First Sentence

"FEELING a somewhat keen desire to know what the Great Pyramid looked like in the days variously when Egyptian civilisation met its first experience of the completed structure: when Thebes was building its Avenue of Sphinxes, and its earlier temples: when Solomon built his; when Moses 1425 B.C. was being instructed in the wisdom of the Egyptians, and more especially when Pythagoras (582 B.C.), Euclid, who taught in Alexandria about 300 B.C., Thomas Aquinas, (1226-1274), and Copernicus (1473-1543), had, in their turn, the Pyramid's impressiveness brought before them (for most of them appear to have studied in its vicinity) I availed myself of a number of recognised sources of general information to ascertain primarily the nature of the covering stones that were, until quite recently, believed to have been so entirely removed."