mystery attracts mystery

''then we saw the vast pyramids at the end of the avenue, ghoulish with a dim atavistical menace which i had not seemed to notice in the daytime. even the smallest of them held a hint of the ghastly--for was it not in this that they had buried queen nitocris alive in the sixth dynasty; subtle queen nitocris, who once invited all her enemies to a feast in a temple below the nile, and drowned them by opening the water-gates? i recalled that the arabs whisper things about nitocris, and shun the third pyramid at certain phases of the moon. it must have been over her that thomas moore was brooding when he wrote a thing muttered about by memphian boatmen: the subterranean nymph that dwells 'mid sunless gems and glories hid--the lady of the pyramid!''

 h.p.lovecraft and erich weiss, imprisoned with the pharaohs.

vacant pedestals

more towering stone at notcothulhu.

 ''there were great masses of towering stone, carven into alien and incomprehensible designs and disposed according to the laws of some unknown, inverse geometry ... gigantic hieroglyphed pedestals more hexagonal than otherwise, and surmounted by cloaked, ill defined shapes ... one of the pedestals was vacant, ... another pedestal taller than the rest, and at the centre of the oddly curved line--neither semicircle nor ellipse, parabola nor hyperbola--which they formed.''

 h.p.lovecraft and e.hoffman price, through the gates of the silver key.