 |
| photo datée de 1896 (Underwood und Underwood) |
Les Manuels pour les voyageurs de l'éditeur britannique John Murray étaient des guides de voyage publiés à Londres à partir de 1836. La série couvrait des destinations touristiques en Europe et dans certaines régions d’Asie et d’Afrique du Nord. Selon le chercheur James Buzard, le style Murray "illustre bien la planification rationnelle exhaustive qui était autant un idéal de l'industrie touristique émergente que de l'organisation commerciale et industrielle britannique en général".
*****
"The statement of the three writers already cited (Herodotus, Diodorus, Pliny), that Cheops Pyramid was built with stone from the quarries of the Arabian mountains, is partly true, as much of the material comes from the magnesian limestone quarries of Toora and Masarah, but the nummulite limestone of the neighbouring rock has also been largely employed. The causeway along which the stone from the other side of the river was brought will be found described further (...). Traces of a similar causeway have been observed between Gebel Masarah and the Nile, which probably served for the conveyance of the stone from the quarry to the river. Herodotus’s expression, that the "greater part is of polished stone, most carefully put together," corroborated by similar statements of Plato, Pliny, and early Arabian authors, though conjectured to mean that the Great Pyramid had, originally, a smooth and even surface, similar to what may still be seen at the top of the Second Pyramid, received no proof until the discovery by Col. Howard Vyse, in 1837, of two of the "casing stones" in situ.
They were blocks of limestone from the Toora quarries 4 feet 11 inches in perpendicular height, and 8 feet 3 inches long, the outer face sloping with an angle of 51° 50’.
After this discovery, there was no longer any doubt that the spaces between the several corners of the Pyramid had been filled in with similar blocks, which after insertion, had been shaped to the required angle, and then polished to an uniform surface.
It is conjectured that these stones, with the exception of the two found by Col. Vyse, were taken away during the time of the Khalifs, for building purposes at Cairo.
They were in their place, in the time of Abd-el-Lateef, who speaks of the extreme nicety with which the stones of which the pyramid is constructed have been prepared and adjusted, a nicety so precise that not even a needle or hair can be inserted between any two of them.
The same author corroborates Herodotus in his assertion, that these polished exterior stones were covered with writing, and adds : "These inscriptions are so numerous, that if those only, which are seen on the surface of these two pyramids were copied upon paper, more than 10,000 pages would be filled with them".
The stones which now appear on the exterior are of various sizes, varying from 2 feet to 5 feet in depth : the first layer is laid in the rock, and the others, each receding about a foot, form, as it were, a staircase. The mortar used appears to be made of crushed red bricks, gravel, sand, Nile mud, and lime.
The method employed in the construction of pyramids has been already described, and is applicable in all its general features to the Great Pyramid. The rock has been carefully levelled all round, and a nucleus of native rock, about 22 feet high, left in the interior.
As to how the stones were raised into their places and what was the form of the machines mentioned by Herodotus, nothing is known. "The notion of Diodorus that machines were not yet invented, is sufficiently disproved by common sense, and by the assertion of Herodotus. It is certainly singular, that the Egyptians, who have left behind them so many records of their customs, should have omitted every explanation of their mode of raising the enormous blocks they used. Some have imagined inclined planes, without recollecting what their extent would be when of such a height and length of base ; and, though the inclined plane may have been employed for some purposes, as it was in sieges by the Assyrians and others, as a "bank" (2 Kings XIX, 32; 2 Samuel XX, 19) for running up the movable tower against a perpendicular wall, it would be difficult to adapt it to the sloping face of a pyramid, or to introduce it into the interior of a large temple." (Rawlinson’s Herodotus)
