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104 PYM PYRAMID The town of Navarino is near the site of the old city, which is considered by most critics as the Pylos of Nestor. K. O. Miiller, how- ever, decides in favor of the Triphylian Pylos. P1M, John, an English patriot, born at Bry- more, Somersetshire, in 1584, died in London, Dec. 8, 1643. He was of a good family, and was educated at Pembroke college, Oxford, but left without taking his degree, and applied himself to the study of common law. He be- came a clerk in the office of the exchequer, en- tered parliament in 1614, and in 1620 became conspicuous as a leader of the country party. In 1621 he was one of the 12 commissioners sent to James I. at Newmarket in behalf of the privileges of parliament, and at the close of that year was sentenced with Coke, Philips, and Mallory to imprisonment for his opposi- tion to the measures of the court. In the first parliament of Charles I. he was indefatigable in his support of the rights of the people, and in 1626 was one of the managers of the articles of impeachment against the duke of Bucking- ham. In 1639 he held communications with the commissioners sent to London by the Scotch Covenanters, and accompanied Hamp- den through the country to incite the people to send in petitions. In the short parliament of 1640 he was one of the most active mem- bers, and in the long parliament exerted great influence. On Nov. 11 he moved to impeach the earl of Strafford for high treason, and as one of the managers on the part of the house of commons he bore a prominent part in the proceedings which led to the execution of that minister. In the subsequent trial of Laud he also made a violent speech against the prisoner, and was the mover of the grand re- monstrance, which enumerated the faults of the royal administration from the accession of Charles. He was one of the five mem- bers of parliament whom the king attempted in person to seize ; and after the departure of Charles from London, he assisted in carrying on the executive branch of the government. Yet in 1643 he -put forth a vindication of his conduct in answer to the charges brought against him, from which it was thought doubt- ful with which of the two parties then divi- ding the kingdom he would go. In November, 1643, just before his death, he was appointed lieutenant of the ordnance. He was buried in Westminster abbey. PYVAKER, Adam, a Dutch painter, born at Pynaker, between Delft and Schiedam, in 1621, died in 1673. In his youth he resided for sev- eral years at Rome, where he acquired an ideal or pastoral style of landscape painting. His pictures contain charming effects of sunlight, with clear, warm skies, and trees and other natural objects are painted with a broad, free pencil, and great richness of color. The best of his works are of cabinet size, and many of these are owned in England. PYRAMID (Gr. irvpaju.if), the geometrical term for any solid contained by a plane polygonal base and other planes meeting in a point, ap- plied to various monumental and temple struc- tures of several nations. The most famous pyramids are those of the ancient Egyptians, and with few exceptions are the tombs of kings. The theories that they were astronom- ical monuments, or large storehouses, or, as Prof. Piazzi Smyth holds, memorials of a sys- tem of weights and measures, intended to be universal, and built with the aid of divine in- spiration, are not supported by the accounts of the ancients, nor by the Egyptian inscriptions and other testimony. The facts that the pyra- mids are found in the midst of a necropolis, that they contain sarcophagi and mummies, and that the inscriptions on the tombs of many priests mention as a special honor that the de- ceased officiated at the funeral services held at the pyramids, seem to prove that they are tombs and nothing else. As the Egyptian tombs have always borne one and the same character, and only the manner in which they were adorned varied with the tastes of the period, their age may be determined with great certainty. For the first eleven dynas- ties, or previous to about 8000 B. C., the tombs were in the form of a mastaba, or mere- ly rectangular walls looking like unfinished pyramids, and their interior was richly deco- rated with sculptures and paintings, referring either to the life of the deceased or to the gods of the current religious system. During the middle empire, and until about 1600 B. C., the tnastnba was superseded by small pyra- mids, and by the gpeos or halls cut into the rocks, and the divinities were seldom repre- sented upon them. In the next period, until about 340 B. C., excavated tombs prevailed, and the statuary and images of the deceased were superseded again by those of a mytho- logical nature. The pyramids are only en- larged mattaba, and belong as such to the first period. Each one was commenced over a se- pulchral chamber excavated in the rock, and