CHAPTER II--THE MEMPHITE EMPIRE

_The royal pyramid builders: Kheops, Khephren, Mykerinos--Memphite

literature and art--Extension of Egypt towards the South, and the

conquest of Nubia by the Pharaohs._

At that time “the Majesty of King Huni died, and the Majesty of King

Snofrûi arose to be a sovereign benefactor over this whole earth.” All

that we know of him is contained in one sentence: he fought against the

nomads of Sinai, constructed fortresses to protect the eastern frontier

of the Delta, and made for himself a tomb in the form of a pyramid.

The almost uninhabited country which connects Africa with Asia is

flanked towards the south by two chains of hills which unite at right

angles, and together form the so-called Gebel et-Tîh. This country is

a tableland, gently inclined from south to north, bare, sombre, covered

with flint-shingle, and siliceous rocks, and breaking out at frequent

intervals into long low chalky hills, seamed with wadys, the largest

of which--that of El-Arish--having drained all the others into itself,

opens into the Mediterranean halfway between Pelusiam and Gaza. Torrents

of rain are not infrequent in winter and spring, but the small quantity

of water which they furnish is quickly evaporated, and barely keeps

alive the meagre vegetation in the bottom of the valleys. Sometimes,

after months of absolute drought, a tempest breaks over the more

elevated parts of the desert.*

* In chap. viii. of the _Account of the Survey_, pp. 226-

228, Mr. Holland describes a sudden rainstorm or “sell” on

December 3, 1867, which drowned thirty persons, destroyed

droves of camels and asses, flocks of sheep and goats, and

swept away, in the Wady Feîrân, a thousand palm trees and a

grove of tamarisks, two miles in length. Towards 4.30 in the

afternoon, a few drops of rain began to fall, but the storm

did not break till 5 p.m. At 5.15 it was at its height, and

it was not over till 9.30. The torrent, which at 8 p.m. was

10 feet deep, and was about 1000 feet in width, was, at 6

a.m. the next day, reduced to a small streamlet.

The wind rises suddenly in squall-like blasts; thick clouds, borne one

knows not whence, are riven by lightning to the incessant accompaniment

of thunder; it would seem as if the heavens had broken up and were

crashing down upon the mountains. In a few moments streams of muddy

water rushing down the ravines, through the gulleys and along the

slightest depressions, hurry to the low grounds, and meeting there in a

foaming concourse, follow the fall of the land; a few minutes later,

and the space between one hillside and the other is occupied by a deep

river, flowing with terrible velocity and irresistible force. At the end

of eight or ten hours the air becomes clear, the wind falls, the rain

ceases; the hastily formed river dwindles, and for lack of supply is

exhausted; the inundation comes to an end almost as quickly as it began.

In a short time nothing remains of it but some shallow pools scattered

in the hollows, or here and there small streamlets which rapidly dry up.

The flood, however, accelerated by its acquired velocity, continues to

descend towards the sea. The devastated flanks of the hills, their

torn and corroded bases, the accumulated masses of shingle left by

the eddies, the long lines of rocks and sand, mark its route and bear

evidence everywhere of its power. The inhabitants, taught by experience,

avoid a sojourn in places where tempests have once occurred. It is in

vain that the sky is serene above them and the sun shines overhead; they

always fear that at the moment in which danger seems least likely to

threaten them, the torrent, taking its origin some twenty leagues off,

may be on its headlong way to surprise them. And, indeed, it comes so

suddenly and so violently that nothing in its course can escape it:

men and beasts, before there is time to fly, often even before they

are aware of its approach, are swept away and pitilessly destroyed. The

Egyptians applied to the entire country the characteristic epithet of

To-Shûît, the land of Emptiness, the land of Aridity.

[Illustration: 154.jpg MAP SINAITIC PENINSULAR, TIME OF MEMPHITE EMPIRE]

They divided it into various districts--the upper and lower Tonû, Aia,

Kadûma. They called its inhabitants Hirû-Shâîtû, the lords of the Sands;

Nomiû-Shâîtû, the rovers of the Sands; and they associated them with the

Amu--that is to say, with a race which we recognize as Semitic. The type

of these barbarians, indeed, reminds one of the Semitic massive

head, aquiline nose, retreating forehead, long beard, thick and not

infrequently crisp hair. They went barefoot, and the monuments represent

them as girt with a short kilt, though they also wore the _abayah_.

Their arms were those commonly used by the Egyptians--the bow, lance,

club, knife, battle-axe, and shield. They possessed great flocks of

goats or sheep, but the horse and camel were unknown to them, as well as

to their African neighbours. They lived chiefly upon the milk of their

flocks, and the fruit of the date-palm. A section of them tilled the

soil: settled around springs or wells, they managed by industrious

labour to cultivate moderately sized but fertile fields, flourishing

orchards, groups of palms, fig and olive trees, and vines. In spite of

all this their resources were insufficient, and their position would

have been precarious if they had not been able to supplement their

stock of provisions from Egypt or Southern Syria. They bartered at the

frontier markets their honey, wool, gums, manna, and small quantities

of charcoal, for the products of local manufacture, but especially for

wheat, or the cereals of which they stood in need. The sight of the

riches gathered together in the eastern plain, from Tanis to Bubastis,

excited their pillaging instincts, and awoke in them an irrepressible

covetousness. The Egyptian annals make mention of their incursions at

the very commencement of history, and they maintained that even the gods

had to take steps to protect themselves from them. The Gulf of Suez and

the mountainous rampart of Gebel Geneffeh in the south, and the marshes

of Pelusium on the north, protected almost completely the eastern

boundary of the Delta; but the Wady Tumilât laid open the heart of the

country to the invaders. The Pharaohs of the divine dynasties in the

first place, and then those of the human dynasties, had fortified this

natural opening, some say by a continuous wall, others by a line of

military posts, flanked on the one side by the waters of the gulf.*

* The existence of the wall, or of the line of military

posts, is of very ancient date, for the name Kîm-Oîrît is

already followed by the hieroglyph of the wall, or by that

of a fortified enclosure in the texts of the Pyramids.

[Illustration: 156.jpg A BARBARIAN MONÎTI FROM SINAI]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph by Petrie. The

original is of the time of Nectanebo, and is at Karnak; I

have chosen it for reproduction in preference to the heads

of the time of the Ancient Empire, which are more injured,

and of which this is only the traditional copy.

Snofrûi restored or constructed several castles in this district, which

perpetuated his name for a long time after his death. These had the

square or rectangular form of the towers, whose ruins are still to

be seen on the banks of the Nile. Standing night and day upon the

battlements, the sentinels kept a strict look-out over the desert, ready

to give alarm at the slightest suspicious movement.

[Illustration: 157.jpg TWO REFUGE TOWERS OF THE HIRÛ-SHÂÎTÛ, IN THE WADY

BÎAR]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the vignette by E. H. Palmer,

_The Desert of the Exodus_, p. 317.

The expression Kîm-Oîrît, “the very black,” is applied to

the northern part of the Red Sea, in contradistinction to

Ûaz-Oîrît, Uazît-Oîrît, “the very green,” the

Mediterranean; a town, probably built at a short distance

from the village of Maghfâr, had taken its name from the

gulf on which it was situated, and was also called Kîm-

Oîrît.

The marauders took advantage of any inequality in the ground to approach

unperceived, and they were often successful in getting through the

lines; they scattered themselves over the country, surprised a village

or two, bore off such women and children as they could lay their hands

on, took possession of herds of animals, and, without carrying their

depredations further, hastened to regain their solitudes before

information of their exploits could have reached the garrison. If their

expeditions became numerous, the general of the Eastern Marches, or the

Pharaoh himself, at the head of a small army, started on a campaign of

reprisals against them. The marauders did not wait to be attacked, but

betook themselves to refuges constructed by them beforehand at certain

points in their territory. They erected here and there, on the crest of

some steep hill, or at the confluence of several wadys, stone towers put

together without mortar, and rounded at the top like so many beehives,

in unequal groups of three, ten, or thirty; here they massed themselves

as well as they could, and defended the position with the greatest

obstinacy, in the hope that their assailants, from the lack of water and

provisions, would soon be forced to retreat.*

* The members of the English Commission do not hesitate to

attribute the construction of these towers to the remotest

antiquity; the Bedouin call them “namûs,” plur. “nawamîs,”

mosquito-houses, and they say that the children of Israel

built them as a shelter during the night from mosquitos at

the time of the Exodus. The resemblance of these buildings

to the “Talayôt” of the Balearic Isles, and to the Scotch

beehive-shaped houses, has struck all travellers.

Elsewhere they possessed fortified “duars,” where not only their

families but also their herds could find a refuge--circular or oval

enclosures, surrounded by low walls of massive rough stones crowned by a

thick rampart made of branches of acacia interlaced with thorny bushes,

the tents or huts being ranged behind, while in the centre was an empty

space for the cattle. These primitive fortresses were strong enough to

overawe nomads; regular troops made short work of them. The Egyptians

took them by assault, overturned them, cut down the fruit trees, burned

the crops, and retreated in security, after having destroyed everything

in their march. Each of their campaigns, which hardly lasted more than a

few days, secured the tranquillity of the frontier for some years.*

* The inscription of Uni (11. 22-32) furnishes us with the

invariable type of the Egyptian campaigns against the Hirû-

Shâîtû: the bas-reliefs of Karnak might serve to illustrate

it, as they represent the great raid led by Seti I. into the

territory of the Shaûsûs and their allies, between the

frontier of Egypt and the town of Hebron.

[Illustration: 159.jpg VIEW OF THE OASIS OF WADY FEÎKÂN IN THE PENINSULA

OF SINAI]

Drawn by Boudier, from the water-colour drawing published by

Lepsius, _Denhn._, i. 7, No. 2.

To the south of Gebel et-Tîh, and cut off from it almost completely by a

moat of wadys, a triangular group of mountains known as Sinai thrusts a

wedge-shaped spur into the Red Sea, forcing back its waters to the right

and left into two narrow gulfs, that of Akabah and that of Suez. Gebel

Katherin stands up from the centre and overlooks the whole peninsula. A

sinuous chain detaches itself from it and ends at Gebel Serbâl, at

some distance to the northwest; another trends to the south, and after

attaining in Gebel Umm-Shomer an elevation equal to that of Gebel

Katherin, gradually diminishes in height, and plunges into the sea at

Ras-Mohammed. A complicated system of gorges and valleys--Wady Nasb,

Wady Kidd, Wady Hebrân, Wady Baba--furrows the country and holds it as

in a network of unequal meshes. Wady Feîrân contains the most fertile

oasis in the peninsula. A never-failing stream waters it for about two

or three miles of its length; quite a little forest of palms enlivens

both banks--somewhat meagre and thin, it is true, but intermingled with

acacias, tamarisks, nabecas, carob trees, and willows. Birds sing amid

their branches, sheep wander in the pastures, while the huts of the

inhabitants peep out at intervals from among the trees. Valleys and

plains, even in some places the slopes of the hills, are sparsely

covered with those delicate aromatic herbs which affect a stony soil.

Their life is a perpetual struggle against the sun: scorched, dried up,

to all appearance dead, and so friable that they crumble to pieces in

the fingers when one attempts to gather them, the spring rains annually

infuse into them new life, and bestow upon them, almost before one’s

eyes, a green and perfumed youth of some days’ duration. The summits of

the hills remain always naked, and no vegetation softens the ruggedness

of their outlines, or the glare of their colouring. The core of the

peninsula is hewn, as it were, out of a block of granite, in which

white, rose-colour, brown, or black predominate, according to the

quantities of felspar, quartz, or oxides of iron which the rocks

contain. Towards the north, the masses of sandstone which join on to

Gebel et-Tîh assume all possible shades of red and grey, from a delicate

lilac neutral tint to dark purple. The tones of colour, although placed

crudely side by side, present nothing jarring nor offensive to the eye;

the sun floods all, and blends them in his light. The Sinaitic peninsula

is at intervals swept, like the desert to the east of Egypt, by terrible

tempests, which denude its mountains and transform its wadys into so

many ephemeral torrents. The Monîtû who frequented this region from the

dawn of history did not differ much from the “Lords of the Sands;” they

were of the same type, had the same costume, the same arms, the same

nomadic instincts, and in districts where the soil permitted it, made

similar brief efforts to cultivate it. They worshipped a god and a

goddess whom the Egyptians identified with Horus and Hâthor; one of

these appeared to represent the light, perhaps the sun, the other the

heavens. They had discovered at an early period in the sides of the

hills rich metalliferous veins, and strata, bearing precious stones;

from these they learned to extract iron, oxides of copper and manganese,

and turquoises, which they exported to the Delta. The fame of their

riches, carried to the banks of the Nile, excited the cupidity of the

Pharaohs; expeditions started from different points of the valley, swept

down upon the peninsula, and established themselves by main force in the

midst of the districts where the mines lay. These were situated to the

north-west, in the region of sandstone, between the western branch

of Gebel et-Tîh and the Gulf of Suez. They were collectively called

Mafkaît, the country of turquoises, a fact which accounts for the

application of the local epithet, lady of Mafkaît, to Hâthor. The

earliest district explored, that which the Egyptians first attacked, was

separated from the coast by a narrow plain and a single range of hills:

the produce of the mines could be thence transported to the sea in a

few hours without difficulty. Pharaoh’s labourers called this region the

district of Baîfc, the mine _par excellence_, or of Bebît, the country

of grottoes, from the numerous tunnels which their predecessors had made

there: the name Wady Maghara, Valley of the Cavern, by which the site

is now designated, is simply an Arabic translation of the old Egyptian

word.

The Monîtû did not accept this usurpation of their rights without a

struggle, and the Egyptians who came to work among them had either to

purchase their forbearance by a tribute, or to hold themselves always in

readiness to repulse the assaults of the Monîtû by force of arms. Zosiri

had already taken steps to ensure the safety of the turquoise-seekers

at their work; Snofrûi was not, therefore, the first Pharaoh who passed

that way, but none of his predecessors had left so many traces of his

presence as he did in this out-of-the-way corner of the empire. There

may still be seen, on the north-west slope of the Wady Maghara, the

bas-relief which one of his lieutenants engraved there in memory of a

victory gained over the Monîtû. A Bedouin sheikh fallen on his knees

prays for mercy with suppliant gesture, but Pharaoh has already seized

him by his long hair, and brandishes above his head a white stone mace

to fell him with a single blow.

[Illustration: 163.jpg THE MINING WORKS OF WADY MAGHARA]

Plan made by Thuillier, from the sketch by Brugscii,

_Wanderung nach den Tiirhis Minen_, p. 70.

The workmen, partly recruited from the country itself, partly despatched

from the banks of the Nile, dwelt in an entrenched camp upon an isolated

peak at the confluence of Wady Genneh and Wady Maghara. A zigzag pathway

on its smoothest slope ends, about seventeen feet below the summit, at

the extremity of a small and slightly inclined tableland, upon which are

found the ruins of a large village; this is the High Castle--Hâît-Qaît

of the ancient inscriptions. Two hundred habitations can still be made

out here, some round, some rectangular, constructed of sandstone blocks

without mortar, and not larger than the huts of the fellahîn: in former

times a flat roof of wicker-work and puddled clay extended over each.

The entrance was not so much a door as a narrow opening, through which

a fat man would find it difficult to pass; the interior consisted of

a single chamber, except in the case of the chief of the works, whose

dwelling contained two.

[Illustration: 164.jpg THE HIGH CASTLE OF THE MINERS--HAÎT-QAÎT--AT THE

CONFLUENCE OF WADY GENNEH AND WADY MAGHARA]

Drawn by Boudier, from the photograph published in the

Ordnance Survey of the Peninsula of Sinai, Photographs, vol.

ii. pls. 59, 60.

A rough stone bench from two to two and a half feet high surrounds the

plateau on which the village stands; a _cheval défrise_ made of thorny

brushwood probably completed the defence, as in the _duars_ of the

desert. The position was very strong and easily defended. Watchmen

scattered over the neighbouring summits kept an outlook over the distant

plain and the defiles of the mountains. Whenever the cries of these

sentinels announced the approach of the foe, the workmen immediately

deserted the mine and took refuge in their citadel, which a handful of

resolute men could successfully hold, as long as hunger and thirst did

not enter into the question. As the ordinary springs and wells would

not have been sufficient to supply the needs of the colony, they had

transformed the bottom of the valley into an artificial lake. A dam

thrown across it prevented the escape of the waters, which filled the

reservoir more or less completely according to the season. It never

became empty, and several species of shellfish flourished in it--among

others, a kind of large mussel which the inhabitants generally used as

food, which with dates, milk, oil, coarse bread, a few vegetables, and

from time to time a fowl or a joint of meat, made up their scanty fare.

Other things were of the same primitive character. The tools found in

the village are all of flint: knives, scrapers, saws, hammers, and heads

of lances and arrows. A few vases brought from Egypt are distinguished

by the fineness of the material and the purity of the design; but the

pottery in common use was made on the spot from coarse clay without

care, and regardless of beauty. As for jewellery, the villagers had

beads of glass or blue enamel, and necklaces of strung cowrie-shells.

In the mines, as in their own houses, the workmen employed stone tools

only, with handles of wood, or of plaited willow twigs, but their

chisels or hammers were more than sufficient to cut the yellow

sandstone, coarse-grained and very friable as it was, in the midst of

which they worked.*

* E. H. Palmer, however, from his observations, is of

opinion that the work in the tunnels of the mines was

executed entirely by means of bronze chisels and tools; the

flint implements serving only to incise the scenes which

cover the surfaces of the rocks.

The tunnels running straight into the mountain were low and wide, and

were supported at intervals by pillars of sandstone left _in situ_.

These tunnels led into chambers of various sizes, whence they followed

the lead of the veins of precious mineral. The turquoise sparkled on

every side--on the ceiling and on the walls--and the miners, profiting

by the slightest fissures, cut round it, and then with forcible blows

detached the blocks, and reduced them to small fragments, which they

crushed, and carefully sifted so as not to lose a particle of the gem.

The oxides of copper and of manganese which they met with here and

elsewhere in moderate quantities, were used in the manufacture of those

beautiful blue enamels of various shades which the Egyptians esteemed

so highly. The few hundreds of men of which the permanent population was

composed, provided for the daily exigencies of industry and commerce.

Royal inspectors arrived from time to time to examine into their

condition, to rekindle their zeal, and to collect the product of their

toil. When Pharaoh had need of a greater quantity than usual of minerals

or turquoises, he sent thither one of his officers, with a select body

of carriers, mining experts, and stone-dressers. Sometimes as many

as two or three thousand men poured suddenly into the peninsula, and

remained there one or two months; the work went briskly forward, and

advantage was taken of the occasion to extract and transport to Egypt

beautiful blocks of diorite, serpentine or granite, to be afterwards

manufactured there into sarcophagi or statues. Engraved stelæ, to be

seen on the sides of the mountains, recorded the names of the principal

chiefs, the different bodies of handicraftsmen who had participated in

the campaign, the name of the sovereign who had ordered it and often the

year of his reign.

It was not one tomb only which Snofrui had caused to be built, but two.

He called them “Khâ,” the Rising, the place where the dead Pharaoh,

identified with the sun, is raised above the world for ever. One of

these was probably situated near Dahshur; the other, the “Khâ rîsi,” the

Southern Rising, appears to be identical with the monument of Mêdûm.

[Illustration: 167.jpg THE PYRAMID OF MÊDÛM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plans of Flinders Petrie,

_Medum_, pl. ii.

The pyramid, like the mastaba,* represents a tumulus with four sides,

in which the earthwork is replaced by a structure of stone or brick. It

indicates the place in which lies a prince, chief, or person of rank in

his tribe or province. It was built on a base of varying area, and was

raised to a greater or less elevation according to the fortune of the

deceased or of his family.**

* No satisfactory etymon for the word _pyramid_, has as yet

been proposed: the least far-fetched is that put forward by

Cantor-Eisenlohr, according to which _pyramid_ is the Greek

form, irupauç, of the compound term “piri-m-ûisi,” which in

Egyptian mathematical phraseology designates the _salient

angle_, the ridge or height of the pyramid.

** The brick pyramids of Abydos were all built for private

persons. The word “mirit,” which designates a pyramid in

the texts, is elsewhere applied to the tombs of nobles and

commoners as well as to those of kings.

The fashion of burying in a pyramid was not adopted in the environs of

Memphis until tolerably late times, and the Pharaohs of the primitive

dynasties were interred, as their subjects were, in sepulchral chambers

of mastabas. Zosiri was the only exception, if the step-pyramid of

Saqqâra, as is probable, served for his tomb.*

* It is difficult to admit that a pyramid of considerable

dimensions could have disappeared without leaving any traces

behind, especially when we see the enormous masses of

masonry which still mark the sites of those which have been

most injured; besides, the inscriptions connect none of the

predecessors of Snofrûi with a pyramid, unless it be Zosiri.

The step-pyramid of Saqqâra, which is attributed to the

latter, belongs to the same type as that of Mêdûm; so does

also the pyramid of Rigah, whose occupant is unknown. If we

admit that this last-mentioned pyramid served as a tomb to

some intermediate Pharaoh between Zosiri and Snofrûi--for

instance, Hûni--the use of pyramids would be merely

exceptional for sovereigns anterior to the IVth dynasty.

The motive which determined Snofrûi’s choice of Mêdûm as a site, is

unknown to us: perhaps he dwelt in that city of Heracleopolis, which in

course of time frequently became the favourite residence of the kings;

perhaps he improvised for himself a city in the plain between El-Wastah

and Kafr el-Ayat. His pyramid, at the present time, is composed of three

large unequal cubes with slightly inclined sides, arranged in steps one

above the other. Some centuries ago five could be still determined, and

in ancient times, before ruin had set in, as many as seven. Each block

marked a progressive increase of the total mass, and bad its external

face polished--a fact which we can still determine by examining the

slabs one behind another; a facing of large blocks, of which many of the

courses still exist towards the base, covered the whole, at one angle

from the apex to the foot, and brought it into conformity with the type

of the classic pyramid. The passage had its orifice in the middle of the

north face about sixty feèt above the ground: it is five feet high, and

dips at a tolerably steep angle through the solid masonry. At a depth of

a hundred and ninety-seven feet it becomes level, without increasing

in aperture, runs for forty feet on this plane, traversing two low and

narrow chambers, then making a sharp turn it ascends perpendicularly

until it reaches the floor of the vault. The latter is hewn out of the

mountain rock, and is small, rough, and devoid of ornament: the ceiling

appears to be in three heavy horizontal courses of masonry, which

project one beyond the other corbel-wise, and give the impression of a

sort of acutely pointed arch. Snofrûi slept there for ages; then robbers

found a way to him, despoiled and broke up his mummy, scattered the

fragments of his coffin upon the ground, and carried off the stone

sarcophagus. The apparatus of beams and cords of which they made use for

the descent, hung in their place above the mouth of the shaft until ten

years ago. The rifling of the tomb took place at a remote date, for from

the XXth dynasty onwards the curious were accustomed to penetrate into

the passage: two scribes have scrawled their names in ink on the back

of the framework in which the stone cover was originally inserted.

The sepulchral chapel was built a little in front of the east face; it

consisted of two small-sized rooms with bare surfaces, a court whose

walls abutted on the pyramid, and in the court, facing the door,

a massive table of offerings flanked by two large stelo without

inscriptions, as if the death of the king had put a stop to the

decoration before the period determined on by the architects. It was

still accessible to any one during the XVIIIth dynasty, and people came

there to render homage to the memory of Snofrûi or his wife Mirisônkhû.

Visitors recorded in ink on the walls their enthusiastic, but

stereotyped impressions: they compared the “Castle of Snofrûi” with the

firmament, “when the sun arises in it; the heaven rains incense there

and pours out perfumes on the roof.” Ramses II., who had little respect

for the works of his predecessors, demolished a part of the pyramid in

order to procure cheaply the materials necessary for the buildings which

he restored to Heracleopolis. His workmen threw down the waste stone

and mortar beneath the place where they were working, without troubling

themselves as to what might be beneath; the court became choked up,

the sand borne by the wind gradually invaded the chambers, the chapel

disappeared, and remained buried for more than three thousand years.

The officers of Snofrûi, his servants, and the people of his city

wished, according to custom, to rest beside him, and thus to form a

court for him in the other world as they had done in this. The menials

were buried in roughly made trenches, frequently in the ground merely,

without coffins or sarcophagi. The body was not laid out its whole

length on its back in the attitude of repose: it more frequently rested

on its left side, the head to the north, the face to the east, the legs

bent, the right arm brought up against the breast, the left following

the outline of the chest and legs.*

* W. Fl. Petrie, _Medum_, pp. 21, 22. Many of these mummies

were mutilated, some lacking a leg, others an arm or a hand;

these were probably workmen who had fallen victims to an

accident during the building of the pyramid. In the majority

of cases the detached limb had been carefully placed with

the body, doubtless in order that the double might find it

in the other world, and complete himself when he pleased for

the exigencies of his new existence.

The people who were interred in a posture so different from that with

which we are familiar in the case of ordinary mummies, belonged to

a foreign race, who had retained in the treatment of their dead the

customs of their native country.

[Illustration: 171.jpg THE COURT AND THE TWO STELÆ OF THE CHAPEL

ADJOINING THE PYRAMID OF MÊDÛM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Fl. Petrie, _Ten

Years’ Digging in Egypt_, p. 141.

The Pharaohs often peopled their royal cities with prisoners of war,

captured on the field of battle, or picked up in an expedition through

an enemy’s country. Snofrûi peopled his city with men from the Libyan

tribes living on the borders of the Western desert or Monîtû captives.*

* Petrie thinks that the people who were interred in a

contracted position belonged to the aboriginal race of the

valley, reduced to a condition of servitude by a race who

had come from Asia, and who had established the kingdom of

Egypt. The latter were represented by the mummies disposed

at full length (_Medum_, p. 21).

The body having been placed in the grave, the relatives who had taken

part in the mourning heaped together in a neighbouring hole the funerary

furniture, flint implements, copper needles, miniature pots and pans

made of rough and badly burned clay, bread, dates, and eatables in

dishes wrapped up in linen. The nobles ranged their mastabas in a single

line to the north of the pyramid; these form fine-looking masses of

considerable size, but they are for the most part unfinished and empty.

Snofrûi having disappeared from the scene, Kheops who succeeded him

forsook the place, and his courtiers, abandoning their unfinished tombs,

went off to construct for themselves others around that of the new king.

We rarely find at Mêdûm finished and occupied sepulchres except that of

individuals who had died before or shortly after Snofrûi. The mummy of

Eânofir, found in one of them, shows how far the Egyptians had carried

the art of embalming at this period. His body, though much shrunken,

is well preserved: it had been clothed in some fine stuff, then covered

over with a layer of resin, which a clever sculptor had modelled in such

a manner as to present an image resembling the deceased; it was then

rolled in three or four folds of thin and almost transparent gauze.

Of these tombs the most important belonged to the Prince Nofirmâît

and his wife Atiti: it is decorated with bas-reliefs of a peculiar

composition; the figures have been cut in outline in the limestone, and

the hollows thus made are filled in with a mosaic of tinted pastes which

show the moulding and colour of the parts. Everywhere else the ordinary

methods of sculpture have been employed, the bas-reliefs being enhanced

by brilliant colouring in a simple and delicate manner.

[Illustration: 173.jpg NOFKÎT, LADY OF MÊDÛM]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph taken by Éinil Brugsch-

Bey.

The figures of men and animals are portrayed with a vivacity of manner

which is astonishing; and the other objects, even the hieroglyphs, are

rendered with an accuracy which does not neglect the smallest detail.

The statues of Eâhotpû and of the lady Nofrît, discovered in a

half-ruined mastaba, have fortunately reached us without having suffered

the least damage, almost without losing anything of their original

freshness; they are to be seen in the Gîzeh Museum just as they were

when they left the hands of the workman. Eâhotpû was the son of a king,

perhaps of Snofrûi: but in spite of his high origin, I find something

humble and retiring in his physiognomy. Nofrît, on the contrary, has

an imposing appearance: an indescribable air of resolution and command

invests her whole person, and the sculptor has cleverly given expression

to it. She is represented in a robe with a pointed opening in the front:

the shoulders, the bosom, the waist, and hips, are shown under the

material of the dress with a purity and delicate grace which one does

not always find in more modern works of art. The wig, secured on the

forehead by a richly embroidered band, frames with its somewhat heavy

masses the firm and rather plump face: the eyes are living, the nostrils

breathe, the mouth smiles and is about to speak. The art of Egypt has at

times been as fully inspired; it has never been more so than on the day

in which it produced the statue of Nofrît.

The worship of Snofrûi was perpetuated from century to century.

After the fall of the Memphite empire it passed through periods of

intermittence, during which it ceased to be observed, or was observed

only in an irregular way; it reappeared under the Ptolemies for the last

time before becoming extinct for ever. Snofrûi was probably, therefore,

one of the most popular kings of the good old times; but his fame,

however great it may have been among the Egyptians, has been eclipsed in

our eyes by that of the Pharaohs who immediately followed him--Kheops,

Khephren, and Mykerinos. Not that we are really better acquainted with

their history. All we know of them is made up of two or three series

of facts, always the same, which the contemporaneous monuments teach us

concerning these rulers. Khnûmû-Khûfûi,* abbreviated into Khûfûi, the

Kheops** of the Greeks, was probably the son of Snofrûi.***

* The existence of the two cartouches Khûfûi and Khnûmû-

Khûfûi on the same monuments has caused much embarrassment

to Egyptologists: the majority have been inclined to see

here two different kings, the second of whom, according to

M. Robiou, would have been the person who bore the pre-nomen

of Dadûfri. Khnûmû-Khûfûi signifies “the god Khnûmû protects

me.”

** Kheops is the usual form, borrowed from the account of

Herodotus; Diodorus writes Khembes or Khemmes, Eratosthenes

Saôphis, and Manetho Souphis.

*** The story in the “Westcar” papyrus speaks of Snofrûi as

father of Khûfûi; but this is a title of honour, and proves

nothing. The few records which we have of this period give

one, however, the impression that Kheops was the son of

Snofrûi, and, in spite of the hesitation of de Rougé, this

affiliation is adopted by the majority of modern historians.

[175.jpg alabaster statue of kheops]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.

He reigned twenty-three years, and successfully defended the mines of

the Sinaitic peninsula against the Bedouin; he may still be seen on the

face of the rocks in the Wady Maghara sacrificing his Asiatic prisoners,

now before the jackal Anubis, now before the ibis-headed Thot. The gods

reaped advantage from his activity and riches; he restored the temple

of Hâ-thor at Den-dera, embellished that of Bubastis, built a stone

sanctuary to the Isis of the Sphinx, and consecrated there gold, silver,

bronze, and wooden statues of Horus, Nephthys, Selkît, Phtah, Sokhît,

Osiris, Thot, and Hâpis. Scores of other Pharaohs had done as much or

more, on whom no one bestowed a thought a century after their death, and

Kheops would have succumbed to the same indifference had he not forcibly

attracted the continuous attention of posterity by the immensity of his

tomb.*

* All the details relating to the Isis of the Sphinx are

furnished by a stele of the daughter of Kheops, discovered

in the little temple of the XXIst dynasty, situated to the

west of the Great Pyramid, and preserved in the Gîzeh

Museum. It was not a work entirely of the XXIst dynasty, as

Mr. Petrie asserts, but the inscription, barely readable,

engraved on the face of the plinth, indicates that it was

remade by a king of the Saïte period, perhaps by Sabaco, in

order to replace an ancient stele of the same import which

had fallen into decay.

[Illustration: 176.jpg THE TRIUMPHAL BAS-RELIEFS OF KHEOPS ON THE ROCKS

OF WADY MAGHARA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph published in the

_Ordnance Survey, Photographs_, vol. iii. pl. 5. On the left

stands the Pharaoh, and knocks down a Monîti before the

Ibis-headed Thot; upon the right the picture is destroyed,

and we see the royal titles only, without figures. The

statue bears no cartouche, and considerations purely

artistic cause me to attribute it to Kheops: it may equally

well represent Dadûfrî, the successor of Kheops, or

Shopsiskaf, who followed Mykerinos.

[Illustration: 176b.jpg PROFILE OF HEAD OF A MUMMY, (A MAN) THEBES]

[Illustration: 177.jpg PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH]

The Egyptians of the Theban period were compelled to form their opinions

of the Pharaohs of the Memphite dynasties in the same way as we do, less

by the positive evidence of their acts than by the size and number

of their monuments: they measured the magnificence of Kheops by the

dimensions of his pyramid, and all nations having followed this example,

Kheops has continued to be one of the three or four names of former

times which sound familiar to our ears. The hills of Gîzeh in his time

terminated in a bare wind-swept table-land. A few solitary mastabas were

scattered here and there on its surface, similar to those whose ruins

still crown the hill of Dahshur.* The Sphinx, buried even in ancient

times to its shoulders, raised its head half-way down the eastern slope,

at its southern angle;** beside him*** the temple of Osiris, lord of the

Necropolis, was fast disappearing under the sand; and still further back

old abandoned tombs honey-combed the rock.****

* No one has noticed, I believe, that several of the

mastabas constructed under Kheops, around the pyramid,

contain in the masonry fragments of stone belonging to some

more ancient structures. Those which I saw bore carvings of

the same style as those on the beautiful mastabas of

Dahshur.

** The stele of the Sphinx bears, on line 13, the cartouche

of Khephren in the middle of a blank. We have here, I

believe, an indication of the clearing of the Sphinx

effected under this prince, consequently an almost certain

proof that the Sphinx was already buried in sand in the time

of Kheops and his predecessors.

*** Mariette identifies the temple which he discovered to

the south of the Sphinx with that of Osiris, lord of the

Necropolis, which is mentioned in the inscription of the

daughter of Kheops. This temple is so placed that it must

have been sanded up at the same time as the Sphinx; I

believe, therefore, that the restoration effected by Kheops,

according to the inscription, was merely a clearing away of

the sand from the Sphinx analogous to that accomplished by

Khephren.

**** These sepulchral chambers are not decorated in the

majority of instances. The careful scrutiny to which I

subjected them in 1885-86 causes me to believe that many of

them must be almost contemporaneous with the Sphinx; that is

to say, that they had been hollowed out and occupied a

considerable time before the period of the IVth dynasty.

Kheops chose a site for his Pyramid on the northern edge of the plateau,

whence a view of the city of the White Wall, and at the same time of the

holy city of Heliopolis, could be obtained.

[Illustration: 179.jpg KHÛÎT, THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GÎZEH, THE SPHINX,

AND THE TEMPLE OF THE SPHINX]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey. The

temple of the Sphinx is in the foreground, covered with sand

up to the top of the walls. The second of the little

pyramids below the large one is that whose construction is

attributed to Honîtsonû, the daughter of Kheops, and with

regard to which the dragomans of the Saite period told such

strange stories to Herodotus.

A small mound which commanded this prospect was roughly squared, and

incorporated into the masonry; the rest of the site was levelled to

receive the first course of stones. The pyramid when completed had a

height of 476 feet on a base 764 feet square; but the decaying influence

of time has reduced these dimensions to 450 and 730 feet respectively.

It possessed, up to the Arab conquest, its polished facing, coloured

by age, and so subtily jointed that one would have said that it was a

single slab from top to bottom.* The work of facing the pyramid began

at the top; that of the point was first placed in position, then the

courses were successively covered until the bottom was reached.**

* The blocks which still exist are of white limestone.

Letronne, after having asserted in his youth (Recherches sur

Dicuil, p. 107), on the authority of a fragment attributed

to Philo of Byzantium, that the facing was formed of

polychromatic zones of granite, of green breccia and other

different kinds of stone, renounced this view owing to the

evidence of Vyse. Perrot and Chipiez have revived it, with

some hesitation.

** Herodotus, ii. 125, the word “point” should not be taken

literally. The Great Pyramid terminated, like its neighbour,

in a platform, of which each side measured nine English feet

(six cubits, according to Diodorus Siculus, i. 63), and

which has become larger in the process of time, especially

since the destruction of the facing. The summit viewed from

below must have appeared as a sharp point. “Having regard

to the size of the monument, a platform of three metres

square would have been a more pointed extremity than that

which terminates the obelisks” (Letronne).

In the interior every device had been employed to conceal the exact

position of the sarcophagus, and to discourage the excavators whom

chance or persistent search might have put upon the right track. Their

first difficulty would be to discover the entrance under the limestone

casing. It lay hidden almost in the middle of the northern face, on

the level of the eighteenth course, at about forty-five feet above the

ground. A movable flagstone, working on a stone pivot, disguised it so

effectively that no one except the priests and custodians could have

distinguished this stone from its neighbours. When it was tilted up, a

yawning passage was revealed,* three and a half feet in height, with a

breadth of four feet.

* Strabo expressly states that in his time the subterranean

parts of the Great Pyramid were accessible: “It has on its

side, at a moderate elevation, a stone which can be moved,

[--Greek phrase--]”. “When it has been lifted up, a tortuous

passage is seen which leads to the tomb.” The meaning of

Strabo’s statement had not been mastered until Mr. Petrie

showed, what we may still see, at the entrance of one of the

pyramids of Dahshur, arrangements which bore witness to the

existence of a movable stone mounted on a pivot to serve as

a door. It was a method of closing of the same kind as that

described by Strabo, perhaps after he had seen it himself,

or had heard of it from the guides, and like that which Mr.

Petrie had reinstated, with much probability, at the

entrance of the Great Pyramid.

[Illustration: 181a.jpg THE MOVABLE FLAGSTONE AT THE entrance to the

great pyramid]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Petrie’s The Pyramids and

Temples of Gîzeh, pl. xi.

The passage is an inclined plane, extending partly through the masonry

and partly through the solid rock for a distance of 318 feet; it passes

through an unfinished chamber and ends in a _cul-de-sac_ 59 feet

further on. The blocks are so nicely adjusted, and the surface so finely

polished, that the joints can be determined only with difficulty. The

corridor which leads to the sepulchral chamber meets the roof at an

angle of 120° to the descending passage, and at a distance of 62 feet

from the entrance. It ascends for 108 feet to a wide landing-place,

where it divides into two branches. One of these penetrates straight

towards the centre, and terminates in a granite chamber with a

high-pitched roof. This is called, but without reason, the “Chamber

of the Queen.” The other passage continues to ascend, but its form and

appearance are altered. It now becomes a gallery 148 feet long and some

28 feet high, constructed of beautiful Mokattam stone. The lower courses

are placed perpendicularly one on the top of the other; each of the

upper courses projects above the one beneath, and the last two, which

support the ceiling, are only about 1 foot 8 inches distant from each

other. The small horizontal passage which separates the upper landing

from the sarcophagus chamber itself, presents features imperfectly

explained. It is intersected almost in the middle by a kind of depressed

hall, whose walls are channelled at equal intervals on each side by four

longitudinal grooves. The first of these still supports a fine flagstone

of granite which seems to hang 3 feet 7 inches above the ground, and the

three others were probably intended to receive similar slabs. The latter

is a kind of rectangular granite box, with a flat roof, 19 feet 10

inches high, 1 foot 5 inches deep, and 17 feet broad. No figures or

hieroglyphs are to be seen, but merely a mutilated granite sarcophagus

without a cover. Such were the precautions taken against man: the result

witnessed to their efficacy, for the pyramid preserved its contents

intact for more than four thousand years.* But a more serious danger

threatened them in the great weight of the materials above. In order

to prevent the vault from being crushed under the burden of the hundred

metres of limestone which surmounted it, they arranged above it five

low chambers placed exactly one above the other in order to relieve the

superincumbent stress. The highest of these was protected by a pointed

roof consisting of enormous blocks made to lean against each other at

the top: this ingenious device served to transfer the perpendicular

thrust almost entirely to the lateral faces of the blocks. Although an

earthquake has to some extent dislocated the mass of masonry, not one

of the stones which encase the chamber of the king has been crushed,

not one has yielded by a hair’s-breadth, since the day when the workmen

fixed it in its place.

* Professor Petrie thinks that the pyramids of Gîzeh were

rifled, and the mummies which they contained destroyed

during the long civil wars which raged in the interval

between the VIth and XIIth dynasties. If this be true, it

will be necessary to admit that the kings of one of the

subsequent dynasties must have restored what had been

damaged, for the workmen of the Caliph Al-Mamoun brought

from the sepulchral chamber of the “Horizon” “a stone

trough, in which lay a stone statue in human form, enclosing

a man who had on his breast a golden pectoral, adorned with

precious stones, and a sword of inestimable value, and on

his head a carbuncle of the size of an egg, brilliant as the

sun, having characters which no man can read.” All the Arab

authors, whose accounts have been collected by Jomard,

relate in general the same story; one can easily recognize

from this description the sarcophagus still in its place, a

stone case in human shape, and the mummy of Kheops loaded

with jewels and arms, like the body of Queen Âhhotpû I.

[Illustration: 181b.jpg the interior of the great pyramid]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from pl. ix., Petrie, The Pyramids

and Temples of Gîzeh. A is the descending passage, B the

unfinished chamber, and C the horizontal passage pierced in

the rock. D is the narrow passage which provides a

communication between chamber B and the landing where the

roads divide, and with the passage FG leading to the

“Chamber of the Queen.” E is the ascending passage, H the

high gallery, I and J the chamber of barriers, K the

sepulchral vault, L indicates the chambers for relieving the

stress; finally, a, are vents which served for the

aeration of the chambers during construction, and through

which libations were introduced on certain feast-days in

honour of Kheops. The draughtsman has endeavoured to render,

by lines of unequal thickness, the varying height of the

courses of masonry; the facing, which is now wanting, has

been reinstated, and the broken line behind it indicates the

visible ending of the courses which now form the northern

face of the pyramid.

[Illustration: 183.jpg The ascending passage OF THE great pyramid]

Facsimile by Boudier of a drawing published in the

_Description de l’Egypte, Ant._, vol. v. pl. xiii. 2.

Four barriers in all were thus interposed between the external world and

the vault.*

* This appears to me to follow from the analogous

arrangements which I met with in the pyramid of Saqqâra. Mr.

Petrie refuses to recognize here a barrier chamber (cf. the

notes which he has appended to the English translation of my

_Archéologie égyptienne_, p. 327, note 27,) but he confesses

that the arrangement of the grooves and of the flagstone is

still an enigma to him. Perhaps only one of the four

intended barriers was inserted in its place--that which

still remains.

The Great Pyramid was called Khûît, the “Horizon” in which Khûfûî had to

be swallowed up, as his father the Sun was engulfed every evening in

the horizon of the west. It contained only the chambers of the deceased,

without a word of inscription, and we should not know to whom it

belonged, if the masons, during its construction, had not daubed here

and there in red paint among their private marks the name of the king,

and the dates of his reign.*

* The workmen often drew on the stones the cartouches of the

Pharaoh under whose reign they had been taken from the

quarry, with the exact date of their extraction; the

inscribed blocks of the pyramid of Kheops bear, among

others, a date of the year XVI.

Worship was rendered to this Pharaoh in a temple constructed a little in

front of the eastern side of the pyramid, but of which nothing remains

but a mass of ruins. Pharaoh had no need to wait until he was mummified

before he became a god; religious rites in his honour were established

on his accession; and many of the individuals who made up his court

attached themselves to his double long before his double had become

disembodied. They served him faithfully during their life, to repose

finally in his shadow in the little pyramids and mastabas which

clustered around him. Of Dadûfri, his immediate successor, we can

probably say that he reigned eight years;* but Khephren, the next son

who succeeded to the throne,** erected temples and a gigantic pyramid,

like his father.

* According to the arrangement proposed by E. de Rougé for

the fragments of the Turin Canon. E. de Rougé reads the name

Râ-tot-ef, and proposes to identify it with the Ratoises of

the lists of Manetho, which the copyists had erroneously put

out of its proper place. This identification has been

generally accepted. Analogy compels us to read Dadûfrî, like

Khâfrî, Menkaurî, in which case the hypothesis of de Rougé

falls to the ground. The worship of Dadûfrî was renewed

towards the Saite period, together with that of Kheops and

Khephren, according to some tradition which connected his

reign with that of these two kings. On the general scheme of

the Manethonian history of these times, see Maspero, _Notes

sur quelques points de Grammaire et d’Histoire dans le

Recueil de Travaux_, vol. xvii. pp. 122-138.

** The Westcar Papyrus considers Khâfri to be the son of

Khûfû; this falls in with information given us, in this

respect, by Diodorus Siculus. The form which this historian

assigns--I do not know on what authority--to the name of the

king, Khabryies, is nearer the original than the Khephren of

Herodotus.

He placed it some 394 feet to the south-west of that of Kheops; and

called it Ûîrû, the Great. It is, however, smaller than its neighbour,

and attains a height of only 443 feet, but at a distance the difference

in height disappears, and many travellers have thus been led to

attribute the same elevation to the two. The facing, of which about

one-fourth exists from the summit downwards, is of nummulite limestone,

compact, hard, and more homogeneous than that of the courses, with

rusty patches here and there due to masses of a reddish lichen, but

grey elsewhere, and with a low polish which, at a distance, reflects the

sun’s rays. Thick walls of unwrought stone enclose the monument on

three sides, and there may be seen behind the west front, in an oblong

enclosure, a row of stone sheds hastily constructed of limestone and

Nile mud.

[Illustration: 187.jpg THE NAME OF KHEOPS DRAWN IN RED ON SEVERAL BLOCKS

OF THE GREAT PYRAMID]

Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin of the sketch in Lepsius, Denkm.,

ii., 1 c.

Here the labourers employed on the works came every evening to huddle

together, and the refuse of their occupation still encumbers the ruins

of their dwellings, potsherds, chips of various kinds of hard stone

which they had been cutting, granite, alabaster, diorite, fragments of

statues broken in the process of sculpture, and blocks of smooth granite

ready for use. The chapel commands a view of the eastern face of the

pyramid, and communicated by a paved causeway with the temple of the

Sphinx, to which it must have borne a striking resemblance.* The plan of

it can be still clearly traced on the ground, and the rubbish cannot

be disturbed without bringing to light portions of statues, vases, and

tables of offerings, some of them covered with hieroglyphs, like the

mace-head of white stone which belonged in its day to Khephren himself.

* The connection of the temple of the Sphinx with that of

the second pyramid was discovered in December, 1880, during

the last diggings of Mariette. I ought to say that the whole

of that part of the building into which the passage leads

shows traces of having been hastily executed, and at a time

long after the construction of the rest of the edifice; it

is possible that the present condition of the place does not

date back further than the time of the Antonines, when the

Sphinx was cleared for the last time in ancient days.

[Illustration: 188.jpg ALABASTER STATUE OF KHEPHREN]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey. See

on p. 199 the carefully executed drawing of the best

preserved among the diorite statues which the Gîzeh Museum

now possesses of this Pharaoh.

The internal arrangements of the pyramid are of the simplest character;

they consist of a granite-built passage carefully concealed in the north

face, running at first at an angle of 25°, and then horizontally, until

stopped by a granite barrier at a point which indicates a change of

direction; a second passage, which begins on the outside, at a distance

of some yards in advance of the base of the pyramid, and proceeds, after

passing through an unfinished chamber, to rejoin the first; finally, a

chamber hollowed in the rock, but surmounted by a pointed roof of fine

limestone slabs.

[Illustration: 188b.jpg THE PYRAMID OF KHEPHREN]

The sarcophagus was of granite, and, like that of Kheops, bore neither

the name of a king nor the representation of a god. The cover was fitted

so firmly to the trough that the Arabs could not succeed in detaching

it when they rifled the tomb in the year 1200 of our era; they were,

therefore, compelled to break through one of the sides with a hammer

before they could reach the coffin and take from it the mummy of the

Pharaoh.*

* The second pyramid was opened to Europeans in 1816 by

Belzoni. The exact date of the entrance of the Arabs is

given us by an inscription, written in ink, on one of the

walls of the sarcophagus chamber: “Mohammed Ahmed Effendi,

the quarryman, opened it; Othman Effendi was present, as

well as the King Ali Mohammed, at the beginning and at the

closing.” The King Ali Mohammed was the son and successor of

Saladin.

Of Khephren’s sons, Menkaûrî (Mykerinos), who was his successor, could

scarcely dream of excelling his father and grandfather;* his pyramid,

the Supreme--Hirû** --barely attained an elevation of 216 feet, and was

exceeded in height by those which were built at a later date.*** Up to

one-fourth of its height it was faced with syenite, and the remainder,

up to the summit, with limestone.****

* Classical tradition makes Mykerinos the son of Kheops.

Egyptian tradition regards him as the son of Khephren, and

with this agrees a passage in the Westcar Papyrus, in which

a magician prophesies that after Kheops his son (Khâfrî)

will yet reign, then the son of the latter (Menkaûrî), then

a prince of another family.

** An inscription, unfortunately much mutilated, from the

tomb of Tabhûni, gives an account of the construction of the

pyramid, and of the transport of the sarcophagus.

*** Professor Petrie reckons the exact height of the pyramid

at 2564 ±15 or 2580 ± 2 inches; that is to say, 214 or 215

feet in round numbers.

**** According to Herodotus, the casing of granite extended

to half the height. Diodorus states that it did not go

beyond the fifteenth course. Professor Petrie discovered

that there were actually sixteen lower courses in red

granite.

For lack of time, doubtless, the dressing of the granite was not

completed, but the limestone received all the polish it was capable of

taking. The enclosing wall was extended to the north so as to meet, and

become one with, that of the second pyramid. The temple was connected

with the plain by a long and almost straight causeway, which ran for

the greater part of its course* upon an embankment raised above the

neighbouring ground. This temple was in fair condition in the early

years of the eighteenth century,** and so much of it as has escaped

the ravages of the Mameluks, bears witness to the scrupulous care and

refined art employed in its construction.

* This causeway should not be confounded, as is frequently

done, with that which may be seen at some distance to the

east in the plain: the latter led to limestone quarries in

the mountain to the south of the plateau on which the

pyramids stand. These quarries were worked in very ancient

times.

** Benoit de Maillet visited this temple between 1692 and

1708. “It is almost square in form. There are to be found

inside four pillars which doubtless supported a vaulted roof

covering the altar of the idol, and one moved around these

pillars as in an ambulatory. These stones were cased with

granitic marble. I found some pieces still unbroken which

had been attached to the stones with mastic. I believe that

the exterior as well as the interior of the temple was cased

with this marble” (Le Mascrier, Description de l’Egypte,

1735, pp. 223, 224).

[Illustration: 192.jpg DIORITE STATUE OF MENRAÛRÏ]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, by Emil Brugsch-Bey, of

a statue preserved in the Museum of Gîzeh.

Coming from the plain, we first meet with an immense halting-place

measuring 100 feet by 46 feet, and afterwards enter a large court with

an egress on each side: beyond this we can distinguish the ground-plan

only of five chambers, the central one, which is in continuation with

the hall, terminating at a distance of some 42 feet from the pyramid,

exactly opposite the middle point of the eastern face. The whole mass

of the building covers a rectangular area 184 feet long by a little

over 177 feet broad. Its walls, like those of the temple of the Sphinx,

contained a core of lime-stone 7 feet 10 inches thick, of which the

blocks have been so ingeniously put together as to suggest the idea that

the whole is cut out of the rock. This core was covered with a casing

of granite and alabaster, of which the remains preserve no trace of

hieroglyphs or of wall scenes: the founder had caused his name to be

inscribed on the statues, which received, on his behalf, the offerings,

and also on the northern face of the pyramid, where it was still shown

to the curious towards the first century of our era. The arrangement of

the interior of the pyramid is somewhat complicated, and bears witness

to changes brought unexpectedly about in the course of construction. The

original central mass probably did not exceed 180 feet in breadth at the

base, with a vertical height of 154 feet. It contained a sloping passage

cut into the hill itself, and an oblong low-roofed cell devoid of

ornament. The main bulk of the work had been already completed, and the

casing not yet begun, when it was decided to alter the proportions of

the whole.

[Illustration: 194.jpg THE COFFIN OF MYKERINOS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. The coffin is in the British Museum.

The drawing of it was published by Vyse, by Birch-Lenormant,

and by Lepsius. Herr Sethe has recently revived an ancient

hypothesis, according to which it had been reworked in the

Saite period, and he has added to archaeological

considerations, up to that time alone brought to bear upon

the question, new philological facts.

Mykerinos was not, it appears, the eldest son and appointed heir of

Khephren; while still a mere prince he was preparing for himself a

pyramid similar to those which lie near the “Horizon,” when the deaths

of his father and brother called him to the throne. What was sufficient

for him as a child, was no longer suitable for him as a Pharaoh; the

mass of the structure was increased to its present dimensions, and a new

inclined passage was effected in it, at the end of which a hall

panelled with granite gave access to a kind of antechamber.* The latter

communicated by a horizontal corridor with the first vault, which was

deepened for the occasion; the old entrance, now no longer of use, was

roughly filled up.**

* Vyse discovered here fragments of a granite sarcophagus,

perhaps that of the queen; the legends which Herodotus (ii.

134, 135), and several Greek authors after him, tell

concerning this, show clearly that an ancient tradition

assumed the existence of a female mummy in the third pyramid

alongside of that of the founder Mykerinos.

** Vyse has noticed, in regard to the details of the

structure, that the passage now filled up is the only one

driven from the outside to the interior; all the others were

made from the inside to the outside, and consequently at a

period when this passage, being the only means of

penetrating into the interior of the monument, had not yet

received its present dimensions.

Mykerinos did not find his last resting-place in this upper level of the

interior of the pyramid: a narrow passage, hidden behind the slabbing

of the second chamber, descended into a secret crypt, lined with granite

and covered with a barrel-vaulted roof. The sarcophagus was a single

block of blue-black basalt, polished, and carved into the form of a

house, with a façade having three doors and three openings in the form

of windows, the whole framed in a rounded moulding and surmounted by a

projecting cornice such as we are accustomed to see on the temples.*

* It was lost off the coast of Spain in the vessel which was

bringing it to England. We have only the drawing remaining

which was made at the time of its discovery, and published

by Vyse. M. Borchardt has attempted to show that it was

reworked under the XXVIth Saite dynasty as well as the

wooden coffin of the king.

The mummy-case of cedar-wood had a man’s head, and was shaped to

the form of the human body; it was neither painted nor gilt, but an

inscription in two columns, cut on its front, contained the name of the

Pharaoh, and a prayer on his behalf: “Osiris, King of the two Egypts,

Menkaûrî, living eternally, given birth to by heaven, conceived by Nûît,

flesh of Sibii, thy mother Nûît has spread herself out over thee in

her name of ‘Mystery of the Heavens,’ and she has granted that thou

shouldest be a god, and that thou shouldest repulse thine enemies, O

King of the two Egypts, Menkaûrî, living eternally.” The Arabs opened

the mummy to see if it contained any precious jewels, but found within

it only some leaves of gold, probably a mask or a pectoral covered

with hieroglyphs. When Vyse reopened the vault in 1837, the bones lay

scattered about in confusion on the dusty floor, mingled with bundles of

dirty rags and wrappings of yellowish woollen cloth.

The worship of the three great pyramid-building kings continued in

Memphis down to the time of the Greeks and Romans. Their statues, in

granite, limestone, and alabaster, were preserved also in the buildings

annexed to the temple of Phtah, where visitors could contemplate these

Pharaohs as they were when alive.

[Illustration: 196.jpg THE GRANITE SARCOPHAGUS OF MYKERINOS]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph in Prisse

D’Avennes, _Histoire de l’Art Égyptien_.

Those of Khephren show us the king at different ages, when young,

mature, or already in his decadence. They are in most cases cut out of

a breccia of green diorite, with long irregular yellowish veins, and of

such hardness that it is difficult to determine the tool with which they

were worked. The Pharaoh sits squarely on his royal throne, his hands on

his lap, his body firm and upright, and his head thrown back with a look

of self-satisfaction. A sparrow-hawk perched on the back of his seat

covers his head with its wings--an image of the god Horus protecting

his son. The modelling of the torso and legs of the largest of these

statues, the dignity of its pose, and the animation of its expression,

make of it a unique work of art which may be compared with the most

perfect products of antiquity. Even if the cartouches which tell us the

name of the king had been hammered away and the insignia of his rank

destroyed, we should still be able to determine the Pharaoh by his

bearing: his whole appearance indicates a man accustomed from his

infancy to feel himself invested with limitless authority. Mykerinos

stands out less impassive and haughty: he does not appear so far removed

from humanity as his predecessor, and the expression of his countenance

agrees, somewhat singularly, with the account of his piety and good

nature preserved by the legends. The Egyptians of the Theban dynasties,

when comparing the two great pyramids with the third, imagined that the

disproportion in their size corresponded with a difference of character

between their royal occupants. Accustomed as they were from infancy to

gigantic structures, they did not experience before “the Horizon” and

“the Great” the feeling of wonder and awe which impresses the beholder

of to-day. They were not the less apt on this account to estimate

the amount of labour and effort required to complete them from top to

bottom. This labour seemed to them to surpass the most excessive corvée

which a just ruler had a right to impose upon his subjects, and the

reputation of Kheops and Khephren suffered much in consequence. They

were accused of sacrilege, of cruelty, and profligacy.

[Illustration: 198.jpg DIORITE STATUE OF KHEPHREN, GÎZEU MUSEUM]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey. It

is one of the most complete statues found by Mariette in the

temple of the Sphinx.

It was urged against them that they had arrested the whole life of their

people for more than a century for the erection of their tombs.

Kheops began by closing the temples and by prohibiting the offering of

sacrifices: he then compelled all the Egyptians to work for him. To some

he assigned the task of dragging the blocks from the quarries of the

Arabian chain to the Nile: once shipped, the duty was incumbent on

others of transporting them as far as the Libyan chain. A hundred

thousand men worked at a time, and were relieved every three months.*

* Professor Petrie thinks that this detail rests upon an

authentic tradition. The inundation, he says, lasts three

months, during which the mass of the people have nothing to

do; it was during these three months that Kheops raised the

100,000 men to work at the transport of the stone. The

explanation is very ingenious, but it is not supported by

the text: Herodotus does not relate that 100,000 men were

called by the corvée for three months every year; but from

three months to three months, possibly four times a year,

bodies of 100,000 men relieved each other at the work. The

figures which he quotes are well-known legendary numbers,

and we must leave the responsibility for them to the popular

imagination (Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buck, p. 465).

The period of the people’s suffering was divided as follows: ten years

in making the causeway along which the blocks were dragged--a work, in

my opinion, very little less onerous than that of erecting the pyramid,

for its length was five _stadia_, its breadth ten _orgyio_, its greatest

height eight, and it was made of cut stone and covered with figures.*

Ten years, therefore, were consumed in constructing this causeway

and the subterranean chambers hollowed out in the hill.... As for the

pyramid itself, twenty years were employed in the making of it.... There

are recorded on it, in Egyptian characters, the value of the sums paid

in turnips, onions, and garlic, for the labourers attached to the works;

if I remember aright, the interpreter who deciphered the inscription

told me that the total amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver.

If this were the case, how much must have been expended for iron to make

tools, and for provisions and clothing for the workmen?**

* Diodorus Siculus declares that there were no causeways to

be seen in his time. The remains of one of them appear to

have been discovered and restored by Vyse.

** Herodotus, ii. 124, 125. The inscriptions which were read

upon the pyramids were the graffiti of visitors, some of

them carefully executed. The figures which were shown to

Herodotus represented, according to the dragoman, the value

of the sums expended for vegetables for the workmen; we

ought, probably, to regard them as the thousands which, in

many of the votive temples, served to mark the quantities of

different things presented to the god, that they might be

transmitted to the deceased.

The whole resources of the royal treasure were not sufficient for such

necessaries: a tradition represents Kheops as at the end of his means,

and as selling his daughter to any one that offered, in order to procure

money.* Another legend, less disrespectful to the royal dignity and to

paternal authority, assures us that he repented in his old age, and that

he wrote a sacred book much esteemed by the devout.**

* Herodotus, ii. 126. She had profited by what she received

to build a pyramid for herself in the neighbourhood of the

great one--the middle one of the three small pyramids: it

would appear in fact, that this pyramid contained the mummy

of a daughter of Kheops, Honîtsonû.

** Manetho, Unger’s edition, p. 91. The ascription of a book

to Kheops, or rather the account of the discovery of a

“sacred book” under Kheops, is quite in conformity with

Egyptian ideas. The British Museum possesses two books,

which were thus discovered under this king; the one, a

medical treatise, in a temple at Coptos; the other comes

from Tanis. Among the works on alchemy published by M.

Berthelot, there are two small treatises ascribed to Sophé,

possibly Souphis or Kheops: they are of the same kind as the

book mentioned by Manetho, and which Syncellus says was

bought in Egypt.

Khephren had imitated, and thus shared with, him, the hatred of

posterity. The Egyptians avoided naming these wretches: their work was

attributed to a shepherd called Philitis, who in ancient times pastured

his flocks in the mountain; and even those who did not refuse to them

the glory of having built the most enormous sepulchres in the world,

related that they had not the satisfaction of reposing in them after

their death. The people, exasperated at the tyranny to which they had

been subject, swore that they would tear the bodies of these Pharaohs

from their tombs, and scatter their fragments to the winds: they had

to be buried in crypts so securely placed that no one has succeeded in

finding them.

Like the two older pyramids, “the Supreme” had its anecdotal history,

in which the Egyptians gave free rein to their imagination. We know

that its plan had been rearranged in the course of building, that it

contained two sepulchral chambers, two sarcophagi, and two mummies:

these modifications, it was said, belonged to two distinct reigns; for

Mykerinos had left his tomb unfinished, and a woman had finished it at

a later date--according to some, Nitokris, the last queen of the VIth

dynasty; according to others, Rhodopis, the Ionian who was the mistress

of Psammetichus I. or of Ainasis.*

* Zoega had already recognized that the Rhodopis of the

Greeks was no other than the Nitokris of Manetho, and his

opinion was adopted and developed by Bunsen. The legend of

Rhodopis was completed by the additional ascription to the

ancient Egyptian queen of the character of a courtesan: this

repugnant trait seems to have been borrowed from the same

class of legends as that which concerned itself with the

daughter of Kheops and her pyramid. The narrative thus

developed was in a similar manner confounded with another

popular story, in which occurs the episode of the slipper,

so well known from the tale of Cinderella. Herodotus

connects Rhodopis with his Amasis, Ælian with King

Psammetichus of the XXVIth dynasty.

The beauty and richness of the granite casing dazzled all eyes, and

induced many visitors to prefer the least of the pyramids to its two

imposing sisters; its comparatively small size is excused on the ground

that its founder had returned to that moderation and piety which

ought to characterize a good king. “The actions of his father were not

pleasing to him; he reopened the temples and sent the people, reduced

to the extreme of misery, back to their religious observances and their

occupations; finally, he administered justice more equitably than all

other kings. On this head he is praised above those who have at any time

reigned in Egypt: for not only did he administer good justice, but if

any one complained of his decision he gratified him with some present in

order to appease his wrath.” There was one point, however, which excited

the anxiety of many in a country where the mystic virtue of numbers

was an article of faith: in order that the laws of celestial arithmetic

should be observed in the construction of the pyramids, it was necessary

that three of them should be of the same size. The anomaly of a third

pyramid out of proportion to the two others could be explained only on

the hypothesis that Mykerinos, having broken with paternal usage,

had ignorantly infringed a decree of destiny--a deed for which he was

mercilessly punished. He first lost his only daughter; a short time

after he learned from an oracle that he had only six more years to

remain upon the earth. He enclosed the corpse of his child in a hollow

wooden heifer, which he sent to Sais, where it was honoured with divine

worship.*

* Herodotus, ii. 129-133. The manner in which Herodotus

describes the cow which was shown to him in the temple of

Sais, proves that he was dealing with Nit, in animal form,

Mihî-ûîrît, the great celestial heifer who had given birth

to the Sun. How the people could have attached to this

statue the legend of a daughter of Mykerinos is now

difficult to understand. The idea of a mummy or a corpse

shut up in a statue, or in a coffin, was familiar to the

Egyptians: two of the queens interred at Déir el-Baharî,

Nofritari Ahhotpû II., were found hidden in the centre of

immense Osirian figures of wood, covered with stuccoed

fabric. Egyptian tradition supposed that the bodies of the

gods rested upon the earth. The cow Mîhî-ûîrît might,

therefore, be bodily enclosed in a sarcophagus in the form

of a heifer, just as the mummified gazelle of Déîr el-Baharî

is enclosed in a sarcophagus of gazelle form; it is even

possible that the statue shown to Herodotus really contained

what was thought to be a mummy of the goddess.

“He then communicated his reproaches to the god, complaining that his

father and his uncle, after having closed the temples, forgotten the

gods and oppressed mankind, had enjoyed a long life, while he, devout as

he was, was so soon about to perish. The oracle answered that it was for

this very reason that his days were shortened, for he had not done that

which he ought to have done. Egypt had to suffer for a hundred and fifty

years, and the two kings his predecessors had known this, while he had

not. On receiving this answer, Mykerinos, feeling himself condemned,

manufactured a number of lamps, lit them every evening at dusk, began to

drink and to lead a life of jollity, without ceasing for a moment night

and day, wandering by the lakes and in the woods wherever he thought to

find an occasion of pleasure. He had planned this in order to convince

the oracle of having spoken falsely, and to live twelve years, the

nights counting as so many days.” Legend places after him Asychis or

Sasychis, a later builder of pyramids, but of a different kind. The

latter preferred brick as a building material, except in one place,

where he introduced a stone bearing the following inscription: “Do not

despise me on account of the stone pyramids: I surpass them as much as

Zeus the other gods. Because, a pole being plunged into a lake and the

clay which stuck to it being collected, the brick out of which I was

constructed was moulded from it.” The virtues of Asychis and Mykerinos

helped to counteract the bad impression which Kheops and Khephren had

left behind them. Among the five legislators of Egypt Asychis stood out

as one of the best. He regulated, to minute details, the ceremonies of

worship. He invented geometry and the art of observing the heavens.*

* Diodorus, i. 94. It seems probable that Diodorus had

received knowledge from some Alexandrian writer, now lost,

of traditions concerning the legislative acts of Shashanqû

I. of the XXIInd dynasty; but the name of the king, commonly

written Sesonkhis, had been corrupted by the dragoman into

Sasykhis.

He put forth a law on lending, in which he authorized the borrower to

pledge in forfeit the mummy of his father, while the creditor had the

right of treating as his own the tomb of the debtor: so that if the

debt was not met, the latter could not obtain a last resting-place for

himself or his family either in his paternal or any other tomb.

History knows nothing either of this judicious sovereign or of many

other Pharaohs of the same type, which the dragomans of the Greek period

assiduously enforced upon the respectful attention of travellers. It

merely affirms that the example given by Kheops, Khephren, and Mykerinos

were by no means lost in later times. From the beginning of the IVth

to the end of the XIVth dynasty--during more than fifteen hundred

years--the construction of pyramids was a common State affair, provided

for by the administration, secured by special services. Not only did

the Pharaohs build them for themselves, but the princes and princesses

belonging to the family of the Pharaohs constructed theirs, each one

according to his resources; three of these secondary mausoleums are

ranged opposite the eastern side of “the Horizon,” three opposite the

southern face of “the Supreme,” and everywhere else--near Abousir, at

Saqqâra, at Dahshur or in the Fayûm--the majority of the royal pyramids

attracted around them a more or less numerous cortège of pyramids of

princely foundation often debased in shape and faulty in proportion. The

materials for them were brought from the Arabian chain. A spur of the

latter, projecting in a straight line towards the Nile, as far as

the village of Troiû, is nothing but a mass of the finest and whitest

limestone. The Egyptians had quarries here from the earliest times. By

cutting off the stone in every direction, they lowered the point of this

spur for a depth of some hundreds of metres. The appearance of these

quarries is almost as astonishing as that of the monuments made out of

their material. The extraction of the stone was carried on with a skill

and regularity which denoted ages of experience. The tunnels were so

made as to exhaust the finest and whitest seams without waste, and the

chambers were of an enormous extent; the walls were dressed, the pillars

and roofs neatly finished, the passages and doorways made of a regular

width, so that the whole presented more the appearance of a subterranean

temple than of a place for the extraction of building materials.*

* The description of the quarries of Turah, as they were at

the beginning of the century, was somewhat briefly given by

Jomard, afterwards more completely by Perring. During the

last thirty years the Cairo masons have destroyed the

greater part of the ancient remains formerly existing in

this district, and have completely changed the appearance of

the place.

Hastily written graffiti, in red and black ink, preserve the names of

workmen, overseers, and engineers, who had laboured here at certain

dates, calculations of pay or rations, diagrams of interesting details,

as well as capitals and shafts of columns, which were shaped out on the

spot to reduce their weight for transport. Here and there true official

stelas are to be found set apart in a suitable place, recording that

after a long interruption such or such an illustrious sovereign had

resumed the excavations, and opened fresh chambers. Alabaster was met

with not far from here in the Wady Gerrauî. The Pharaohs of very early

times established a regular colony here, in the very middle of the

desert, to cut the material into small blocks for transport: a strongly

built dam, thrown across the valley, served to store up the winter and

spring rains, and formed a pond whence the workers could always supply

themselves with water. Kheops and his successors drew their alabaster

from Hâtnûbû, in the neighbourhood of Hermopolis, their granite from

Syene, their diorite and other hard rocks, the favourite material for

their sarcophagi, from the volcanic valleys which separate the Nile from

the Red Sea--especially from the Wady Hammamât. As these were the only

materials of which the quantity required could not be determined in

advance, and which had to be brought from a distance, every king was

accustomed to send the principal persons of his court to the quarries

of Upper Egypt, and the rapidity with which they brought back the stone

constituted a high claim on the favour of their master. If the building

was to be of brick, the bricks were made on the spot, in the plain

at the foot of the hills. If it was to be a limestone structure, the

neighbouring parts of the plateau furnished the rough material in

abundance. For the construction of chambers and for casing walls, the

rose granite of Elephantine and the limestone of Troiu were commonly

employed, but they were spared the labour of procuring these specially

for the occasion. The city of the White Wall had always at hand a supply

of them in its stores, and they might be drawn upon freely for public

buildings, and consequently for the royal tomb. The blocks chosen from

this reserve, and conveyed in boats close under the mountain-side, were

drawn up slightly inclined causeways by oxen to the place selected by

the architect.

The internal arrangements, the length of the passages and the height

of the pyramids, varied much: the least of them had a height of some

thirty-three feet merely. As it is difficult to determine the motives

which influenced the Pharaohs in building them of different sizes, some

writers have thought that the mass of each increased in proportion to

the time bestowed upon its construction--that is to say, to the length

of each reign. As soon as a prince mounted the throne, he would probably

begin by roughly sketching out a pyramid sufficiently capacious to

contain the essential elements of the tomb; he would then, from year to

year, have added fresh layers to the original nucleus, until the day of

his death put an end for ever to the growth of the monument.*

* This was the theory formulated by Lepsius, after the

researches made by himself, and the work done by Erbkam, and

the majority of Egyptologists adopted it, and still maintain

it. It was vigorously attacked by Perrot-Chipiez and by

Petrie; it was afterwards revived, with amendments, by

Borchardt whose conclusions have been accepted by Ed. Meyer.

The examinations which I have had the opportunity of

bestowing on the pyramids of Saqqâra, Abusir, Dahshur,

Rîgah, and Lisht have shown me that the theory is not

applicable to any of these monuments.

This hypothesis is not borne out by facts: such a small pyramid as that

of Saqqâra belonged to a Pharaoh who reigned thirty years, while

“the Horizon” of Gîzeh is the work of Kheops, whose rule lasted only

twenty-three years.

[Illustration: 208.jpg MAP OLEANDER LOWER]

The plan of each pyramid was arranged once for all by the architect,

according to the instructions he had received, and the resources at his

command. Once set on foot, the work was continued until its completion,

without addition or diminution, unless something unforeseen occurred.

The pyramids, like the mastabas, ought to present their faces to the

four cardinal points; but owing to unskilfulness or negligence, the

majority of them are not very accurately orientated, and several of them

vary sensibly from the true north. The great pyramid of Saqqâra does not

describe a perfect square at its base, but is an oblong rectangle, with

its longest sides east and west; it is stepped--that is to say, the six

sloping sided cubes of which it is composed are placed upon one another

so as to form a series of treads and risers, the former being about two

yards wide and the latter of unequal heights. The highest of the stone

pyramids of Dahshur makes at its lower part an angle of 54° 41’ with the

horizon, but at half its height the angle becomes suddenly more acute

and is reduced to 42° 59’. It reminds one of a mastaba with a sort of

huge attic on the top. Each of these monuments had its enclosing wall,

its chapel and its college of priests, who performed there for ages

sacred rites in honour of the deceased prince, while its property in

mortmain was administered by the chief of the “priests of the double.”

Each one received a name, such as “the Fresh,” “the Beautiful,” “the

Divine in its places,” which conferred upon it a personality and, as it

were, a living soul. These pyramids formed to the west of the White Wall

a long serrated line whose extremities were lost towards the south and

north in the distant horizon: Pharaoh could see them from the terraces

of his palace, from the gardens of his villa, and from every point in

the plain in which he might reside between Heliopolis and Mêdûm--as a

constant reminder of the lot which awaited him in spite of his divine

origin. The people, awed and inspired by the number of them, and by the

variety of their form and appearance, were accustomed to tell stories

of them to one another, in which the supernatural played a predominant

part. They were able to estimate within a few ounces the heaps of gold

and silver, the jewels and precious stones, which adorned the royal

mummies or rilled the sepulchral chambers: they were acquainted with

every precaution taken by the architects to ensure the safety of all

these riches from robbers, and were convinced that magic had added to

such safeguards the more effective protection of talismans and genii.

There was no pyramid so insignificant that it had not its mysterious

protectors, associated with some amulet--in most cases with a statue,

animated by the double of the founder. The Arabs of to-day are still

well acquainted with these protectors, and possess a traditional respect

for them. The great pyramid concealed a black and white image, seated

on a throne and invested with the kingly sceptre. He who looked upon the

statue “heard a terrible noise proceeding from it which almost caused

his heart to stop beating, and he who had heard this noise would die.”

An image of rose-coloured granite watched over the pyramid of Khephren,

standing upright, a sceptre in its hand and the urous on its brow,

“which serpent threw himself upon him who approached it, coiled

itself around his neck, and killed him.” A sorcerer had invested these

protectors of the ancient Pharaohs with their powers, but another

equally potent magician could elude their vigilance, paralyze their

energies, if not for ever, at least for a sufficient length of time

to ferret out the treasure and rifle the mummy. The cupidity of the

fellahîn, highly inflamed by the stories which they were accustomed to

hear, gained the mastery over their terror, and emboldened them to risk

their lives in these well-guarded tombs. How many pyramids had been

already rifled at the beginning of the second Theban empire!

The IVth dynasty became extinct in the person of Shop-siskaf, the

successor and probably the son of Mykerinos.* The learned of the time of

Ramses II. regarded the family which replaced this dynasty as merely

a secondary branch of the line of Snofrûi, raised to power by the

capricious laws which settled hereditary questions.**

* The series of kings beginning with Mykerinos was drawn up

for the first time in an accurate manner by E. de Rougé,

_recherches sur les Monu-mails qu’on peut attribuer aux six

premières dynasties_, pp. 66-84, M. de Rouge’s results have

been since adopted by all Egyptologists. The table of the

IVTH dynasty, restored as far as possible with the

approximate dates, is subjoined:--

[Illustration: 211.jpg TABLE OF THE IVTH DYNASTY]

** The fragments of the royal Turin Papyrus exhibit, in

fact, no separation between the kings which Manetho

attributes to the IVth dynasty and those which he ascribes

to the Vth, which seems to show that the Egyptian annalist

considered them all as belonging to one and the same family

of Pharaohs.

Nothing on the contemporary monuments, it is true, gives indication of a

violent change attended by civil war, or resulting from a revolution at

court: the construction and decoration of the tombs continued without

interruption and without indication of haste, the sons-in-law of

Shopsiskaf and of Mykerinos, their daughters and grandchildren, possess

under the new kings, the same favour, the same property, the same

privileges, which they had enjoyed previously. It was stated, however,

in the time of the Ptolemies, that the Vth dynasty had no connection

with the IVth; it was regarded at Memphis as an intruder, and it was

asserted that it came from Elephantine.* The tradition was a very old

one, and its influence is betrayed in a popular story, which was current

at Thebes in the first years of the New Empire. Kheops, while in search

of the mysterious books of Thot in order to transcribe from them the

text for his sepulchral chamber,** had asked the magician Didi to be

good enough to procure them for him; but the latter refused the perilous

task imposed upon him.

* Such is the tradition accepted by Manetho. Lepsius thinks

that the copyists of Manetho were under some distracting

influence, which made them transfer the record of the origin

of the VIth dynasty to the Vth: it must have been the VIth

dynasty which took its origin from Elephantine. I think the

safest plan is to respect the text of Manetho until we know

more, and to admit that he knew of a tradition ascribing the

origin of the Vth dynasty to Elephantine.

** The Great Pyramid is mute, but we find in other pyramids

inscriptions of some hundreds of lines. The author of the

story, who knew how much certain kings of the VIth dynasty

had laboured to have extracts of the sacred books engraved

within their tombs, fancied, no doubt, that his Kheops had

done the like, but had not succeeded in procuring the texts

in question, probably on account of the impiety ascribed to

him by the legends. It was one of the methods of explaining

the absence of any religious or funereal inscription in the

Great Pyramid.

“‘Sire, my lord, it is not I who shall bring them to thee.’ His Majesty

asks: ‘Who, then, will bring them to me?’ Didi replies, ‘It is the

eldest of the three children who are in the womb of Rudîtdidît who will

bring them to thee.’ His Majesty says: ‘By the love of Râ! what is this

that thou tellest me; and who is she, this Rudîtdidît?’ Didi says to

him: ‘She is the wife of a priest of Râ, lord of Sakhîbû. She carries in

her womb three children of Râ, lord of Sakhîbû, and the god has promised

to her that they shall fulfil this beneficent office in this whole

earth,* and that the eldest shall be the high priest at Heliopolis.” His

Majesty, his heart was troubled at it, but Didi says to him: “‘What are

these thoughts, sire, my lord? Is it because of these three children?

Then I say to thee: ‘Thy son, his son, then one of these.’”** The good

King Kheops doubtless tried to lay his hands upon this threatening trio

at the moment of their birth; but Râ had anticipated this, and saved his

offspring. When the time for their birth drew near, the Majesty of Râ,

lord of Sakhîbû, gave orders to Isis, Nephthys, Maskhonît, Hiquît,***

and Khnûmû: “Come, make haste and run to deliver Budîtdidît of these

three children which she carries in her womb to fulfil that beneficent

office in this whole earth, and they will build you temples, they will

furnish your altars with offerings, they will supply your tables with

libations, and they will increase your mortmain possessions.”

* This kind of circumlocution is employed on several

occasions in the old texts to designate royalty. It was

contrary to etiquette to mention directly, in common speech,

the Pharaoh, or anything belonging to his functions or his

family. Cf. pp. 28, 29 of this History.

** This phrase is couched in oracular form, as befitting the

reply of a magician. It appears to have been intended to

reassure the king in affirming that the advent of the three

sons of Râ would not be immediate: his son, then a son of

this son, would succeed him before destiny would be

accomplished, and one of these divine children succeed to

the throne in his turn. The author of the story took no

notice of Dadufrî or Shopsiskaf, of whose reigns little was

known in his time.

*** Hiquît as the frog-goddess, or with a frog’s head, was

one of the mid-wives who is present at the birth of the sun

every morning. Her presence is, therefore, natural in the

case of the spouse about to give birth to royal sons of the

sun.

The goddesses disguised themselves as dancers and itinerant musicians:

Khnûmû assumed the character of servant to this band of nautch-girls and

filled the bag with provisions, and they all then proceeded together

to knock at the door of the house in which Budîtdidît was awaiting her

delivery. The earthly husband Baûsîr, unconscious of the honour that the

gods had in store for him, introduced them to the presence of his wife,

and immediately three male children were brought into the world one

after the other. Isis named them, Maskhonît predicted for them their

royal fortune, while Khnûmû. infused into their limbs vigour and health;

the eldest was called Ûsirkaf, the second Sahûrî, the third Kakiû.

Kaûsîr was anxious to discharge his obligation to these unknown persons,

and proposed to do so in wheat, as if they were ordinary mortals: they

had accepted it without compunction, and were already on their way to

the firmament, when Isis recalled them to a sense of their dignity, and

commanded them to store the honorarium bestowed upon them in one of

the chambers of the house, where henceforth prodigies of the strangest

character never ceased to manifest themselves. Every time one entered

the place a murmur was heard of singing, music, and dancing, while

acclamations such as those with which kings are wont to be received gave

sure presage of the destiny which awaited the newly born. The manuscript

is mutilated, and we do not know how the prediction was fulfilled. If we

may trust the romance, the three first princes of the Vth dynasty were

brothers, and of priestly descent, but our experience of similar stories

does not encourage us to take this one very seriously: did not such

tales affirm that Kheops and Khephren were brothers also?

The Vth dynasty manifested itself in every respect as the sequel and

complement of the IVth.* It reckons nine Pharaohs after the three which

tradition made sons of the god Râ himself and of Rudîtdidîfc. They

reigned for a century and a half; the majority of them have left

monuments, and the last four, at least, Ûsirnirî Ânû, Menkaû-horû,

Dadkerî Assi, and Unas, appear to have ruled gloriously. They all built

pyramids,** they repaired temples and founded cities.***

* A list is appended of the known Pharaohs of the Vth

dynasty, restored as far as can be, with the closest

approximate dates of their reigns:--

[Illustration: 215.jpg TABLE OF PHARAOHS OF THE VTH DYNASTY]

** It is pretty generally admitted, but without convincing

proofs, that the pyramids of Abûsîr served as tombs for the

Pharaohs in the Vth dynasty, one for Sahûrî, another to

Ûsirnirî Anû, although Wiedemann considers that the

truncated pyramid of Dahshur was the tomb of this king. I am

inclined to think that one of the pyramids of Saqqâra was

constructed by Assi; the pyramid of Unas was opened in 1881,

and the results made known by Maspero, _Études de Mythologie

et d’Archéologie_, vol. i. p. 150, et seq., and _Recueil de

Travaux_, vols. iv. and v. The names of the majority of the

pyramids are known to us from the monuments: that of Ûsirkaf

was called “Ûâbisîtu”; that of Sahûrî, “Khâbi”; that of

Nofiririkerî, “Bi”; that of Anû, “Min-isûîtû”; that of

Menkaûhorû, “Nûtirisûîtû”; that of Assi, “Nutir”; that of

Unas, “Nofir-isûîtû.”

*** Pa Sahûrî, near Esneh, for instance, was built by

Sahûrî. The modern name of the village of Sahoura still

preserves, on the same spot, without the inhabitants

suspecting it, the name of the ancient Pharaoh.

[Illustration: 210.jpg STATUE IN ROSE-COLOURED GRANITE OF THE PHARAOH

ANÛ, IN THE GÎZEH MUSEUM]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

The Bedouin of the Sinaitic peninsula gave them much to do. Sahûrî

brought these nomads to reason, and perpetuated the memory of his

victories by a stele, engraved on the face of one of the rocks in the

Wady Magharah; Anû obtained some successes over them, and Assi repulsed

them in the fourth year of his reign. On the whole, they maintained

Egypt in the position of prosperity and splendour to which their

predecessors had raised it.

In one respect they even increased it. Egypt was not so far isolated

from the rest of the world as to prevent her inhabitants from knowing,

either by personal contact or by hearsay, at least some of the peoples

dwelling outside Africa, to the north and east.

[Illustration: 217.jpg TRIUMPHAL BAS-RELIEF OF PHARAOH SAHÛRÛ, ON THE

ROCKS OF WADY MAGHARAH.]

Drawn by Boudier, from the water-colour published in

Lepsius, _Denhn._, i. pl. 8, No. 2

They knew that beyond the “Very Green,” almost at the foot of the

mountains behind which the sun travelled during the night, stretched

fertile islands or countries and nations without number, some barbarous

or semi-barbarous, others as civilized as they were themselves. They

cared but little by what names they were known, but called them all by

a common epithet, the Peoples beyond the Seas, “Haûi-nîbû.” If they

travelled in person to collect the riches which were offered to them by

these peoples in exchange for the products of the Nile, the Egyptians

could not have been the unadventurous and home-loving people we have

imagined. They willingly left their own towns in pursuit of fortune

or adventure, and the sea did not inspire them with fear or religious

horror. The ships which they launched upon it were built on the model of

the Nile boats, and only differed from the latter in details which would

now pass unnoticed. The hull, which was built on a curved keel, was

narrow, had a sharp stem and stern, was decked from end to end, low

forward and much raised aft, and had a long deck cabin: the steering

apparatus consisted of one or two large stout oars, each supported on

a forked post and managed by a steersman. It had one mast, sometimes

composed of a single tree, sometimes formed of a group of smaller masts

planted at a slight distance from each other, but united at the top by

strong ligatures and strengthened at intervals by crosspieces which made

it look like a ladder; its single sail was bent sometimes to one yard,

sometimes to two; while its complement consisted of some fifty men,

oarsmen, sailors, pilots, and passengers. Such were the vessels for

cruising or pleasure; the merchant ships resembled them, but they were

of heavier build, of greater tonnage, and had a higher freeboard. They

had no hold; the merchandise had to remain piled up on deck, leaving

only just enough room for the working of the vessel. They nevertheless

succeeded in making lengthy voyages, and in transporting troops into the

enemy’s territory from the mouths of the Nile to the southern coast of

Syria. Inveterate prejudice alone could prevent us from admitting that

the Egyptians of the Memphite period went to the ports of Asia and to

the Haûi-nîbû by sea. Some, at all events, of the wood required for

building* and for joiner’s work of a civil or funereal character, such

as pine, cypress or cedar, was brought from the forests of Lebanon or

those of Amanus.