History of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria in the Light of Recent Discovery Part 4

We must not omit to note an interesting point in connection with the royal tombs at Abydos, In that of King Khent or Tjer (the reading of the ideograph is doubtful) M. Amelineau found a large bed or bier of granite, with a figure of the G.o.d Osiris lying in state sculptured in high relief upon it. This led him to jump to the conclusion that he had found the tomb of the G.o.d Osiris himself, and that a skull he found close by was the veritable cranium of the primeval folk-hero, who, according to the euhemerist theory, was the deified original of the G.o.d.

The true explanation is given by Dr. Wallis Budge in his _History of Egypt_, i, p. 19. It is a fact that the tomb of Tjer was regarded by the Egyptians of the XIXth Dynasty as the veritable tomb of Osiris.

They thought they had discovered it, just as M. Amelineau did. When the ancient royal tombs of Umm el-Ga'ab were rediscovered and identified at the beginning of the XIXth Dynasty, and Seti I built the great temple of Abydos to the divine ancestors in honour of the discovery, embellishing it with a relief of himself and his son Ramses making offerings to the names of his predecessors (the "Tablet of Abydos "), the name of King Khent or Tjer (which is perhaps the really correct original form) was read by the royal scribes as "Khent" and hastily identified with the first part of the name of the G.o.d _Khent-amenti_ Osiris, the lord of Abydos. The tomb was thus regarded as the tomb of Osiris himself, and it was furnished with a great stone figure of the G.o.d lying on his bier, attended by the two hawks of Isis and Nephthys; ever after the site was visited by crowds of pilgrims, who left at Umm el-Ga'ab the thousands of little votive vases whose fragments have given the place its name of the "Mother of Pots." This is the explanation of the discovery of the "Tomb of Osiris." We have not found what M. Amelineau seems rather naively to have thought possible, a confirmation of the ancient view that Osiris was originally a man who ruled over Egypt and was deified after his death; but we have found that the Egyptians themselves were more or less euhemerists, and did think so.

It may seem remarkable that all this new knowledge of ancient Egypt is derived from tombs and has to do with the resting-places of the kings when dead, rather than with their palaces or temples when living. Of temples at this early period we have no trace. The oldest temple in Egypt is perhaps the little chapel in front of the pyramid of Snefru at Medm. We first hear of temples to the G.o.ds under the IVth Dynasty, but of the actual buildings of that period we have recovered nothing but one or two inscribed blocks of stone. Prof. Petrie has traced out the plan of the oldest temple of Osiris at Abydos, which may be of the time of Khufu, from scanty evidences which give us but little information. It is certain, however, that this temple, which is clearly one of the oldest in Egypt, goes back at least to his time. Its site is the mound called Kom es-Sultan, "The Mound of the King," close to the village of el-Kherba, and on the borders of the cultivation northeast of the royal tombs at Umm el-Oa'ab.

Of royal palaces we have more definite information. North of the Kom es-Sultan are two great fortress-enclosures of brick: the one is known as _Snet es-Zebib_, "the Storehouse of Dried Orapes;" the other is occupied by the Coptic monastery of Der Anba Musas. Both are certainly fortress-palaces of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy. We know from the small record-plaques of this period that the kings were constantly founding or repairing places of this kind, which were always great rectangular enclosures with crenelated brick walls like those of early Babylonian buildings.

We have seen that the Northern Egyptian possessed similar fortress-cities which were captured by Narmer. These were the seats of the royal residence in various parts of the country. Behind their walls was the king's house, and no doubt also a town of n.o.bles and retainers, while the peasants lived on the arable land without.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 089.jpg THE SHUNET EZ-ZEBIB: THE FORTRESS-TOWN, About 3900 B.C.]

The Shnet ez-Zebib and its companion fortress were evidently the royal cities of the 1st and IId Dynasties at Abydos. The former has been excavated by Mr. E. R. Ayrton for the Egypt Exploration Fund, under the supervision of Prof. Petrie. He found jar-sealings of Khasekhemui and Perabsen. In later times the place was utilized as a burial-place for ibis-mummies (it had already been abandoned as a city before the time of the XIIth Dynasty), and from this fact it received the name of _Shenet deb-hib_, or "Storehouse of Ibis Burials." The Arab invaders adapted this name to their own language in the nearest form which would have any meaning, as _Shnet ez-Zebb_, "the Storehouse of Dried Grapes."

The Arab word _shna_ ("Barn" or "Storehouse") was, it should be noted, taken over from the Coptic _sheune,_ which is the old-Egyptian _shenet_.

The ident.i.ty of _sheune_ or _shna_ with the German "Scheune" is a quaint and curious coincidence. In the ill.u.s.tration of the Shnet ez-Zebib the curved line of crenelated wall, following the contour of the hill, should be noted, as it is a remarkable example of the building of this early period.

It will have been seen from the foregoing description of what far-reaching importance the discoveries at Abydos have been. A new chapter of the history of the human race has been opened, which contains information previously undreamt of, information which Egyptologists had never dared to hope would be recovered. The sand of Egypt indeed conceals inexhaustible treasures, and no one knows what the morrow's work may bring forth.

_Ex Africa semper aliquid novi!_

CHAPTER III--MEMPHIS AND THE PYRAMIDS

Memphis, the "beautiful abode," the "City of the White Wall," is said to have been founded by the legendary Menes, who in order to build it diverted the stream of the Nile by means of a great d.y.k.e constructed near the modern village of Koshesh, south of the village of Mitrahena, which marks the central point of the ancient metropolis of Northern Egypt. It may be that the city was founded by Aha or Narmer, the historical originals of Mena or Menes; but we have another theory with regard to its foundation, that it was originally built by King Merpeba Atjab, whose tomb was also discovered at Abydos near those of Aha and Narmer. Merpeba is the oldest king whose name is absolutely identified with one occurring in the XIXth Dynasty king-lists and in Manetho. He is certainly the "Merbap" or "Merbepa" ("Merbapen") of the lists and the _Miebis_ of Manetho. In both the lists and in Manetho he stands fifth in order from Mena, and he was therefore the sixth king of the Ist Dynasty.

The lists, Manetho, and the small monuments in his own tomb agree in making him the immediate successor of Semti Den (Ousaphas), and from the style of these latter it is evident that he comes after Tja, Tjer, Narmer, and Aha. That is to say, the contemporary evidence makes him the fifth king from Aha, the first original of "Menes."

Now after the piety of Seti I had led him to erect a great temple at Abydos in memory of the ancient kings, whose sepulchres had probably been brought to light shortly before, and to compile and set up in the temple a list of his predecessors, a certain pious sn.o.bbery or sn.o.bbish piety impelled a worthy named Tunure, who lived at Memphis, to put up in his own tomb at Sakkara a tablet of kings like the royal one at Abydos.

If Osiris-Khentamenti at Abydos had his tablet of kings, so should Osiris-Seker at Sakkara. But Tunure does not begin his list with Mena; his initial king is Merpeba. For him Merpeba was the first monarch to be commemorated at Sakkara. Does not this look very much as if the strictly historical Merpeba, not the rather legendary and confused Mena, was regarded as the first Memphite king? It may well be that it was in the reign of Merpeba, not in that of Aha or Narmer, that Memphis was founded.

The XIXth Dynasty lists of course say nothing about Mena or Merpeba having founded Memphis; they only give the names of the kings, nothing more. The earliest authority for the ascription of Memphis to "Menes", is Herodotus, who was followed in this ascription, as in many other matters, by Manetho; but it must be remembered that Manetho was writing for the edification of a Greek king (Ptolemy Philadelphus) and his Greek court at Alexandria, and had therefore to evince a respect for the great Greek cla.s.sic which he may not always have really felt. Herodotus is not, of course, accused of any wilful misstatement in this or in any other matter in which his accuracy is suspected. He merely wrote down what he was told by the Egyptians themselves, and Merpeba was sufficiently near in time to Aha to be easily confounded with him by the scribes of the Persian period, who no doubt ascribed everything to "Mena" that was done by the kings of the Ist and IId Dynasties.

Therefore it may be considered quite probable that the "Menes" who founded Memphis was Merpeba, the fifth or sixth king of the Ist Dynasty, whom Tunure, a thousand years before the time of Herodotus and his informants, placed at the head of the Memphite "List of Sakkara."

The reconquest of the North by Khasekhemui doubtless led to a further strengthening of Memphis; and it is quite possible that the deeds of this king also contributed to make up the sum total of those ascribed to the Herodotean and Manethonian Menes.

It may be that a town of the Northerners existed here before the time of the Southern Conquest, for Phtah, the local G.o.d of Memphis, has a very marked character of his own, quite different from that of Khen-tamenti, the Osiris of Abydos. He is always represented as a little bow-legged hydrocephalous dwarf very like the Phoenician _Kabeiroi_. It may be that here is another connection between the Northern Egyptians and the Semites. The name "Phtah," the "Opener," is definitely Semitic. We may then regard the dwarf Phtah as originally a non-Egyptian G.o.d of the Northerners, probably Semitic in origin, and his town also as antedating the conquest. But it evidently was to the Southerners that Memphis owed its importance and its eventual promotion to the position of capital of the united kingdom. Then the dwarf Phtah saw himself rivalled by another Phtah of Southern Egyptian origin, who had been installed at Memphis by the Southerners. This Phtah was a sort of modified edition of Osiris, in mummy-form and holding crook and whip, but with a refined edition of the Kabeiric head of the indigenous Phtah. The actual G.o.d of "the White Wall" was undoubtedly confused vith the dead G.o.d of the necropolis, whose name was Seker or Sekri (Sokari), "the Coffined." The original form of this deity was a mummied hawk upon a coffin, and it is very probable that he was imported from the South, like the second Phtah, at the time of the conquest, when the great Northern necropolis began to grow up as a duplicate of that at Abydos. Later on we find Seker confused with the ancient dwarf-G.o.d, and it is the latter who was afterwards chiefly revered as Phtah-Socharis-Osiris, the protector of the necropolis, the mummied Phtah being the generally recognized ruler of the City of the White Wall.

It is from the name of Seker that the modern Sak-kara takes its t.i.tle.

Sakkara marks the central point of the great Memphite necropolis, as it is the nearest point of the western desert to Memphis. Northwards the necropolis extended to Griza and Abu Roash, southwards, to Daslmr; even the necropoles of Lisht and Medm may be regarded as appanages of Sakkara. At Sakkara itself Tjeser of the IIId Dynasty had a pyramid, which, as we have seen, was probably not his real tomb (which was the great mastaba at Bet Khallaf), but a secondary or sham tomb corresponding to the "tombs" of the earliest kings at Umm el-Ga'ab in the necropolis of Abydos. Many later kings, however, especially of the Vith Dynasty, were actually buried at Sakkara. Their tombs have all been thoroughly described by their discoverer, Prof. Maspero, in his history.

The last king of the Hid Dynasty, Snefru, was buried away down south at Medm, in splendid isolation, but he may also have had a second pyramid at Sakkara or Abu Roash.

The kings of the IVth Dynasty were the greatest of the pyramid builders, and to them belong the huge edifices of Griza. The Vth Dynasty favoured Abusir, between Ciza and Sakkara; the Vith, as we have said, preferred Sakkara itself. With them the end of the Old Kingdom and of Memphite dominion was reached; the sceptre fell from the hands of the Memphite kings and was taken up by the princes of Herakleopolis (Ahnasyet el-Medina, near Beni Suef, south of the Eayym) and Thebes. Where the Herakleopolite kings were buried we do not know; probably somewhere in the local necropolis of the Gebel es-Sedment, between Ahnasya and the Fayym. The first Thebans (the XIth Dynasty) were certainly buried at Thebes, but when the Herakleopolites had finally disappeared, and all Egypt was again united under one strong sceptre, the Theban kings seem to have been drawn northwards. They removed to the seat of the dominion of those whom they had supplanted, and they settled in the neighbourhood of Herakleopolis, near the fertile province of the Fayym, and between it and Memphis. Here, in the royal fortress-palace of Itht-taui, "Controlling the Two Lands," the kings of the XIIth Dynasty lived, and they were buried in the necropoles of Dashr, Lisht, and Illahun (Hawara), in pyramids like those of the old Memphite kings. These facts, of the situation of Itht-taui, of their burial in the southern an ex of the old necropolis of Memphis, and of the fori of their tombs (the true Upper Egyptian and Thebian form was a rock-cut gallery and chamber driven deep into the hill), show how solicitous were the Amenemhats and Senusrets of the suffrages of Lower Egypt, how anxious they were to conciliate the ancient royal pride of Memphis.

Where the kings of the XIIIth Dynasty and the Hyksos or "Shepherds" were buried, we do not know. The kings of the restored Theban empire were all interred at Thebes. There are, in fact, no known royal sepulchres between the Fayym and Abydos. The great kings were mostly buried in the neighbourhood of Memphis, Abydos, and Thebes. The sepulchres of the "Middle Empire"--the XIth to XIIIth Dynasties--in the neighbourhood of the Fayym may fairly be grouped with those of the same period at Dashr, which belongs to the necropolis of Memphis, since it is only a mile or two south of Sakkara.

It is chiefly with regard to the sepulchres of the kings that the most momentous discoveries of recent years have been made at Thebes, and at Sakkara, Abusir, Dashr, and Lisht, as at Abydos. For this reason we deal in succession with the finds in the necropoles of Abydos, Memphis, and Thebes respectively. And with the sepulchres of the "Old Kingdom,"

in the Memphite necropolis proper, we have naturally grouped those of the "Middle Kingdom" at Dashr, Lisht, Illahun, and Hawara.

Some of these modern discoveries have been commented on and ill.u.s.trated by Prof. Maspero in his great history. But the discoveries that have been made since this publication have been very important,--those at Abusir, indeed, of first-rate importance, though not so momentous as those of the tombs of the Ist and IId Dynasties at Abydos, already described. At Abu Roash and at Giza, at the northern end of the Memphite necropolis, several expeditions have had considerable success, notably those of the American Dr. Reisner, a.s.sisted by Mr. Mace, who excavated the royal tombs at Umm el-Ga'ab for Prof. Petrie, those of the German Drs. Steindorff and Borchardt,--the latter working for the _Beutsch-Orient Gesellschaft_,--and those of other American excavators.

Until the full publication of the results of these excavations appears, very little can be said about them. Many mastaba-tombs have, it is understood, been found, with interesting remains. Nothing of great historical importance seems to have been discovered, however. It is otherwise when we come to the discoveries of Messrs. Borchardt and Schafer at Abusir, south of Giza and north of Sakkara. At this place results of first-rate historical importance have been attained.

The main group of pyramids at Abusir consists of the tombs of the kings Sahura, Neferarikara, and Ne-user-Ra, of the Vth Dynasty. The pyramids themselves are smaller than those of Giza, but larger than those of Sakkara. In general appearance and effect they resemble those of Giza, but they are not so imposing, as the desert here is low. Those of Giza, Sakkara, and Dashr owe much of their impressiveness to the fact that they are placed at some height above the cultivated land. The excavation and planning of these pyramids were carried out by Messrs. Borchardt and Schafer at the expense of Baron von Bissing, the well-known Egyptologist of Munich, and of the _Deutsch-Orient Gesell-schaft_ of Berlin. The antiquities found have been divided between the museums of Berlin and Cairo.

One of the most noteworthy discoveries was that of the funerary temple of Ne-user-Ra, which stood at the base of his pyramid. The plan is interesting, and the granite lotus-bud columns found are the most ancient yet discovered in Egypt. Much of the paving and the wainscoting of the walls was of fine black marble, beautifully polished. An interesting find was a basin and drain with lion's-head mouth, to carry away the blood of the sacrifices. Some sculptures in relief were discovered, including a gigantic representation of the king and the G.o.ddess Isis, which shows that in the early days of the Vth Dynasty the king and the G.o.ds were already depicted in exactly the same costume as they wore in the days of the Ramses and the Ptolemies. The hieratic art of Egypt had, in fact, now taken on itself the final outward appearance which it retained to the very end. There is no more of the archaism and absence of conventionality, which marks the art of the earliest dynasties.

We can trace by successive steps the swift development of Egyptian art from the rude archaism of the Ist Dynasty to its final consummation under the Vth, when the conventions became fixed. In the time of Khasekhemui, at the beginning of the IId Dynasty, the archaic character of the art has already begun to wear off. Under the same dynasty we still have styles of unconventional navete, such as the famous Statue "No. 1" of the Cairo Museum, bearing the names of Kings Hetepahaui, Neb-ra, and Neneter. But with the IVth Dynasty we no longer look for unconventionality. Prof. Petrie discovered at Abydos a small ivory statuette of Khufu or Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The portrait is a good one and carefully executed. It was not till the time of the XVIIIth Dynasty, indeed, that the Egyptians ceased to portray their kings as they really were, and gave them a purely conventional type of face. This convention, against which the heretical King Amenhetep IV (Akhunaten) rebelled, in order to have himself portrayed in all his real ungainliness and ugliness, did not exist till long after the time of the IVth and Vth Dynasties.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 100.jpg STATUE NO. 1 OF THE CAIRO MUSEUM, About 3900 B.C.]

The kings of the XIIth Dynasty especially were most careful that their statues should be accurate portraits; indeed, the portraits of Usertsen (Senusret) III vary from a young face to an old one, showing that the king was faithfully depicted at different periods of his life.

But the general conventions of dress and deportment were finally fixed under the Vth Dynasty. After this time we no longer have such absolutely faithful and original presentments as the other little ivory statuette found by Prof. Petrie at Abydos (now in the British Museum), which shows us an aged monarch of the Ist Dynasty. It is obvious that the features are absolutely true to life, and the figure wears an unconventionally party-coloured and bordered robe of a kind which kings of a later day may have worn in actual life, but which they would a.s.suredly never be depicted as wearing by the artists of their day. To the end of Egyptian history, the kings, even the Roman emperors, were represented on the monuments clothed in the official costume of their ancestors of the IVth and Vth Dynasties, in the same manner as we see Khufu wearing his robe in the little figure from Abydos, and Ne-user-Ra on the great relief from Abusir. There are one or two exceptions, such as the representations of the original genius Akhunaten at Tell el-Amarna and the beautiful statue of Ramses II at Turin, in which we see these kings wearing the real costume of their time, but such exceptions are very rare.

The art of Abusir is therefore of great interest, since it marks the end of the development of the priestly art. Secular art might develop as it liked, though the crystallizing influence of the ecclesiastical canon is always evident here also. But henceforward it was an impiety, which only an Akhunaten could commit, to depict a king or a G.o.d on the walls of a temple otherwise (except so far as, the portrait was concerned) than as he had been depicted in the time of the Vth Dynasty.

Other buildings have been excavated by the Germans at Abusir, notably the usual town of mastaba-tombs belonging to the chief dignitaries of the reign, which is always found at the foot of a royal pyramid of this period. Another building of the highest interest, belonging to the same age, was also excavated, and its true character was determined. This is a building at a place called er-Righa or Ab Ghuraib, "Father of Crows,"

between Abusir and Giza. It was formerly supposed to be a pyramid, but the German excavations have shown that it is really a temple of the Sun-G.o.d Ra of Heliopolis, specially venerated by the kings of the Vth Dynasty, who were of Heliopolitan origin. The great pyramid-builders of the IVth Dynasty seem to have been the last true Memphites. At the end of the reign of Shepseskaf, the last monarch of the dynasty, the sceptre pa.s.sed to a Heliopolitan family. The following VIth Dynasty may again have been Memphite, but this is uncertain. The capital continued to be Memphis, and from the beginning of the Hid Dynasty to the end of the Old Kingdom and the rise of Herakle-opolis and Thebes, Memphis remained the chief city of Egypt.

The Heliopolitans were naturally the servants of the Sun-G.o.d above all other G.o.ds, and they were the first to call themselves "Sons of the Sun," a t.i.tle retained by the Pharaohs throughout all subsequent history. It was Ne-user-Ra who built the Sun-temple of Abu Ghuraib, on the edge of the desert, north of his pyramid and those of his two immediate predecessors at Abusir. As now laid bare by the excavations of 1900, it is seen to consist of an artificial mound, with a great court in front to the eastward. On the mound was erected a truncated obelisk, the stone emblem of the Sun-G.o.d. The worshippers in the court below looked towards the Sun's stone erected upon its mound in the west, the quarter of the sun's setting; for the Sun-G.o.d of Heliopolis was primarily the setting sun, Tum-Ra, not Ra Harmachis, the rising sun, whose emblem is the Great Sphinx at Giza, which looks towards the east.

The sacred emblem of the Heliopolitan Sun-G.o.d reminds us forcibly of the Semitic _bethels_ or _baetyli_, the sacred stones of Palestine, and may give yet another hint of the Semitic origin of the Heliopolitan cult.

In the court of the temple is a huge circular altar of fine alabaster, several feet across, on which slain oxen were offered to the Sun, and behind this, at the eastern end of the court, are six great basins of the same stone, over which the beasts were slain, with drains running out of them by which their blood was carried away. This temple is a most interesting monument of the civilization of the "Old Kingdom" at the time of the Vth Dynasty.

At Sakkara itself, which lies a short distance south of Abusir, no new royal tombs have, as has been said, been discovered of late years. But a great deal of work has been done among the private mastaba-tombs by the officers of the _Service des Antiquites_, which reserves to itself the right of excavation here and at Dashr. The mastaba of the sage and writer Kagernna (or rather Gemnika, "I-have-found-a-ghost," which sounds very like an American Indian appellation) is very fine.

"I-have-found-a-ghost" lived in the reign of the king Tatkara a.s.sa, the "Tancheres" of Manetho, and he wrote maxims like his great contemporary Phtahhetep ("Offered to Phtah"), who was also buried at Sakkara. The officials of the _Service des Antiquites_ who cleaned the tomb unluckily misread his name Ka-bi-n (an impossible form which could only mean, literally translated, "Ghost-soul-of" or "Ghost-soul-to-me"), and they have placed it in this form over the entrance to his tomb. This mastaba, like those, already known, of Mereruka (sometimes misnamed "Mera") and the famous Ti, both also at Sakkara, contains a large number of chambers, ornamented with reliefs. In the vicinity M. Grebaut, then Director of the Service of Antiquities, discovered a very interesting Street of Tombs, a regular Via Sacra, with rows of tombs of the dignitaries of the VIth Dynasty on either side of it. They are generally very much like one another; the workmanship of the reliefs is fine, and the portrait of the owner of the tomb is always in evidence.

Several of the smaller mastabas have lately been disposed of to the various museums, as they are liable to damage if they remain where they stand; moreover, they are not of great value to the Museum of Cairo, but are of considerable value to various museums which do not already possess complete specimens of this cla.s.s of tombs. A fine one, belonging to the chief Uerarina, is now exhibited in the a.s.syrian Bas.e.m.e.nt of the British Museum; another is in the Museum of Leyden; a third at Berlin, and so on. Most of these are simple tombs of one chamber. In the centre of the rear wall we always see the _stele_ or gravestone proper, built into the fabric of the tomb. Before this stood the low table of offerings with a bowl for oblations, and on either side a tall incense-altar. From the altar the divine smoke (_senetr_) arose when the _hen-ka_, or priest of the ghost (literally, "Ghost's Servant"), performed his duty of venerating the spirits of the deceased, while the _Kher-heb_, or cantor, enveloped in the mystic folds of the leopard-skin and with bronze incense-burner in hand, sang the holy litanies and spells which should propitiate the ghost and enable him to win his way to ultimate perfection in the next world.

The stele is always in the form of a door with pyloni-form cornice. On either side is a figure of the deceased, and at the sides are carved prayers to Anubis, and at a later date to Osiris, who are implored to give the funerary meats and "everything good and pure on which the G.o.d there (as the dead man in the tomb has been const.i.tuted) lives;" often we find that the biography and list of honorary t.i.tles and dignities of the deceased have been added.

Sakkara was used as a place of burial in the latest as well as in the earliest time. The Egyptians of the XXVIth Dynasty, wearied of the long decadence and devastating wars which had followed the glorious epoch of the conquering Pharaohs of the XVIIIth and XIXth Dynasties, turned for a new and refreshing inspiration to the works of the most ancient kings, when Egypt was a simple self-contained country, holding no intercourse with outside lands, bearing no outside burdens for the sake of pomp and glory, and knowing nothing of the decay and decadence which follows in the train of earthly power and grandeur. They deliberately turned their backs on the worn-out and discredited imperial trappings of the Thothmes and Ramses, and they took the supposed primitive simplicity of the Snefrus, the Khufus, and the Ne-user-Ras for a model and ensampler to their lives. It was an age of conscious and intended archaism, and in pursuit of the archaistic ideal the Mem-phites of the Sate age had themselves buried in the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, side by side with their ancestors of the time of the Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several of these tombs have lately been discovered and opened, and fitted with modern improvements. One or two of them, of the Persian period, have wells (leading to the sepulchral chamber) of enormous depth, down which the modern tourist is enabled to descend by a spiral iron staircase. The Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings at Thebes nothing disturbs the silence but the steady thumping pulsation of the dynamo-engine which lights the ancient sepulchres of the Pharaohs. Thus do modern ideas and inventions help us to see and so to understand better the works of ancient Egypt. But it is perhaps a little too much like the Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. The interiors of the later tombs are often decorated with reliefs which imitate those of the early period, but with a kind of delicate grace which at once marks them for what they are, so that it is impossible to confound them with the genuine ancient originals from which they were adapted.

Riding from Sakkara southwards to Dashr, we pa.s.s on the way the gigantic stone mastaba known as the _Mastabat el-Fara'n_, "Pharaoh's Bench." This was considered to be the tomb of the Vth Dynasty king, Unas, until his pyramid was found by Prof. Maspero at Sakkara. From its form it might be thought to belong to a monarch of the Hid Dynasty, but the great size of the stone blocks of which it is built seems to point rather to the XIIth. All attempts to penetrate its secret by actual excavation have been unavailing.

Further south across the desert we see from the Mastabat el-Fara'n four distinct pyramids, symmetrically arranged in two lines, two in each line. The two to the right are great stone erections of the usual type, like those of Giza and Abusir, and the southernmost of them has a peculiar broken-backed appearance, due to the alteration of the angle of inclination of its sides during construction. Further, it is covered almost to the ground by the original casing of polished white limestone blocks, so that it gives a very good idea of the original appearance of the other pyramids, which have lost their casing. These two pyramids very probably belong to kings of the Hid Dynasty, as does the Step-Pyramid of Sakkara. They strongly resemble the Giza type, and the northernmost of the two looks very like an understudy of the Great Pyramid. It seems to mark the step in the development of the royal pyramid which was immediately followed by the Great Pyramid. But no excavations have yet proved the accuracy of this view. Both pyramids have been entered, but nothing has been found in them. It is very probable that one of them is the second pyramid of Snefru.

The other two pyramids, those nearest the cultivation, are of very different appearance. They are half-ruined, they are black in colour, and their whole effect is quite different from that of the stone pyramids. For they are built of brick, not of stone. They are pyramids, it is true, but of a different material and of a different date from those which we have been describing. They are built above the sepulchres of kings of the XIIth Dynasty, the Theban house which transferred its residence northwards to the neighbourhood of the ancient Northern capital. We have, in fact, reached the end of the Old Kingdom at Sakkara; at Dashr begin the sepulchres of the Middle Kingdom. Pyramids are still built, but they are not always of stone; brick is used, usually with stone in the interior. The general effect of these brick pyramids, when new, must have been indistinguishable from that of the stone ones, and even now, when it has become half-ruined, such a great brick pyramid as that of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Dashr is not without impressiveness. After all, there is no reason why a brick building should be less admirable than a stone one. And in its own way the construction of such colossal ma.s.ses of bricks as the two eastern pyramids of Dashr must have been as arduous, even as difficult, as that of building a moderate-sized stone pyramid. The photograph of the brick pyramids of Dashr on this page shows well the great size of these ma.s.ses of brickwork, which are as impressive as any of the great brick structures of Babylonia and a.s.syria.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 109.jpg EXTERIOR OF THE SOUTHERN BRICK PYRAMID OF DASHUR]

XIITH DYNASTY. Excavated by M. de Morgan, 1895. This is the secondary tomb of Amenemhat III; about 2200 B.C.

The XIIth Dynasty use of brick for the royal tombs was a return to the custom of earlier days, for from the time of Aha to that Tjeser, from the 1st Dynasty to the Hid, brick had been used for the building of the royal mastaba-tombs, out of which the pyramids had developed.

At this point, where we take leave of the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom, we may notice the latest theory as to the building of these monuments, which has of late years been enunciated by Dr. Borchardt, and is now generally accepted. The great Prussian explorer Lepsius, when he examined the pyramids in the 'forties, came to the conclusion that each king, when he ascended the throne, planned a small pyramid for himself.

This was built in a few years' time, and if his reign were short, or if he were unable to enlarge the pyramid for other reasons, it sufficed for his tomb. If, however, his reign seemed likely to be one of some length, after the first plan was completed he enlarged his pyramid by building another and a larger one around it and over it. Then again, when this addition was finished, and the king still reigned and was in possession of great resources, yet another coating, so to speak, was put on to the pyramid, and so on till colossal structures like the First and Second Pyramid of Giza, which, we know, belonged to kings who were unusually long-lived, were completed. And finally the aged monarch died, and was buried in the huge tomb which his long life and his great power had enabled him to erect. This view appeared eminently reasonable at the time, and it seemed almost as though we ought to be able to tell whether a king had reigned long or not by the size of his pyramid, and even to obtain a rough idea of the length of his reign by counting the successive coats or accretions which it had received, much as we tell the age of a tree by the rings in its bole. A pyramid seemed to have been constructed something after the manner of an onion or a Chinese puzzle-box.