The Pyramid Read Free

no force, no length of time could ever bury, or damage, or decompose, would rise up in the desert, like unto itself, until the end of time, “It has been thus. Majesty, and so it must always be thus. Nor is its shape an arbitrary one. It is a divine shape inspired in ancient geometers by Providence herself. You are in it in all its parts, at the vertex, the summit, the peak, but also in every one of the nameless blocks of stone supporting you, stuck fast against each other, shoulder to shoulder, O Majesty.”
    Every time that they mentioned the visible form of the work, they alluded once again to the possibility of a general collapse. Cheops then recalled the autumn morning when he had believed that his courtiers’ consternation over this pyramid business had been only a symptom of their servility. Now he saw the extent of his mistake. Their distress had been quite genuine. He was henceforth convinced that the pyramid would not just be his own, but equally, if not more, theirs.
    He raised his right hand to let them know that he wished to bring the audience to an end.
    With their hearts in their mouths, they listened for the Pharaoh’s brief, dry, and sober judgment.
    “Let the pyramid be built. The highest of all. The most majestic.”

II
Start of Works
Quite Unlike the Preparations
for Any Other Building Site
    N EWS of the pyramid’s construction spread with amazing speed, for which two explanations were offered: the people’s joy after long waiting for such tidings; or, on the contrary, the dismay felt when a much-feared misfortune that people hoped never to see happen finally rises over the horizon.
    Ahead of its announcement by public criers, the news had already reached the thirty-eight different provinces of the kingdom, had spread everywhere, like sand blown by yesterday’s wind of disquiet.
    “The Pharaoh Cheops, our sun, has decided to grant the people of Egypt a grandiose and sacred mission, the most majestic of all buildings and the most sacred of all tasks, the construction of his pyramid.”
    The drum rolls echoed from village to village, and even before the voices of the heralds had died away, provincial dignitaries put their heads together to deliberate on steps to be taken on their own initiative before instructions reached them from the capital Their faces seemed lit with joy as they left the square for their homes, repeating, At last, as we had foreseen, the great day has come! From that day on there was something new in their stride, in their gestures, in the way they held their heads. A kind of hidden exultation tended to contract their muscles and to tighten their fists, The pyramid entered their existence so readily that in barely a few days they began to mutter. How the devil did we manage without it up to now?
    Meanwhile, without waiting for the arrival of directives from the center, they acted as their predecessors had acted for all previous pyramids: they stifled the voices of the malcontents. The mere idea that thousands of people, instead of rejoicing at the news, could wail despairingly, “Woe! Another round! ” put them beside themselves with anger.
    “Did you think you were going get away with it? Did you believe that everything had changed, that there would be no more pyramids and that you could live as you liked? Well now, you see how things are! So bow your heads, and grouse to your heart’s content!”
    In the capital the situation had become perceptibly more tense. Not only the mien and bearing of the functionaries but the buildings themselves seemed to have grown stiffen Coaches shuttled between the White House, as the Finance Building was called, and the Pharaoh’s palace, between the palace and the building that was said to house the secret service, and even to unknown destinations, toward the desert.
    Architects in the leading group directed by Hemiunu worked overtime. The plan seemed ever more complex to them, and each of them imagined that, when he finally managed to