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Show NSIDE THE PYRAMIDS. An interesting place of news for Egyptologists and the public generally has just been contributed to the Journal des Debuts from Bedrechya by M. Gabriel Charmes. That gentleman is now travelling in Egypt with M. Maspero, the director of the Egyptian Museum, he has determined on opening all the pyramids that have not yet been explored and on further searching those that are not thoroughly known. Among the pyramids situated on the border of the ?? ?? is that of [unreadable] the most my tenure of [unreadable] its entrance had never [unreadable] in the hope of finding a treasure ?? therein. It is to ?? pyramid that M. Maspero is now devoting his attention. By removing some of the ground on the north side of the artificial mound which surrounds the pyramid he has succeeded in uncovering all the points where an opening might be revealed, and the result has shown that his calculations were well founded. Thirteen days of active labor, with skilled workmen, have sufficed for the discovery of a secret which was believed to be undiscoverable. The spades of the fellahs have exposed to view the opening, which is situated nearly at the top of the artificial mound. On entering the pyramids the visitor passes through a corridor admirably constructed, which takes him about forty yards in a gentle decline as is the case in the great Gizeh Pyramid. Here, for the moment, he is stopped by the debris, which is being rapidly cleared away M. Maspero has already found two sacred inscriptions, in the style of the Twentieth Dynasty giving the names of two scribes who had visited the pyramid. Hopes are entertained that no one may have set foot in it since and that it may be found to be intact. "But," concedes Gabriel Charmes, "whatever happens, the opening of the Meydonia Pyramid will still unravel one of those mysteries which have for so many centuries hung over ancient Europe, and which one by one are yielding to the efforts of modern science." The late Mariotte Bey, in one of his works said that the pyramid was called by the Arabs, ?? of Kaldub-the False Pyramid as they believed it to be nothing but a huge rock shaped as a pyramid. This tradition may have helped to preserve it from molestation. |