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| Auteur inconnu (1878) |
L’auteur et l’ouvrage que je vous propose de (re)découvrir ici tiennent une place à part dans le contenu de ce blog-inventaire.
L’auteur, James Bonwick (1817-1906), était un écrivain anglais, d’origine australienne, spécialisé dans les ouvrages pédagogiques traitant d’histoire, de religion, d’astronomie, de géographie, d’anthropologie.Son ouvrage Pyramids : facts and fancies, publié en 1877, est un patchwork des connaissances et hypothèses les plus diverses et “imaginatives” relatives aux pyramides égyptiennes, tel qu’on pouvait l’établir à la fin du XIXe siècle. James Bonwick ne se hasarde pas à livrer son point de vue personnel ; il se contente de mettre bout à bout les opinions et analyses des auteurs-références : Hérodote, Diodore, historiens arabes, Greaves, Pococke, Jomard, Belzoni, Vyse, Caviglia, Smyth, etc.
En guise d’illustration de cette méthode, je reproduis ci-dessous les quelques paragraphes consacrés aux techniques de construction des pyramides.
Après une description de la Grande Pyramide dans son environnemment (tranchée, chaussée...) et ses différentes structures, l’auteur fait place aux questions incontournables : Comment fut construite la pyramide ? À quelle époque ? Par qui ?
Un nouveau chapitre énumère ensuite une dizaine de théories sur la fonction des pyramides : une barrière contre l’invasion des sables du désert (de Persigny), le “siège de Satan” (Thomas Browne), une imitation de l’Arche de Noé ou de la tour de Babel (Thomas Yeates), des installations pour filtrer l’eau du Nil (un philosophe suédois), des constructions “pour plaire aux femmes” (eh oui ! une opinion d’un certain Mr. Gable), les “greniers de Joseph”, une expression du despotisme des pharaons, un lieu de sauvegarde des connaissances humaines, des tombeaux royaux...
Trois autres chapitres sont enfin consacrés à des approches globales, inspirées par les pyramides égyptiennes, sous l’angle de l’astronomie, de la religion, de la science et de la mystique.
Pour vous permettre de consulter à votre guise cet ouvrage, j'ai inséré ci-dessous un lecteur proposé par http://www.archive.org/, le site d’Internet Archive. La consultation nécessite l'installation préalable sur votre ordinateur du logiciel (gratuit) Java. Le sommaire est en début d’ouvrage (pp.vii et viii).
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| Cliché d'Antonio Beato (1868) |
How it [the Great Pyramid] was built
“One reputed architect has informed the world that the whole was constructed of pisé. Water, by elaborate machinery, was led up to the required heights to mix with the sand, &c., to set in blocks of the needed size, and formed themselves tier by tier in the moulds. Mr. Perring thought scaffoldings were employed. Sir Gardner Wilkinson refers to the cutting away of the projecting angles, when they "smoothed the face of them to a flat inclined surface as they descended”. This will meet the difficulty of its being finished downward.Herodotus, the enigmatical historian, rather than the simple one, had before given this story. Dr. Lepsius, the German scholar, has his way of looking at it. " At the commencement of each reign", says he, "the rock-chamber destined for the monarch's grave was excavated, and one course of masonry erected upon it. If the king died in the first year of his reign, a casing was put upon it, and a pyramid formed ; but if the king did not die, another course of stone was added above, and two of the same height and thickness on each side ; thus, in process of time, the building assumed the form of a series of regular steps. These were cased over with stones, all the angles filled up, and stones placed for steps. Then, as Herodotus long ago informed us, the pyramid was finished from the top downwards, by all the edges being cut away, and a perfect triangle left."
Mr. Melville, the mystic, author of Veritas, has his view of the transaction ; saying, " Herodotus tells us the pyramids were finished downwards, and unquestionably they were. Books, learned books, as the writers fancy, have lately been published to explain this passage. Large blocks of stone have been supposed to have been lifted to their places, and then cut as required, and the debris thrown to the base. Oh, folly ! "
This is the story of the Greek : " Having finished the first tier, they elevated the stones to the second by the aid of machinery constructed of short pieces of wood; from the second, by a similar machine, they were raised to the third, and so on to the summit. Thus there were as many machines as there were courses in the structure of the pyramids, though there might have been only one, which, being easily manageable, could be raised from one layer to the next in succession ; both modes were mentioned to me, and I know not which of them deserves most credit."
Sir H. James, of the Ordnance Department, thinks the working rule of construction was by two poles, one horizontal, ten feet long, and the other vertical, of nine feet ; as, " the inclination of each edge of the pyramid is what engineers call ten to nine". But Sir Edmund Beckett, as an architect, demurs, remarking, " I do not at all agree with him that the builders worked by any such inconvenient rule as that - carrying up diagonally, slanting standards at the comers, and making the courses lineable by eye with them, however easy it may sound theoretically."
