A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Volume I Part 20

FIG. 141.

FIG. 142.

FIGS. 136-142.--Successive states of a pyramid, according to the system advocated in Baedeker's _Guide_.]

We are told that the system of construction here set forth is rendered almost certain by the fact that "the deeper we penetrate into the pyramid the more careful do we find the construction, which becomes more and more careless as the exterior is approached. In fact, as each new envelope was commenced, the chances of its being completed became less." The ma.s.s of stone to be worked and placed was greater, while the king, upon whose life the whole operation depended, was older and nearer his death. The builders became less sure of the morrow; they pressed on so as to increase, at all hazards, the size of the monument, and trusted to the final casing to conceal all defects of workmanship.

This system of pyramid building would explain the curious shapes which we have noticed in the Stepped Pyramid and the southern pyramid of Dashour.[193] Both of those erections would thus be unfinished pyramids. At Sakkarah, the angles left by the successive stages would be waiting for their filling in; at Dashour, the upper part of a pyramid of gentle slope would have been constructed upon the nucleus which was first erected, but the continuation of the slope to the ground would have been prevented by the stoppage of the works at the point of intersection of the upper pyramid and its provisional substructure. Hence the broken slope which has such a strange effect, an effect which could not have entered into the original calculations of the architect.

[193] There are other stepped pyramids besides that at Sakkarah.

Jomard describes one of crude and much crumbled brick at Dashour. It is, he says, about 140 feet high. Its height is divided into five stages, each being set back about 11 feet behind the one below. These steps are often found, he adds, among the southern pyramids, and there is one example of such construction at Gizeh. (_Description de l'egypte_, vol. x., p.

5.) At Matarieh, between Sakkarah and Meidoum, there is a pyramid with a double slope like that at Dashour.

But although this theory seems satisfactorily to explain some puzzling appearances, it also, when tested by facts, encounters some very grave objections. The explorers of the pyramids have more than once, in their search for lost galleries and hidden chambers, cut for themselves a pa.s.sage through the masonry, but neither in these breaches made by violence, nor in the ancient and carefully constructed pa.s.sages to which they were the means of giving access, have any signs been, discovered, or at least, reported, of the junctions of different surfaces and slopes which must have existed according to the theory which we are noticing. We should expect, at least, to find the nearly upright sides of the cubic ma.s.s with which the pyramid began, contrasting with the comparatively gentle slopes which were built against it. These different parts of the pyramid, we are told, were built and finished separately, a proceeding which, if the later parts were to be properly fitted to the earlier and the final stability of the monument a.s.sured, would have demanded a minute and scrupulous care which was not common with Egyptian workmen. How, without numerous through bonding-stones, could those slides and settlements be prevented to which the want of h.o.m.ogeneity in the structure would otherwise be sure to lead? But we are not told that any such junctions of old and new work are to be found even in those points where they would be most conspicuous, namely, in the galleries leading to the internal chambers, where a practised eye could hardly fail to note the transition. We do not say that there are no such transitions, but we think the advocates of the new theory should have begun by pointing them out if they exist.

There is another difficulty in their way. How is their system to explain the position of the mummy-chamber in certain pyramids? Let us take that of Cheops as an example. If its internal arrangements had been fixed from the beginning, if the intention had been from the first to place the mummy-chamber where we now find it, at about one-third of the whole height, why should the builders have complicated their task by imposing upon themselves these ever difficult junctions? Would it not have been far better to build the pyramid at once to the required height, leaving in its thickness the necessary galleries? The same observation applies to the discharging chambers above the mummy-chamber. The whole of these arrangements, the high vestibule with its wonderful masonry, the chambers and the structural voids above them, appear to have been conceived and carried out at one time, and by the same brains and hands. Not a sign is to be found of those more or less well-veiled transitions which are never absent when the work of one time and one set of hands has to be united with that of another. Or are we to believe that they commenced by building a hill of stone composed of those different pyramids one within another, and that they afterwards carved the necessary chambers and corridors out of its ma.s.s? One of the heroes of Hoffmann, the fantastic Crespel, made use indeed of some such method in giving doors and windows to his newly-built house, but we may be sure that no architect, either in Egypt or elsewhere, ever thought of employing it.

The disintegration to which it would lead may easily be imagined.

We may here call attention to a circ.u.mstance which justifies all our reserves. There is but one pyramid which seems to have been built upon a system which, though much less complicated, resembled that which we are noticing in some degree, we mean the Stepped Pyramid of Sakkarah.

Now we find that the whole of the complicated net-work of chambers and pa.s.sages in that pyramid is cut out of the living rock beneath its base, and that they are approached from without by subterranean pa.s.sages. The difficulty of deciding upon the position of the chambers in advance, and of constructing the galleries through the various slopes of the concentric ma.s.ses which were to form the pyramid, was thus avoided, and the builder was able to devote all his attention to increasing the size of the monument, by multiplying those parallel wedges disposed around a central core of which it is composed.

The observations made by Lepsius in the Stepped Pyramid and in one at Abousir seem to prove that some pyramids were constructed in this manner. In both of those buildings all necessary precautions were taken to guard against the weaknesses of such a system. It is difficult to understand how separate slices of masonry, placed one upon the other in the fashion shown by the section which we have borrowed from Perring's work (Fig. 134), could have had sufficient adherence one to another. Lepsius made a breach in the southern face of this pyramid, and the examination which he was thus enabled to inst.i.tute led him to suggest a rather more probable system of construction. Upon the external sloping face of each step he found two casing-walls, but these did not extend from the ground to the apex of the monument, they reached no higher than the single step, so that they found a true resisting base in the flat ma.s.s (see Fig. 143) upon which they rested. Moreover, the architect provided for the lateral tying of the different sections of his work, as Lepsius proves to us by a partial section of the pyramid of Abousir. Two walls of fine limestone blocks inclose a filling in of rubble, to which they are bound by perpend stones which penetrate its substance. This method of construction has its faults, but it is so rapid that its employment is not to be wondered at.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 143.--Section of the Stepped Pyramid at Sakkarah; from Lepsius.[194]]

[194] Fig. 5 of his paper, _Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden_.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 144.--Construction of the Pyramid of Abousir in parallel layers; transverse section in perspective from the geometrical section of Lepsius.[195]]

[195] Fig. 8 of his paper, _Ueber den Bau der Pyramiden_.

Do these parallel walls reach from top to bottom? A detail discovered by Minutoli would seem to indicate that a base was first constructed of sufficient extent for the whole monument. In the lower part of the Stepped Pyramid Minutoli[196] shows concave courses of stone laid out to the segment of a circle. These courses formed a kind of inverted vault, ab.u.t.ting, at its edges, upon the rock. This curious arrangement should be studied upon the spot by some competent observer. As we do not know whether these curves exist upon each face or not, or whether they meet each other and penetrate deeply into the structure or not, we cannot say what their purpose may have been. But however this may be, they afford another argument against the notion that all the great pyramids were built round such a pyramidoid core as that represented by our Fig. 136. We fear that this system must be regarded merely as an intellectual plaything. The views of Lepsius as to the enlargement of the pyramid by the addition of parallel slices are worthy of more respect, and their truth seems to be demonstrated in the case of some pyramids. But these all belong to that category of monuments which have subterranean chambers only. We have yet to learn that they were ever made use of in those pyramids which inclose the mummy-chamber and its avenues in their own substance. Variety is universal in that Egypt which has so often been described as the land of uniformity and immobility--no two of the pyramids resemble each other exactly.

[196] _Voyage au Temple de Jupiter Amman et dans la Haute-egypte._ (Berlin, 1824, 4to. and folio; Pl. xxvii. Fig.

3.)

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 145.--Partial section of the Stepped Pyramid; from Minutoli.]

We have yet to speak of two ancient monuments in which some would recognize unfinished pyramids, namely, the Pyramid of Meidoum and the Mastabat-el-Faraoun. We do not agree with this opinion, which has, however, been lately put forward, so far, at least, as the former monument is concerned.[197] These two sepulchres seem to us to represent a different type of funerary architecture, a type created by the ancient empire, and meriting special notice at our hands.

[197] BaeDEKER, _Egypt_, part i. 1878. The pages dealing with the monumental remains were edited in great part by Professor Ebers.

The monument which rises so conspicuously from the plain near the village of Meidoum on the road to the Fayoum, is called by Arabs the Haram-el-Kabbab, or "the false pyramid." It is, in fact, not so much a pyramid, strictly speaking, as a ma.s.s formed of three square towers with slightly inclined sides superimposed one upon the other, the second being less in area than the first, and the third than the second. The remains of a fourth story may be distinguished on the summit of the third; some see in them the remains of a small pyramid; others those of a cone. Judging from the names found in the neighbouring mastabas, which were opened and examined by Mariette, this is the tomb of Snefrou I., one of the greatest kings of the third dynasty.[198]

[198] _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. i. p. 45.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 146.--The Pyramid of Meidoum; from Perring.]

The Mastabat-el-Faraoun or "Seat of Pharaoh," as the Arabs call it, is a huge rectangular ma.s.s with sloping sides; it is about 66 feet high, 340 long, and 240 deep. It is oriented like the pyramids. It is a royal tomb with internal arrangements which resemble those in the pyramid of Mycerinus; the same sloping galleries, the same chambers, the same great lateral niches. Upon a block lying at the foot of the structure of which it had once formed a part, Mariette found a quarry-mark traced in red ochre which seemed to him to form part of the name of Ounas, one of the last kings of the fifth dynasty (Figs.

109 and 147).

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 147.--The Mastabat-el-Faraoun; from Lepsius.]

Upon the platform of the Mastabat-el-Faraoun certain blocks are to be found which, from their position, must have been bonding-stones. They seem to hint, therefore, either that the structure was never finished, or that it has lost its former crown. The latter hypothesis is the more probable. Among the t.i.tles of people buried in the necropolis at Sakkarah, we often come upon those of priests attached to the service of some monument with a form similar to that represented by our Fig.

148. Who can say asks Mariette, that it is not the Mastabat-el-Faraoun itself?[199]

[199] _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. i. p. 34.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 148.--Funerary monument represented in the inscriptions.]

M. Mariette cites, in support of this conjecture, certain other structures of a similar character, such as the large tomb situated near the south-eastern angle of the second pyramid at Gizeh, and the little monument which is called the Pyramid of Righa. From these he concludes that the principles of the mastaba and the pyramid were sometimes combined under the ancient empire. The royal tombs in the Memphite region were not always pyramids, they were sometimes composed of a mastaba and of one or more high square tower-like erections upon it, the whole ending in one of those small pyramids which we call pyramidions. This type allowed of numerous combinations, many of which are to be discovered in the monuments of a later period.

The pyramid was employed as a terminal form throughout the whole of Egyptian history. Both Thebes and Abydos offer us many examples of its use, either in those sepulchral edifices which are still extant, or in the representations of them upon bas-reliefs. But the pyramid properly speaking was confined to the Memphite period. The princes of the twelfth dynasty seem to have constructed some in the Fayoum. The pyramids of Hawara and Illahoon correspond to those which, we are told, were built in connection with the labyrinth and upon the islands of Lake Mris respectively. These, so far as we can judge, were the last of the pyramids. There are, indeed, in the necropolis of Thebes, upon the rocks of Drah-abou'l-neggah, a few pyramids of crude brick, some of which seem to belong to Entefs of the eleventh dynasty; but they are small and carelessly constructed.[200] When the art of Egypt had arrived at its full development, such purely geometrical forms would seem unworthy of its powers, as they did not allow of those varied beauties of construction and decoration which its architects had gradually mastered.

[200] LEPSIUS, _Denkmaeler_, part i. pl. 94. RHIND, _Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants_, p. 45. MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-egypte_, vol. ii. p. 80.

The pyramids have never failed to impress the imaginations of those foreign travellers who have visited Egypt. Their venerable antiquity; the memories, partly fable, partly history, which were attached to them by popular tradition; their colossal ma.s.s and the vast s.p.a.ce of ground which they covered, at the very gates of the capital and upon the boundary between the desert and the cultivated land, all combined to heighten their effect. Those nations who came under the living influence of Egypt could hardly, then, escape from the desire to imitate her pyramids in their own manner. We shall find the pyramidal form employed to crown buildings in Phnicia, Judaea, and elsewhere.

But the kingdom of Ethiopia, the southern annexe of Egypt and the copyist of her civilization, was the chief reproducer of the Egyptian pyramid as it was created by the kings of the ancient empire. Napata, Meroe, and other places have pyramids which may be counted by dozens.

Like those in Egypt, they are the tombs of the native monarchs.

We shall not attempt any study of these remains. Like all the other products of Ethiopian art, they are neither original nor interesting.

The people who inhabited the region which we now call by the names of Nubia and the Soudan, had, indeed, reconquered their political independence a thousand years before our era, but they were not gifted by nature with power to a.s.similate the lessons of their former masters. Even during the short period when the Ethiopian monarchs reigned over a divided and weakened Egypt, Ethiopia remained the clumsy pupil and imitator of the northern people. She never learnt to give to her royal pyramids the air of grandeur which distinguishes the great structures of Memphis. The Ethiopian pyramids were generally so narrow and steep in slope that their whole character was different from those of Egypt. In Egypt the base line was always greater than the vertical height, upon the Upper Nile the proportions were reversed.[201] The latter edifices thus lost some of that appearance of indestructible solidity which is their natural expression. They remind one at once of the obelisk and the pyramid. Add to this that an unintelligent taste overspread them with ill-devised decoration. Thus the upper part of their eastern faces, for they are oriented, generally bears a false window surmounted by a cornice, about as incongruous an ornament as could well be conceived, and one which expresses nothing either to the eye or the mind.

[201] Thus the Great Pyramid was 482 feet high, while the length of one side at the base is 764 feet. On the other hand, the "third pyramid" at Gebel-Barkal (Napata) is 35 feet square at the base and 60 feet high; the "fifth" is 39 feet square at the base and nearly 50 feet high. Their proportions are not constant, but the height of the Nubian pyramids is always far greater than the length of one side at its base.

We shall, therefore, take no further notice of these more or less ill-designed variations upon the type which was created by the Egyptians in the early days of their civilization and fully understood by themselves alone.

We must return, however, to that type for a moment, in order to show, in as few words as possible, how far the art of working and fixing stone had advanced even at the time of the first dynasties.

The Great Pyramid affords us a curious example of the elaborate precautions taken against the violation of the royal tomb (Fig. 132).

At the point where the ascending gallery branched off from that descending corridor which was the only entrance to the pyramid, the mouth of the former was closed by a block of granite which exactly fitted it. This block was so heavy and so well adjusted, that entrance could only be obtained by cutting a pa.s.sage through the surrounding masonry, which, being of limestone, did not offer such an unyielding resistance to the tools brought against it. Formerly the mouth of a gallery, which seemed to be the continuation of the entrance corridor, remained open, and, when followed to the end, led to an unfinished chamber cut in the rock at about the level of the Nile. If this had been finished the waters would perhaps have invaded it by infiltration. This seems to have been intended by the constructor, because Herodotus, who no doubt thought the work had been completed, tells us of a subterranean conduit which admitted the waters of the Nile.[202] The violaters of the tomb would believe the corpse to be in this unsuspected reservoir, and would search no farther, or if they guessed the deception and persevered till they found the entrance to the ascending gallery, they would find another obstacle to their success which would be likely to arrest them longer than the first.

The upper extremity of the great gallery, at which we suppose them arrived, opens upon a small vestibule which would still separate them from the sarcophagus-chamber itself. Four flat blocks of granite, sliding in grooves, masked the entrance to the latter; Figs. 150 and 151 show the arrangement of these portcullis stones. The narrow pa.s.sage leading to the discharging chambers above the mummy-chamber, would be likely to lead our supposed robbers into the upper part of the pyramid. The entrance to this pa.s.sage is high up in the end wall of the grand gallery; it was left open. The unbidden visitors would thus have explored the interior of the pyramid high and low without result, and even supposing that they expended considerable time and trouble in the search, they might easily have failed to penetrate into the mummy-chamber itself.[203]

[202] HERODOTUS, ii. 124.

[203] DU BARRY DE MERVAL, _etudes sur l'Architecture egyptienne_, pp. 129, 130.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 149.--Plan and elevation of a pyramid at Meroe: from Prisse.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 150.--Method of closing a gallery by a stone portcullis; from the southern pyramid of Dashour. Drawn in perspective from the plans and elevations of Perring.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 151.--Portcullis closed.]

Another ingenious arrangement which demands our notice is that of those discharging chambers to which we have already alluded. These chambers were explored, not without trouble, by Colonel Howard Vyse and J. L. Perring, who at once comprehended their use. The roof of the sarcophagus-chamber consists of nine slabs of fine red granite, like those which form the walls of the same chamber. They are 18 feet 9 inches long and their ends rest upon the side walls of the chamber. In spite of their thickness and of the hard nature of the rock of which they are composed, it was feared that they might give way under the enormous weight of the masonry above, for the floor of the chamber is still nearly 340 feet below the actual apex of the pyramid. This danger was met in the fashion figured above.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIG. 152.--Transverse section, in perspective, through the sarcophagus-chamber and the discharging chambers; from the elevation of Perring.]

As the structure grew above the roof of the mummy-chamber, five small chambers were left, one above the other, to a total height of 56 feet, which would relieve the flat ceiling of the mummy-chamber of the weight to be placed above it. The first four of these chambers were of similar shape and had flat roofs, but the roof of the fifth was formed of sloping slabs, meeting in a ridge, and giving the chamber a triangular section (see Fig. 152). Thanks to this succession of voids immediately over the main chamber, and to the pointed arch which surmounts them, the vertical pressure of the superstructure is discharged from the chamber itself and distributed over the lateral parts of the pyramid. These precautions have been quite effectual. Not a stone has been stirred either by the inward thrust or by the crushing of their substance; not a block is out of place but those which have been disturbed by the violence of man; and, moreover, the whole structure is so well bonded and so well balanced that even his violent attacks have led neither to disruption nor settlement in the apartment of Cheops or in the galleries which lead to it.[204]