Page:H. D. Traill - From Cairo to the Soudan Frontier.djvu/89

guard. Inscriptions discovered within recent years have proved that it is no mere mushroom growth of the Middle Empire, as was once supposed—no "jerry-built" edifice, if one may so express it, which had barely completed its two thousandth year at the commencement of the Christian era—but that it was in existence when the Pyramids themselves were being piled, and that, in all probability, one at least of their builders repaired it. It is certainly older, therefore, than the Fourth Dynasty, and, perhaps, even than the first; older, it may be, than Menes, the first human King of Egypt, and no more traceable to its beginnings than are the gods themselves. Even to think of its antiquity almost takes the breath away. Suppose it to have been only 300 years old when Cheops reigned, then it would already have been gazing for 4000 years across the desert when the Star of the Nativity was stayed over the manger at Bethlehem. One million four hundred and sixty thousand times had those