It is objected that the American edifices are different in form from the Egyptian, in that they are truncated, or flattened at the top; but this is not an universal rule.

“In many of the ruined cities of Yucatan one or more pyramids have been found upon the summit of which no traces of any building could be discovered, although upon surrounding pyramids such structures could be found.  There is also some reason to believe that perfect pyramids have been found in America.  Waldeck found near Palenque two pyramids in a state of perfect preservation, square at the base, pointed at the top, and thirty-one feet high, their sides forming equilateral triangles.”  (Bancroft’s “Native Races,” vol. v., p. 58.)

Bradford thinks that “some of the Egyptian pyramids, and those which with some reason it has been supposed are the most ancient, are precisely similar to the Mexican teocalli.” ("North Americans of Antiquity” p. 423.)

And there is in Egypt another form of pyramid called the mastaba, which, like the Mexican, was flattened on the top; while in Assyria structures flattened like the Mexican are found.  “In fact,” says one writer, “this form of temple (the flat-topped) has been found from Mesopotamia to the Pacific Ocean.”  The Phoenicians also built pyramids.  In the thirteenth century the Dominican Brocard visited the ruins of the Phoenician city of Mrith or Marathos, and speaks in the strongest terms of admiration of those pyramids of surprising grandeur, constructed of blocks of stone from twenty-six to twenty eight feet long, whose thickness exceeded the stature of a tall man. ("Prehistoric Nations,” p. 144.)

“If,” says Ferguson, “we still hesitate to pronounce that there was any connection between the builders of the pyramids of Suku and Oajaca, or the temples of Xochialco and Boro Buddor, we must at least allow that the likeness is startling, and difficult to account for on the theory of mere accidental coincidence.”

Pyramidsof Egypt.

The Egyptian pyramids all stand with their sides to the cardinal points, while many of the Mexican pyramids do likewise.  The Egyptian pyramids were penetrated by small passage-ways; so were the Mexican.  The Pyramid of Teotihuacan, according to Almarez, has, at a point sixty-nine feet from the base, a gallery large enough to admit a man crawling on hands and knees, which extends, inward, on an incline, a distance of twenty feet, and terminates in two square wells or chambers, each five feet square and one of them fifteen feet deep.  Mr. Lowenstern states,

Pyramidsof Teotihuacan.

according to Mr. Bancroft ("Native Races,” vol. iv., p. 533), that “the gallery is one hundred and fifty-seven feet long, increasing in height to over six feet and a half as it penetrates the pyramid; that the well is over six feet square, extending (apparently) down to the base and up to the summit; and that other cross-galleries are blocked up by debris.”  In the Pyramid of Cheops there is a similar opening or passage-way forty-nine feet above the base; it is three feet eleven inches high, and three feet five and a half inches wide; it leads down a slope to a sepulchral chamber or well, and connects with other passage-ways leading up into the body of the pyramid.