a funerary monument as large as the
Great Pyramid, though death took him before he was able to do
so. Herodotus, Strabo and Pliny certainly all made visits to the
pyramid. Doubtless, every famous traveler in antiquity must have
visited Khufu's complex. Many later individuals came to see this
wonder of the ancient world, and they continue to come today.
For years, it was popular for them to climb the pyramid, though
this is no longer allowed, but atop it one can see the names
etched in stone of those who did.

Though most of the early visitors to the Great Pyramid were
non-intrusive, by the time of the Arab Invasion of Egypt, the
ancient Egyptian religion was gone and so too was apparently the
Egyptian's understanding of the monument. Fables arose –of

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