Another method of sepulture was made use of in the Ancient Empire, a

method which afterwards came into general use in Egypt, we mean the

_hypogeum_, or subterranean tomb. The Egyptian Commission has

described several rock-cut tombs in the neighbourhood of the Pyramids,

especially some which face the western slope of the Second Pyramid.

Similar tombs are to be found near the pyramid of Mycerinus. Some of

these sepulchral grottos declare their extreme antiquity by their

imitations of wooden architecture;[174] others by their inscriptions

dating from the fourth and fifth dynasties. We shall not dwell long

upon these rock-cut tombs. They are generally composed of one or two

small sculptured chambers, upon one of which the well opens which

leads to the mummy chamber. We shall postpone their study to a later

chapter, as the time of the Middle Empire affords us richer and more

complete examples of them than the earlier period; but, indeed, the

New Empire has left us the most important examples of this kind of

sepulchre. We shall here content ourselves with pointing out that the

architects of Memphis did not ignore the facilities offered by the

easily cut limestone rocks, not only for construction of well and

mummy chamber, but also for those open parts of the tomb where the

funeral rites and the ceremonies of the Ritual of the Dead were

performed. In the whole course of her long vitality Egypt did little

more, either in art or religion, than develop, with variations, the

themes presented to her by the generations which were ruled by her

first six dynasties.

[174] _Description de l'Égypte_, vol. v. p. 647, and _Atlas,

Ant._ vol. v. pl. 16, Figs. 3, 4, and 5.

THE PYRAMIDS.

The _mastaba_ was the private tomb of the great lord or rich citizen

of primitive Egypt; the _pyramid_ was the royal tomb for the same

epoch, the tomb of that son of the gods, almost a god himself, before

whom all foreheads were bowed into the dust. As his head towered over

those of his prostrate subjects during life, so, after death, should

his sepulchre rise high above the comparatively humble tombs of his

proudest servants. The most imposing mastabas, before the sand had

buried them to the summit, must have looked small enough beside those

prodigious masses. They were ant-hills at the foot of a palace.

It may seem that in considering the mastaba before the pyramid we have

reversed the natural order. We were led to do so by the fact that the

enormous mass of the pyramids and their peculiarities of construction

compelled their architects to separate elements which are found

closely allied in the mastaba. In consequence of this separation the

elements in question have not all had the same fate. In the case of

the mastaba all survived or perished together, but, in the pyramids,

some are in a marvellous state of preservation, while others have

disappeared and left hardly a trace behind. We are therefore obliged

to make use of the private tomb in our restoration of that which was

peculiar to the king.

Philologists have attempted to trace back the etymology of the word

πυραμίς to the ancient language of Egypt. The term was first employed

by the Greeks, and from their language it has been adopted into that

of every civilized nation, with a meaning which is scientifically

exact. Its origin has been sought for in the coptic term _pi-rama_,

height, and in the term _pir-aa_, which occurs continually in Exodus,

and was used by Moses to signify the reigning Pharaoh. But

egyptologists now seem to be unanimous in rejecting both these

derivations. They are, we are told, refuted by the fact that the terms

which are supposed to have meant a pyramid are never used in that

sense in any of the texts. 'The words which mean a royal tomb or a

tomb of any kind, have not the remotest likeness,' says Herr

Brugsch,[175] 'to the term πυραμίς. Each royal pyramid had its own

name, a composite epithet which was peculiar to itself.' Thus the

largest of them all was called "the brilliant dwelling of Choufou;"

the second, "the great;" the third, "that which is on high." The word

_pyramid_ appears therefore to be a purely Greek term, derived from

πῦρ, fire, and suggested by the similarity between its shape and that

of a tongue of flame.

[175] _History of Egypt_ (English version, Murray, 1879), vol.

i. pp. 72, 73.

We shall not waste our time in noticing and refuting those fantastic

explanations of the pyramids which have been given in modern times. We

shall not trouble ourselves to prove that they were not observatories.

Those sloping tunnels, at the bottom of which some modern writers

would set unlucky astronomers to watch the passage of stars across the

meridian, were hermetically sealed, and minute precautions were taken

with the sole object of obstructing and concealing their entrance. The

four slopes of the pyramid faced to the cardinal points, simply

because the orientation of the tomb was habitual with the Egyptians;

we have already explained its meaning. Still less need we occupy

ourselves with the theory, which made, however, some stir in its time,

that the pyramids were bulwarks by which the ancient Egyptians

attempted to keep back the sand from the fertile valley of the Nile.

The science of M. de Persigny was well worthy of his policy. There was

in both, the same turn for fantastic invention, the same want of

reflection and common sense. If such a costly barrier had been either

useful or necessary it should at least have been prolonged from one

end of Egypt to the other, and all the pyramids would not have been

found assembled, with but few exceptions, in the neighbourhood of

Memphis.[176]

[176] FIALIN DE PERSIGNY, _De la Destination et de l'Utilité

permanente des Pyramides d'Égypte et de Nubie contre les

Irruptions sablonneuses du Désert, Développements du Mémoire

adressé à l'Académie des Sciences le 14 Juillet, 1844_, suivie

d'_une nouvelle interprétation de la Fable d'Osiris et d'Isis_.

Paris, 1845, gr. in-8.

No one in our day thinks of either starting or discussing such

theories as these. There are, of course, several obscure points in the

history of the pyramids, several details of their construction, which

stimulate to fresh research and lend themselves to many different

explanations; but there can be no doubt as to their general character.

Their exploration and the interpretations of the Egyptian texts have

confirmed the assertions of those Greek writers who were most familiar

with Egypt, such as Herodotus,[177] Diodorus Siculus,[178] and

Strabo.[179] The Pyramids are sepulchres. "They are massive, simply

conceived, carefully sealed up tombs. All entrance is forbidden even

to their most carefully built corridors. They are tombs without

windows, without doors, without exterior openings of any kind. They

are the gigantic and impregnable dwellings of the mummy; ... their

colossal dimensions have been invoked to bear out the arguments of

those who would attribute to them some other destination, but they are

in fact to be found of all sizes, some being no more than twenty feet

high. Besides this, it must be remembered that in all Egypt no

pyramid, or rather group of pyramids, is to be found, which is not the

centre of a necropolis, a fact which is enough by itself to indicate

their funerary character."[180] It is proved still more definitely, if

that be possible, by the sarcophagi which have been found in the

internal chambers, empty in most cases, because those chambers had

been entered and despoiled, either in the days of antiquity or in

those of the middle ages, but sometimes intact, as in the pyramid of

Mycerinus. The pyramids were hermetically sealed. Even without direct

evidence we might assert that it was so, knowing as we do the

precautions which the Egyptians took elsewhere to guard their tombs

against intrusion; but direct proof of the fact is not wanting. When

in the ninth century the Kaliph Al-Mamoun wished to penetrate into the

Great Pyramid he was only enabled to do so by breaking into it

violently, near the centre of its northern face, and thus stumbling

accidentally upon the descending passage at some distance from its

mouth. That he was reduced to employ this method at the risk of

meeting with nothing but the solid masonry shows that no external

indication had been left of the opening through which the mummy had

been carried in. The casing seems to have been then complete and

consequently the four sides of the Pyramid must have been free from

_débris_ and generally uniform. That the Arabs should have chosen the

right side for their attack was perhaps owing to the survival of some

ancient tradition indicating the northern side to be that of the

entrance, which, as a fact, it has been found to be in all the

pyramids as yet explored. Perhaps too the Arabs may have been guided

by the traces of previous attempts made either in the time of the

Persians or in that of the Romans.[181] However this may be it is very

certain that had they perceived any signs of an original doorway, they

would have directed their attentions to it. Those who seek for

treasure do not, like archæologists, strike out lines of exploration

in all directions for the satisfaction of their curiosity, they go

straight to their point.

[177] HERODOTUS, ii. 127.

[178] DIODORUS, l. 64, 4.

[179] STRABO, xvii. p. 1161, C.

[180] MARIETTE, _Itinéraire de la Haute-Égypte_, pp. 96, 97. [An

excellent translation of this work into English, by M. Alphonse

Mariette, has been published (Trübner, 1877, 8vo.)--ED.]

[181] The existence of the passage leading to the mummy chamber

was not unknown to STRABO. He says: "Very nearly at the middle

of their sides, as to height, the pyramids had a stone which

could be moved away; when this is done, a winding passage

appears, which leads to the coffin" (xvii. p. 1161, C).

The pyramid includes two of those four parts into which we have

divided the typical Egyptian tomb; it contains the well and the mummy

chamber. As for the funerary chapel, there were obvious difficulties

in the way of including it in the thickness of the monument itself. It

would have been difficult to preserve it from being crushed by the

immense weight above it, and as it would have had to be lighted from

the door alone, it must always have been of the most restricted

dimensions. A different arrangement had therefore to be devised from

that adopted in the case of the mastaba. The open part of the monument

was separated from that which was destined to be sealed up from the

outer world. The chapel or temple, in which the successors of the

prince buried in the pyramid and the priests told off for its service

performed the prescribed rites, was erected at some distance from the

eastern face. The remains of such buildings have been found to the

east of both the second and third pyramids. That of Cheops has not

been discovered, but we may assert with confidence that it has either

been destroyed by the hand of man, or that it still lies under the

veil of sand. Were there any _serdabs_ concealed in the thickness of

the temple walls? That question cannot be answered. The remains of

those buildings are in such a condition that all traces of such an

arrangement would have vanished had there been any. The walls have

disappeared. The lower courses of masonry are still in place, and

allow us to follow the very simple plan upon which these chapels were

erected; and that is all. It is possible, however, that the Egyptians

depended solely upon the profound respect which was felt for the royal

person, combined with the sacredness of the spot and the vigilance of

the established priesthood of the necropolis, to preserve the august

images of the sovereign from insult or destruction. The seven or eight

statues of Chephren which were found at the bottom of a pit in what is

called the _Temple of the Sphinx_, were all more or less mutilated,

proving that this want of precaution was sometimes disastrous. In the

course of so many centuries, during which the Hyksos, the Ethiopians,

the Assyrians, and the Persians overran the country by turns, such

statues as were not sheltered in some well dissembled retreat must

more than once have been struck off their pedestals and broken, or,

like those of the unlucky Chephren, thrown head-foremost into the

depths of the earth.

[Illustration: FIG. 127.--Plans of the temples belonging to the second

and third pyramids; from Perring.]

As such vast importance was attached to the preservation of the

portrait statues upon which the prolongation of life after death was

made so largely to depend, is it not probable that the idea of hiding

some of them in the innermost recesses of the pyramids themselves may

have occurred to those who caused those monuments to be built? It is

obvious that no hiding-place could be more secure. No such retreats

have yet been discovered in any of the galleries which have been

explored by modern curiosity, but it does not follow that they do not

exist in some corner which has not yet been reached, which will

perhaps never be reached by the most persevering explorer. Quite

lately M. Maspero believed that he recognized a serdab in a

subterranean chamber with three niches which he found near the mummy

chamber in the Pyramid of Ounas, the last king of the fifth

dynasty.[182] Before we could say that such an arrangement does not

exist elsewhere, we should have to take some pyramid to pieces from

the first stone to the last. It might, however, be asserted that the

images of the deceased would, if hidden in the pyramid, be too far

removed from that public hall to which his relations brought their

offerings and their pious homage. At such a distance they would not

have heard the friendly voices or the magic chants; nor would the

scent of the incense have reached their nostrils. In a word, they

would have been ill placed for the fulfilment of the office assigned

to them by the Egyptian faith.

[182] This pyramid was opened on February 28, 1881.

Circumstantial accounts of the discoveries to which it led have

not yet been published. The _Moniteur Égyptien_ of March 15,

1881, contains a short account of the opening. [Since this note

was written, a full account of the entrance and exploration of

this pyramid, together with the texts discovered, has been

published by M. MASPERO in the _Recueil de Travaux_, vol. iii.

liv. 3 and 4, 1882.--ED.]

We have hitherto spoken only of the social purposes of the pyramid, of

its office as the sepulchre of the ancient kings of Egypt, or rather

as the part of that sepulchre that corresponded to the least

interesting parts of private tombs. In the plants of our gardens and

orchards, we see cultivation develop certain organs at the expense of

others. We find stamens changed into petals, giving us double flowers,

and the envelope of the seeds thickened and made to shed perfume. We

see the same process of development in the tombs of the early Egyptian

monarchs. Under the influence of their pride of station, and as a

consequence of the effort which they made to perpetuate their rank

even after death, the stone hiding-place which protected the mummy

took a size which is oppressive to the imagination, while the funerary

chapel remained of modest dimensions. This disproportion is to be

easily explained. The simple method of construction which

distinguishes the pyramid permitted almost indefinite extension,

while architecture, properly speaking, was not yet sufficiently

advanced to make use of those grandiose orders which distinguish the

porticos and hypostyle temples of the Theban period.

We have now to consider the pyramids from another point of view, from

that of their probable origin, of their variety of form, and of the

materials of which they are composed. Descriptions of these monuments,

such as those contained in the great works of Vyse[183] and

Perring[184], works which gave to the world the accumulated results of

long and costly explorations, must not be looked for in these volumes.

We do not think it necessary that we should give even a succinct

account of the more important pyramids, such as that given by Bædeker

or Isambert. Such a proceeding would be a mere duplication of those

excellent manuals, and would moreover, be foreign to the purpose which

we have before us. We take the pyramids as known. The two books just

mentioned are within the reach of all. Thanks to the precise

information and the numerous figures which they contain, we may

content ourselves with making a few general observations. Some of

these observations will refer to the pyramids as a whole, some to the

peculiarities of construction which distinguish a few, peculiarities

which do not affect that general type which seems to be as old as the

Egyptian monarchy itself.

[183] VYSE (Howard), _Operations carried on at the Pyramids of

Gizeh in 1837, with an Account of a Voyage into Upper Egypt, and

an Appendix_. (London, 1840, 3 vols. 8vo.)

[184] PERRING (J. L.), _The Pyramids of Gizeh, from Actual

Survey and Admeasurement, illustrated by Notes and References to

the Several Plans, with Sketches taken on the Spot by J.

Andrews._ (3 parts, large oblong folio. London, 1839-42.)

As soon as a society had sprung up on the banks of the Nile which

attempted to organize itself under the directing lead of chiefs or

headmen, the latter seem to have been stung by the desire to make

known their final resting-place by some conspicuous sign. The most

simple way of arriving at the desired result was to heap up the earth

over the corpse, so as to form an artificial hillock which should be

visible from a distance over the level plain. This was the origin of

that funerary mound which modern archæologists call a _tumulus_. The

tumulus is to be found in most districts of the ancient as well as of

the modern world. But to confine ourselves to our own province, it is

to be found in pre-Christian times among the Scythians of Herodotus

and our ancestors the Gauls, as well as among the Greeks of the heroic

age. We all know the frequent expression of Homer, σῆμα χεύειν, which

is literally to _display a signal_, that is to say, to accumulate over

the corpse of a warrior a sufficient number of spadefuls of earth to

_signalize_ it, for the worship and admiration of posterity. Tradition

ascribes those tumuli which are yet to be seen on the plain of Troy to

the observance of this custom.

The funerary architecture of Egypt commenced in the same fashion, in

those distant ages which were called by the Egyptians themselves the

times of _Hor-schesou_ or slaves of Horus. We cannot doubt that the

pyramid sprang from the mound. Its birth must have taken place after

Menes had, by uniting the various tribes under his own sceptre, caused

the whole race to take a distinct step onwards in civilization. The

pyramid is but a built mound. It is a tumulus in which brick and stone

take the place of earth. This substitution adds very greatly to its

chances of duration, and makes it a much safer place of deposit and a

much more lasting monument for the body committed to its charge. The

Nile mud, when moulded and dried in the sun, gave bricks which still

remain good; their manufacture and their constructive use seem to have

been understood by the Egyptians as soon as they emerged from

primitive barbarism. Thanks to the facilities thus afforded, they were

enabled to build monuments upon the graves of their rulers which could

offer a better resistance to injuries of time and human enemies than a

few handfuls of earth and grass. They began, perhaps, by placing a few

blocks of stone upon their mounds, so as to fix them more securely, or

by covering them with a thin coat of brickwork. But, after a few

experiments in that direction, they found it better to construct the

whole body of the tumulus in the harder material. Its size increased

with the constructive skill and material appliances of its builders,

until it became first a hillock and finally a mountain of stone, with

the impenetrable rock for its base and flanks of solid masonry.

The built-up tumulus of masonry took a form very different, in its

definite lines, from the rounded slopes of the mound. The squared

forms of brick or cut stone infallibly give to the edifice upon which

they are employed one of those more or less rigid forms which are

defined by geometry. When they leave the hands of the builder they are

either cubes or parallelopipeds, pyramids or prisms, cylinders or

cones. They present the general appearance, they possess the essential

properties, of one of those forms. We may say that architecture was

born on the day when man began to use the unyielding materials by

which definite geometrical forms can alone be given. As soon as this

early development was reached he set to work to combine those

elementary forms in different proportions and to add to their effect

by elegance and richness of decoration, and so in the end to form

national architectures.

When the first pyramid was built upon the borders of the desert man

was on the threshold of the movement to which we have referred. The

form adopted for the royal tomb was one of the most simple which could

be chosen for a building. The most simple of all would have been the

_tetrahedron_, or pyramid built upon a triangular base. But not a

single pyramid of that kind has been discovered in Egypt. The whole of

the pyramids, large or small, are built upon a right-angled base, and

in most instances upon one with sides practically equal.[185] Mystic

reasons for this shape have been given. It has been said that each

face was dedicated to one of the four powers of Amen, which

corresponded to the cardinal points of heaven.[186] We are not yet

sufficiently well acquainted with the genesis of the Egyptian religion

to be able to decide how far into the past the four powers of Amen may

be traced: but it is quite possible that they were derived from the

four faces of the strictly oriented pyramids. Were we inclined to

enter into this discussion we should rather, perhaps, attribute the

shape of the pyramid to the prevailing Egyptian desire to turn one

face of their tombs towards the west, the abode of the dead, and

another to the east, whence the hoped-for resurrection was to come.

The three-sided pyramid would not have lent itself to such an

arrangement.

[185] The base of the great pyramid at Sakkarah is a rectangle,

measuring 390 feet from north to south, and 347 from east to

west. The three great pyramids at Gizeh like most of these

structures, are built upon a base which is practically square.

[186] MARIETTE, _Itinéraire de la Haute-Égypte_, p. 96.

There is also something unpleasant to the eye in the sharp angles

which form the three _arêtes_ of the tetrahedron; it looks as if there

had been a lack of material, and as if the structure would suffer in

consequence. The four-sided pyramid has more dignity and more

amplitude; its four faces, placed back to back in pairs, seem to

counterpoise and sustain each other in a fashion which is impossible

in the case of the tetrahedron.

[Illustration: FIG. 128.--Plan of the Pyramid of Cheops.]

The one characteristic possessed in common by those relics of the

Ancient Empire which we call pyramids, is their four-sidedness. To an

attentive observer these buildings offer more diversities than would

at first sight be believed. From Meidoum in the south to Abou-Roash in

the north is a distance of 43-1/2 miles as the crow flies. Between

these two points, which may be called the northern and southern

boundaries of the pyramid field, about one hundred have been

discovered, sixty-seven of which have been examined by Lepsius. Now,

in this whole number there are not two which resemble each other in

all particulars, or which seem to be copies of one model. We do not

refer only to their height, which differs in an extreme degree. The

three large pyramids at Gizeh are 482, 454, and 218 feet high

respectively, while at their feet are several little pyramids which

hardly exceed from 50 to 70 feet of vertical height. Between these two

extremes many of intermediate sizes may be inserted. The Stepped

Pyramid, near Sakkarah, is about 190 feet high; the largest of those

at Abousir is about 165; one of those at Dashour is not quite 100

feet. These differences in height are easily explained by one of those

national habits to which we have already alluded. Every Egyptian, as

soon as he arrived at years of discretion, set about building his own

tomb. He dug the well and the mummy chamber, he caused the sarcophagus

to be carved and the funerary chapel to be built. It often happened

that those who had ordered such works died long before they were

finished, and it would seem that their heirs were content with doing

no more than was strictly necessary. They placed the mummy in its

grave with the prescribed ceremonies, they filled up the well and

sealed the private parts of the tomb; but being occupied with the

preparations for their own funeral, they did not continue the

decoration of the chapel, which thenceforward remained _in statu quo_.

Thus only can we explain the state in which several important tombs

have been discovered both at Memphis and at Thebes. On one wall we

find paintings and sculptures carried out with the greatest care and

finish, while on another nothing is to be seen but the first rough

outline, in red paint, by the artist charged with the undertaking. The

completion of the work must have been suddenly arrested by the death

of the destined inhabitant of the tomb.

[Illustration: FIG. 129.--The great pyramid and the small pyramids at

its foot; from Perring.]

It was the same with the sepulchres of the kings. Each sovereign began

the construction of his pyramid as soon as he found himself upon the

throne. But, in case his life and his reign should be cut short, he

began with those constituents of the tomb which were absolutely

necessary. He pressed on the work until he had raised a pyramid of

moderate size with its mummy chamber. When this point had been

reached, his immediate anxiety came to an end; but that was no reason

for interrupting the course of the work. The higher and wider his

pyramid, the more efficient a guardian of his body would it be, and

the more impressive would be the message carried down by it to

posterity as to the power of its builder. Year after year, therefore,

he employed crowds of impressed workmen to clothe it in layer after

layer of dressed stone or brick, so that the edifice raised in

comparative haste at the beginning of his reign, became in time

nothing but the nucleus or kernel of one many times its size.[187] The

construction was thus begun in the centre and was developed outwards,

like the timber of a tree in successive years. As the pyramid grew in

extent and height, each successive coat, so to speak, required more

hands and more time. We have no reason to believe that each coat had

to be finished within a certain period, and so it would be futile to

attempt to found any calculation as to the duration of the different

reigns upon the number of these concentric layers; but we may assert

in a general way that the highest pyramids correspond to the longest

reigns. We know, by the witness of ancient authors, that the kings who

built the three great pyramids at Gizeh, namely, Cheops, Chephren, and

Mycerinus, each reigned about sixty years. History thus confirms the

truth of the induction which arises from the study of those monuments

and from a comparison of the constructive processes made use of by the

architects of the pyramids.[188]

[187] This method of construction may be easily recognized in

the Pyramid of Meidoum. That curious structure was built in

concentric layers round a nucleus. These layers are by no means

equal in the excellence either of the workmanship or of the

materials employed. Some show supreme negligence; in others we

find the builders of the Ancient Empire and their materials both

at their best. The same fact has been observed in regard to the

Stepped Pyramid and the pyramids at Abousir. It would seem that

the work was assigned in sections to different _corvées_, whose

consciences varied greatly in elasticity. (MARIETTE, _Voyage de

la Haute-Égypte_, p. 45.)

[188] LEPSIUS, _Briefe aus Ægypten_, pp. 41, 42 (in speaking of

the Pyramid of Meidoum, from which he received the first hint of

this explanation). See also his paper entitled _Ueber den Bau

der Pyramiden_, in the _Monatsbericht_ of the Berlin Academy,

1843, pp. 177-203.

The author of Bædeker's _Guide_ has not been content with believing,

like Perring, Lepsius, and Mariette, that the pyramid grew by the

application of successive envelopes of stone round the central mass,

either in horizontal courses or in courses sloping towards the axis of

the building. He has brought forward an elaborate theory of

construction, which, though very ingenious, encounters several grave

objections. We shall point out those objections while we endeavour to

explain the system itself by the help of special illustrations drawn

for us by the author of the _Guide_ in question.[189]

[189] _Ægypten_, First part, 1878, p. 341.

[Illustration: FIG. 130.--The three great pyramids; from the south.]

When Cheops first began to think about building his tomb, he could not

have counted upon giving it the colossal dimensions which it presents

even in its actual injured condition. The area of the great pyramid is

more than double that of Saint Peter's at Rome. If we deduct from its

total volume the core of rock which it incloses[190] and the openings

which it contains, the masonry in its primitive integrity must have

amounted to a total of 3,479,600 cubic yards. Even now, when so much

of its substances has been detached and carried away, there still

remains the enormous mass of 3,246,600 cubic yards. Supposing that,

two or three years after the commencement of a work upon this colossal

scale, death had carried off its projector, can we believe that any

successor, even a son who was sincerely devoted to the memory of his

father, would have burthened himself with the continuation and

completion of such an enterprise? The new sovereign would have enough

to do in commencing and carrying on the erection of his own tomb, and,

moreover, would be irresistibly tempted to make use, for its

construction, of the accumulated material and collected labour of his

predecessor.

[190] It has been suggested by Mr. Cope Whitehouse that the

nucleus of rock under the great pyramids was originally much

more important than is commonly supposed. During his expedition

in March, 1882, he ascertained that a profile from the Mokattam

across the Nile valley into the western desert would present the

contours shown in the annexed woodcut. He concludes that a large

part of the material of those pyramids was obtained upon their

sites, and quarried above the level at which the stones were

finally placed. He cites HERODOTUS (ii. 125) as conveying in an

imperfect form the tradition that the pyramids were "constructed

from above."

Even four or five thousand years before our era, men were too

sagacious to reckon upon the piety or gratitude of an heir. For the

closing and final sealing up of the pyramid, its builder and destined

inhabitant was obliged to depend upon his survivors, he could not do

it himself. Moreover, the external completion, which, in the case of

the greater monuments, must have been a long and costly matter, had to

be entrusted to the same hands. The reigning king, so long as he was

not too sternly reminded of the end by disease or the infirmities of

age, must have felt great reluctance to order the cessation of the

work which had gone on under his own eye for so many years, or to

arrest that course of development which, after being a continual

source of pride and pleasure to himself, might end in giving him a

monument surpassing those of his famous predecessors. He was,

therefore, very likely to be surprised by death with his tomb still

unfinished, with the final cope-stone still upon the ground, or, even

when that had been put in place so as to show the total height, with

the casing of polished stone which was destined to hide the inner

courses of the masonry and the entrances, still incomplete. Upon

two-thirds or three-quarters of each face, his pyramid would still

present the aspect which necessarily belonged to it during the period

of its construction; an aspect which has again distinguished the great

pyramid since it was despoiled of its casing. As each course was set

back from that upon which it was placed, the final _ensemble_ looked

like an enormous staircase with steps gradually diminishing in length

as they neared the summit.

There were many of the Egyptian princes who from want of patience or

zeal, or from some other motive, failed to carry on the enterprise of

their predecessors to its destined conclusion. We are ignorant as to

the condition of the three great pyramids of Gizeh at the death of

their projectors. But they appear to have been finished in most of

their details with a care which would seem to indicate that Cheops,

Chephren, and Mycerinus, must have been there to overlook the smallest

details of their execution. Other pyramids, on the other hand, seem to

have been left in a comparatively imperfect state.

These observations furnish us with an initial objection to the theory

to which we have referred. Some may refuse to believe that Cheops

intended from the beginning that his pyramid should have the

dimensions and the internal arrangements which we now see. But why

should he not have done so? If he had died at the end of a few years,

his pyramid would, perhaps, have presented to us a shape like that of

some other edifices of the same kind, a large base which had never

received either its cope-stone or its casing. So too with those of

Mycerinus and Chephren. Have not absolute monarchs existed at all

times, whose infinite power seems to have made them forget the eternal

limits of time and space? Sometimes Fortune has been cruel to them:

but often she seems to have placed herself entirely at their disposal.

Among the causes which combine to make the royal tombs of the first

six dynasties so unequal in height and appearance, the very unequal

length of the reigns is the most important. If we were better

acquainted with the condition of Egypt in those remote epochs, we

should, no doubt, be enabled to give other reasons for their want of

uniformity. The chances of completion and even of preservation in its

complete state enjoyed by a pyramid must have greatly depended upon

the descent of the crown. When king succeeded king in one family those

chances were much better than when dynasty succeeded dynasty, whether

the break were due to internal revolution or to the failure of the

legitimate line. It is even possible that some of those pyramids which

are now to outward appearance mere heaps of _débris_ never received

the mummy for whose reception they were designed and built.

The pyramids differ also in the materials employed. The great pyramids

at Gizeh are built of fine limestone from Mokattam and Toura; the

chief one at Sakkarah of a bad clayish limestone from the neighbouring

rocks; at Dashour and Abou-Roash there are pyramids of unburnt brick.

Finally there are pyramids built chiefly of stone which is kept in

place by a carefully constructed skeleton, so to speak, of brick. This

construction is to be found in the pyramid of Illahoun, at the

entrance to the Fayoum (Fig. 131).

There is the same variety in the position of the mummy chamber.

Sometimes this is within the sides of the pyramid itself, as in that

of Cheops; sometimes, after the example of the mastaba, it is cut out

of the living rock upon which the pyramid stands. This arrangement is

to be found, for instance, in the pyramid of Mycerinus, where the roof

of the mummy chamber is about 33 feet below the lowest course of the

pyramid itself. So too in the Stepped Pyramid, where the whole

complicated system of corridors and cells, which distinguishes that

edifice, is cut in the rock, so that the building itself is absolutely

solid. Most of the pyramids have no more than one or two entrances,

giving access to narrow galleries, sometimes ascending, sometimes

descending, which lead to one or two chambers of very small dimensions

when compared to the enormous mass which rises above and around them

(Fig. 132). In the subterranean part of the Stepped Pyramid the

proportion of voids to solids is far less insignificant. This pyramid,

which is not nearly so carefully oriented as the others, has four

entrances and a series of internal passages, horizontal galleries,

staircases and cells, which make it little else than a subterranean

labyrinth. It is singular also in having, upon its central axis and at

the point upon which, at various heights, all its galleries converge,

a sort of large well, a chamber about twenty feet square and eighty

feet high, in the pavement of which a huge block of granite cut into

the shape of a cork or plug was so placed as to open at will[191] and

leave a free passage for the descent into a second chamber, the

purpose of which is more than obscure, as it is too small even to have

contained a sarcophagus.[192] The end of the long passage which leads

to the thirty chambers which have been counted beneath this pyramid

has been found in the neighbouring sands (Fig. 134).

[191] The weight of this stopper is about four tons, and it has

long been a puzzle to egyptologists how it, and others like it,

could be raised and lowered. M. Perrot's words must not,

therefore, be taken too literally.--ED.

[192] ARTHUR RHONÉ, _L'Égypte à petites Journées_, p. 259.

[Illustration: FIG. 131.--The pyramid of Illahoun, horizontal section

in perspective; from the plan of Perring.]

Another point of difference: most of the pyramids are built round a

core of living rock, which is embraced by the lower courses of their

masonry. But the pyramid of Mycerinus is just the reverse of this. It

is built over a hollow in the rock which is filled up with masonry.

The inequalities of the surface were usually taken advantage of so as

to economize material, and make a greater show with less labour.

Mycerinus, however, did not fear to increase his task by rearing his

pyramid over a depression in the plateau.

[Illustration: FIG. 132.--Section of the pyramid of Cheops; from

Perring.]

There is no less diversity in the external aspects of the pyramids. We

are most familiar with the shapes of the great pyramids at Gizeh (Fig.

130 and Pl. 1, 2); their images have been multiplied to infinity by

engraving and photography, but we make a great mistake when we imagine

all the royal tombs at Memphis to be built upon this one model. They

do not all present the same simplicity of form, the same regular slope

from summit to base, or the smooth and polished casing which

distinguished those great monuments when they were in complete

preservation. The southern pyramid of Dashour offers us one of the

most curious variations upon the original theme (Fig. 133). Its

angle-ridges are not unbroken straight lines from base to summit. The

slope of its faces becomes less steep at about half their height. The

lower part of its sides make angles of 54° 41' with the horizon, while

above they suddenly fall back to an angle of 42° 59'. This latter

slope does not greatly differ from the 43° 36' of the other pyramid in

the same neighbourhood. No indication has yet been discovered as to

the builder of this pyramid.

A second variation, still more unlike the Gizeh type, is to be found

in the great pyramid of Sakkarah, the Stepped Pyramid, which was

considered by Mariette as the oldest of them all. Taking a passage

from Manetho as his authority, he thought himself justified in

attributing it to the fourth king of the first dynasty, Ouenephes or

Ata, and he was inclined to see in it the Serapeum, or Apis tomb, of

the Ancient Empire. Its present elevation is about 190 feet. Each of

its sides is divided horizontally into six large steps with inclined

faces. The height of these steps decreases progressively, from the

base to the summit, from 38 feet 2 inches to 29 feet 6 inches. The

width of each step is nearly 7 feet. It will be seen, therefore, that

this building rather tends to the pyramidal form than achieves it; it

is a rough sketch for a pyramid.

[Illustration: FIG. 133.--The southern pyramid of Dashour; from the

measurements of Perring.]

[Illustration: FIG. 134.--Section of the Stepped Pyramid; from

Perring.]

Does this want of completion result from accidental causes, or must

it be referred to ignorance of the full beauties of the pyramidal form

on the part of its builders? If the conjecture of Mariette is well

founded, the Stepped Pyramid is not only the most ancient building in

Egypt but in the whole world; and in the remote century which

witnessed its construction men may not yet have learnt to fill up the

angles left in their masonry, they may have been quite satisfied to

leave their work in a condition which to us seems imperfect.

[Illustration: FIG. 135.--The Stepped Pyramid; restored from the

measurements of Perring.]

The Germans have evolved a complicated system of construction from

notes made by Lepsius upon the details of the masonry in different

pyramids. In order that this system may be more easily understood, we

give, on the opposite page, a series of representations of such a

pyramid in different stages of completion (Figs. 136 to 142). A

commencement was made by erecting a very narrow and perpendicular

pyramid crowned by a pyramidion, like a stumpy obelisk (Fig. 136).

This finished, sloping masses were erected against it so as to form,

with the pyramidion of the first mass, a second pyramid. The apex of

this pyramid, a pyramidion of a single stone, might be put in place

and the work considered finished (Fig. 137); or, if the builder were

sanguine as to time, he might seek to push on still farther. Then, at

the line where the slopes of the pyramid left the earth, four

perpendicular walls were erected to the height of the pyramidion. The

space between the sides of the pyramid and the inner faces of these

walls was filled in, and thus a kind of terrace, or huge rectangular

block, was obtained (Fig. 138), which served as the core for a new

pyramid (Fig. 139). This again disappeared under a pyramid of larger

section and gentler slope (Fig. 140), whose sides reached the ground

far beyond the foundations of the terrace. In the case of a long reign

this operation might be repeated over and over again (Figs. 140 and

142). A large pyramid would thus be composed of a series of pyramidal

envelopes placed one upon another. The mummy-chamber was either cut in

the rock before the laying of the first course of stone, or it was

contrived in the thickness of the masonry itself; as the casing of

stone went on increasing in thickness, galleries were left for

ventilation and for the introduction of the sarcophagus and the

mummy. The mummy-chamber is always found either upon the axis of the

pyramid, or in its immediate neighbourhood, and always nearer the base

than the summit.

[Illustration: FIG. 136.

FIG. 137.

FIG. 138.

FIG. 139.

FIG. 140.

FIG. 141.

FIG. 142.

FIGS. 136-142.--Successive states of a pyramid, according to the

system advocated in Bædeker's _Guide_.]

We are told that the system of construction here set forth is rendered

almost certain by the fact that "the deeper we penetrate into the

pyramid the more careful do we find the construction, which becomes

more and more careless as the exterior is approached. In fact, as each

new envelope was commenced, the chances of its being completed became

less." The mass of stone to be worked and placed was greater, while

the king, upon whose life the whole operation depended, was older and

nearer his death. The builders became less sure of the morrow; they

pressed on so as to increase, at all hazards, the size of the

monument, and trusted to the final casing to conceal all defects of

workmanship.

This system of pyramid building would explain the curious shapes which

we have noticed in the Stepped Pyramid and the southern pyramid of

Dashour.[193] Both of those erections would thus be unfinished

pyramids. At Sakkarah, the angles left by the successive stages would

be waiting for their filling in; at Dashour, the upper part of a

pyramid of gentle slope would have been constructed upon the nucleus

which was first erected, but the continuation of the slope to the

ground would have been prevented by the stoppage of the works at the

point of intersection of the upper pyramid and its provisional

substructure. Hence the broken slope which has such a strange effect,

an effect which could not have entered into the original calculations

of the architect.

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

Jomard describes one of crude and much crumbled brick at

Dashour. It is, he says, about 140 feet high. Its height is

divided into five stages, each being set back about 11 feet

behind the one below. These steps are often found, he adds,

among the southern pyramids, and there is one example of such

construction at Gizeh. (_Description de l'Égypte_, vol. x., p.

5.) At Matarieh, between Sakkarah and Meidoum, there is a

pyramid with a double slope like that at Dashour.

But although this theory seems satisfactorily to explain some puzzling

appearances, it also, when tested by facts, encounters some very grave

objections. The explorers of the pyramids have more than once, in

their search for lost galleries and hidden chambers, cut for

themselves a passage through the masonry, but neither in these

breaches made by violence, nor in the ancient and carefully

constructed passages to which they were the means of giving access,

have any signs been, discovered, or at least, reported, of the

junctions of different surfaces and slopes which must have existed

according to the theory which we are noticing. We should expect, at

least, to find the nearly upright sides of the cubic mass with which

the pyramid began, contrasting with the comparatively gentle slopes

which were built against it. These different parts of the pyramid, we

are told, were built and finished separately, a proceeding which, if

the later parts were to be properly fitted to the earlier and the

final stability of the monument assured, would have demanded a minute

and scrupulous care which was not common with Egyptian workmen. How,

without numerous through bonding-stones, could those slides and

settlements be prevented to which the want of homogeneity in the

structure would otherwise be sure to lead? But we are not told that

any such junctions of old and new work are to be found even in those

points where they would be most conspicuous, namely, in the galleries

leading to the internal chambers, where a practised eye could hardly

fail to note the transition. We do not say that there are no such

transitions, but we think the advocates of the new theory should have

begun by pointing them out if they exist.

There is another difficulty in their way. How is their system to

explain the position of the mummy-chamber in certain pyramids? Let us

take that of Cheops as an example. If its internal arrangements had

been fixed from the beginning, if the intention had been from the

first to place the mummy-chamber where we now find it, at about

one-third of the whole height, why should the builders have

complicated their task by imposing upon themselves these ever

difficult junctions? Would it not have been far better to build the

pyramid at once to the required height, leaving in its thickness the

necessary galleries? The same observation applies to the discharging

chambers above the mummy-chamber. The whole of these arrangements, the

high vestibule with its wonderful masonry, the chambers and the

structural voids above them, appear to have been conceived and carried

out at one time, and by the same brains and hands. Not a sign is to be

found of those more or less well-veiled transitions which are never

absent when the work of one time and one set of hands has to be united

with that of another. Or are we to believe that they commenced by

building a hill of stone composed of those different pyramids one

within another, and that they afterwards carved the necessary chambers

and corridors out of its mass? One of the heroes of Hoffmann, the

fantastic Crespel, made use indeed of some such method in giving doors

and windows to his newly-built house, but we may be sure that no

architect, either in Egypt or elsewhere, ever thought of employing it.

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

We may here call attention to a circumstance which justifies all our

reserves. There is but one pyramid which seems to have been built upon

a system which, though much less complicated, resembled that which we

are noticing in some degree, we mean the Stepped Pyramid of Sakkarah.

Now we find that the whole of the complicated net-work of chambers and

passages in that pyramid is cut out of the living rock beneath its

base, and that they are approached from without by subterranean

passages. The difficulty of deciding upon the position of the chambers

in advance, and of constructing the galleries through the various

slopes of the concentric masses which were to form the pyramid, was

thus avoided, and the builder was able to devote all his attention to

increasing the size of the monument, by multiplying those parallel

wedges disposed around a central core of which it is composed.

The observations made by Lepsius in the Stepped Pyramid and in one at

Abousir seem to prove that some pyramids were constructed in this

manner. In both of those buildings all necessary precautions were

taken to guard against the weaknesses of such a system. It is

difficult to understand how separate slices of masonry, placed one

upon the other in the fashion shown by the section which we have

borrowed from Perring's work (Fig. 134), could have had sufficient

adherence one to another. Lepsius made a breach in the southern face

of this pyramid, and the examination which he was thus enabled to

institute led him to suggest a rather more probable system of

construction. Upon the external sloping face of each step he found two

casing-walls, but these did not extend from the ground to the apex of

the monument, they reached no higher than the single step, so that

they found a true resisting base in the flat mass (see Fig. 143) upon

which they rested. Moreover, the architect provided for the lateral

tying of the different sections of his work, as Lepsius proves to us

by a partial section of the pyramid of Abousir. Two walls of fine

limestone blocks inclose a filling in of rubble, to which they are

bound by perpend stones which penetrate its substance. This method of

construction has its faults, but it is so rapid that its employment is

not to be wondered at.

[Illustration: FIG. 143.--Section of the Stepped Pyramid at Sakkarah;

from Lepsius.[194]]

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

[Illustration: FIG. 144.--Construction of the Pyramid of Abousir in

parallel layers; transverse section in perspective from the

geometrical section of Lepsius.[195]]

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

Do these parallel walls reach from top to bottom? A detail discovered

by Minutoli would seem to indicate that a base was first constructed

of sufficient extent for the whole monument. In the lower part of the

Stepped Pyramid Minutoli[196] shows concave courses of stone laid out

to the segment of a circle. These courses formed a kind of inverted

vault, abutting, at its edges, upon the rock. This curious

arrangement should be studied upon the spot by some competent

observer. As we do not know whether these curves exist upon each face

or not, or whether they meet each other and penetrate deeply into the

structure or not, we cannot say what their purpose may have been. But

however this may be, they afford another argument against the notion

that all the great pyramids were built round such a pyramidoid core as

that represented by our Fig. 136. We fear that this system must be

regarded merely as an intellectual plaything. The views of Lepsius as

to the enlargement of the pyramid by the addition of parallel slices

are worthy of more respect, and their truth seems to be demonstrated

in the case of some pyramids. But these all belong to that category of

monuments which have subterranean chambers only. We have yet to learn

that they were ever made use of in those pyramids which inclose the

mummy-chamber and its avenues in their own substance. Variety is

universal in that Egypt which has so often been described as the land

of uniformity and immobility--no two of the pyramids resemble each

other exactly.

[196] _Voyage au Temple de Jupiter Amman et dans la

Haute-Égypte._ (Berlin, 1824, 4to. and folio; Pl. xxvii. Fig.

3.)

[Illustration: FIG. 145.--Partial section of the Stepped Pyramid; from

Minutoli.]

We have yet to speak of two ancient monuments in which some would

recognize unfinished pyramids, namely, the Pyramid of Meidoum and the

Mastabat-el-Faraoun. We do not agree with this opinion, which has,

however, been lately put forward, so far, at least, as the former

monument is concerned.[197] These two sepulchres seem to us to

represent a different type of funerary architecture, a type created by

the ancient empire, and meriting special notice at our hands.

[197] BÆDEKER, _Egypt_, part i. 1878. The pages dealing with the

monumental remains were edited in great part by Professor

Ebers.

The monument which rises so conspicuously from the plain near the

village of Meidoum on the road to the Fayoum, is called by Arabs the

Haram-el-Kabbab, or "the false pyramid." It is, in fact, not so much a

pyramid, strictly speaking, as a mass formed of three square towers

with slightly inclined sides superimposed one upon the other, the

second being less in area than the first, and the third than the

second. The remains of a fourth story may be distinguished on the

summit of the third; some see in them the remains of a small pyramid;

others those of a cone. Judging from the names found in the

neighbouring mastabas, which were opened and examined by Mariette,

this is the tomb of Snefrou I., one of the greatest kings of the third

dynasty.[198]

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

[Illustration: FIG. 146.--The Pyramid of Meidoum; from Perring.]

The Mastabat-el-Faraoun or "Seat of Pharaoh," as the Arabs call it, is

a huge rectangular mass with sloping sides; it is about 66 feet high,

340 long, and 240 deep. It is oriented like the pyramids. It is a

royal tomb with internal arrangements which resemble those in the

pyramid of Mycerinus; the same sloping galleries, the same chambers,

the same great lateral niches. Upon a block lying at the foot of the

structure of which it had once formed a part, Mariette found a

quarry-mark traced in red ochre which seemed to him to form part of

the name of Ounas, one of the last kings of the fifth dynasty (Figs.

109 and 147).

[Illustration: FIG. 147.--The Mastabat-el-Faraoun; from Lepsius.]

Upon the platform of the Mastabat-el-Faraoun certain blocks are to be

found which, from their position, must have been bonding-stones. They

seem to hint, therefore, either that the structure was never finished,

or that it has lost its former crown. The latter hypothesis is the

more probable. Among the titles of people buried in the necropolis at

Sakkarah, we often come upon those of priests attached to the service

of some monument with a form similar to that represented by our Fig.

148. Who can say asks Mariette, that it is not the Mastabat-el-Faraoun

itself?[199]

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

[Illustration: FIG. 148.--Funerary monument represented in the

inscriptions.]

M. Mariette cites, in support of this conjecture, certain other

structures of a similar character, such as the large tomb situated

near the south-eastern angle of the second pyramid at Gizeh, and the

little monument which is called the Pyramid of Righa. From these he

concludes that the principles of the mastaba and the pyramid were

sometimes combined under the ancient empire. The royal tombs in the

Memphite region were not always pyramids, they were sometimes composed

of a mastaba and of one or more high square tower-like erections upon

it, the whole ending in one of those small pyramids which we call

pyramidions. This type allowed of numerous combinations, many of

which are to be discovered in the monuments of a later period.

The pyramid was employed as a terminal form throughout the whole of

Egyptian history. Both Thebes and Abydos offer us many examples of its

use, either in those sepulchral edifices which are still extant, or in

the representations of them upon bas-reliefs. But the pyramid properly

speaking was confined to the Memphite period. The princes of the

twelfth dynasty seem to have constructed some in the Fayoum. The

pyramids of Hawara and Illahoon correspond to those which, we are

told, were built in connection with the labyrinth and upon the islands

of Lake Mœris respectively. These, so far as we can judge, were the

last of the pyramids. There are, indeed, in the necropolis of Thebes,

upon the rocks of Drah-abou'l-neggah, a few pyramids of crude brick,

some of which seem to belong to Entefs of the eleventh dynasty; but

they are small and carelessly constructed.[200] When the art of Egypt

had arrived at its full development, such purely geometrical forms

would seem unworthy of its powers, as they did not allow of those

varied beauties of construction and decoration which its architects

had gradually mastered.

[200] LEPSIUS, _Denkmæler_, part i. pl. 94. RHIND, _Thebes, its

Tombs and their Tenants_, p. 45. MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la

Haute-Égypte_, vol. ii. p. 80.

The pyramids have never failed to impress the imaginations of those

foreign travellers who have visited Egypt. Their venerable antiquity;

the memories, partly fable, partly history, which were attached to

them by popular tradition; their colossal mass and the vast space of

ground which they covered, at the very gates of the capital and upon

the boundary between the desert and the cultivated land, all combined

to heighten their effect. Those nations who came under the living

influence of Egypt could hardly, then, escape from the desire to

imitate her pyramids in their own manner. We shall find the pyramidal

form employed to crown buildings in Phœnicia, Judæa, and elsewhere.

But the kingdom of Ethiopia, the southern annexe of Egypt and the

copyist of her civilization, was the chief reproducer of the Egyptian

pyramid as it was created by the kings of the ancient empire. Napata,

Meroe, and other places have pyramids which may be counted by dozens.

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

We shall not attempt any study of these remains. Like all the other

products of Ethiopian art, they are neither original nor interesting.

The people who inhabited the region which we now call by the names of

Nubia and the Soudan, had, indeed, reconquered their political

independence a thousand years before our era, but they were not gifted

by nature with power to assimilate the lessons of their former

masters. Even during the short period when the Ethiopian monarchs

reigned over a divided and weakened Egypt, Ethiopia remained the

clumsy pupil and imitator of the northern people. She never learnt to

give to her royal pyramids the air of grandeur which distinguishes the

great structures of Memphis. The Ethiopian pyramids were generally so

narrow and steep in slope that their whole character was different

from those of Egypt. In Egypt the base line was always greater than

the vertical height, upon the Upper Nile the proportions were

reversed.[201] The latter edifices thus lost some of that appearance

of indestructible solidity which is their natural expression. They

remind one at once of the obelisk and the pyramid. Add to this that an

unintelligent taste overspread them with ill-devised decoration. Thus

the upper part of their eastern faces, for they are oriented,

generally bears a false window surmounted by a cornice, about as

incongruous an ornament as could well be conceived, and one which

expresses nothing either to the eye or the mind.

[201] Thus the Great Pyramid was 482 feet high, while the length

of one side at the base is 764 feet. On the other hand, the

"third pyramid" at Gebel-Barkal (Napata) is 35 feet square at

the base and 60 feet high; the "fifth" is 39 feet square at the

base and nearly 50 feet high. Their proportions are not

constant, but the height of the Nubian pyramids is always far

greater than the length of one side at its base.

We shall, therefore, take no further notice of these more or less

ill-designed variations upon the type which was created by the

Egyptians in the early days of their civilization and fully understood

by themselves alone.

We must return, however, to that type for a moment, in order to show,

in as few words as possible, how far the art of working and fixing

stone had advanced even at the time of the first dynasties.

The Great Pyramid affords us a curious example of the elaborate

precautions taken against the violation of the royal tomb (Fig. 132).

At the point where the ascending gallery branched off from that

descending corridor which was the only entrance to the pyramid, the

mouth of the former was closed by a block of granite which exactly

fitted it. This block was so heavy and so well adjusted, that entrance

could only be obtained by cutting a passage through the surrounding

masonry, which, being of limestone, did not offer such an unyielding

resistance to the tools brought against it. Formerly the mouth of a

gallery, which seemed to be the continuation of the entrance corridor,

remained open, and, when followed to the end, led to an unfinished

chamber cut in the rock at about the level of the Nile. If this had

been finished the waters would perhaps have invaded it by

infiltration. This seems to have been intended by the constructor,

because Herodotus, who no doubt thought the work had been completed,

tells us of a subterranean conduit which admitted the waters of the

Nile.[202] The violaters of the tomb would believe the corpse to be in

this unsuspected reservoir, and would search no farther, or if they

guessed the deception and persevered till they found the entrance to

the ascending gallery, they would find another obstacle to their

success which would be likely to arrest them longer than the first.

The upper extremity of the great gallery, at which we suppose them

arrived, opens upon a small vestibule which would still separate them

from the sarcophagus-chamber itself. Four flat blocks of granite,

sliding in grooves, masked the entrance to the latter; Figs. 150 and

151 show the arrangement of these portcullis stones. The narrow

passage leading to the discharging chambers above the mummy-chamber,

would be likely to lead our supposed robbers into the upper part of

the pyramid. The entrance to this passage is high up in the end wall

of the grand gallery; it was left open. The unbidden visitors would

thus have explored the interior of the pyramid high and low without

result, and even supposing that they expended considerable time and

trouble in the search, they might easily have failed to penetrate into

the mummy-chamber itself.[203]

[202] HERODOTUS, ii. 124.

[203] DU BARRY DE MERVAL, _Études sur l'Architecture

Égyptienne_, pp. 129, 130.

[Illustration: FIG. 149.--Plan and elevation of a pyramid at Meroe:

from Prisse.]

[Illustration: FIG. 150.--Method of closing a gallery by a stone

portcullis; from the southern pyramid of Dashour. Drawn in perspective

from the plans and elevations of Perring.]

[Illustration: FIG. 151.--Portcullis closed.]

Another ingenious arrangement which demands our notice is that of

those discharging chambers to which we have already alluded. These

chambers were explored, not without trouble, by Colonel Howard Vyse

and J. L. Perring, who at once comprehended their use. The roof of the

sarcophagus-chamber consists of nine slabs of fine red granite, like

those which form the walls of the same chamber. They are 18 feet 9

inches long and their ends rest upon the side walls of the chamber. In

spite of their thickness and of the hard nature of the rock of which

they are composed, it was feared that they might give way under the

enormous weight of the masonry above, for the floor of the chamber is

still nearly 340 feet below the actual apex of the pyramid. This

danger was met in the fashion figured above.

[Illustration: FIG. 152.--Transverse section, in perspective, through

the sarcophagus-chamber and the discharging chambers; from the

elevation of Perring.]

As the structure grew above the roof of the mummy-chamber, five small

chambers were left, one above the other, to a total height of 56 feet,

which would relieve the flat ceiling of the mummy-chamber of the

weight to be placed above it. The first four of these chambers were of

similar shape and had flat roofs, but the roof of the fifth was formed

of sloping slabs, meeting in a ridge, and giving the chamber a

triangular section (see Fig. 152). Thanks to this succession of voids

immediately over the main chamber, and to the pointed arch which

surmounts them, the vertical pressure of the superstructure is

discharged from the chamber itself and distributed over the lateral

parts of the pyramid. These precautions have been quite effectual. Not

a stone has been stirred either by the inward thrust or by the

crushing of their substance; not a block is out of place but those

which have been disturbed by the violence of man; and, moreover, the

whole structure is so well bonded and so well balanced that even his

violent attacks have led neither to disruption nor settlement in the

apartment of Cheops or in the galleries which lead to it.[204]

[204] The discovery of these chambers was interesting from

another point of view. The name of Choufou was found continually

repeated upon the blocks of which they are formed. It was

written in red ochre, and, in places, it was upside down, thus

proving that it must have been written before the stones were

put in place. It cannot therefore have been traced after the

tradition which assigned the pyramid to Cheops, that is, to

Khoufou, arose; and so it affords conclusive corroboration of

the statements of Herodotus.

[Illustration: FIG. 153.--Longitudinal section through the lower

chambers; perspective after Perring.]

The glory of the workmen who built the Great Pyramid is the masonry of

the Grand Gallery, the gallery which opens immediately into the

vestibule of the King's Chamber. As this corridor is 28 feet high and

7 feet wide, the visitor can breathe more freely than in the low and

narrow passages which lead to it, and can examine at his ease the

beautiful blocks of limestone from Mokattam of which its polished

walls are composed. The faces of these blocks have been dressed with a

care which is not to be surpassed even by the most perfect examples of

Hellenic architecture on the Acropolis at Athens. The internal faces

must have been worked with equal care. No cement has been employed in

the fixing, and the adherence is so perfect that, in the words of

Abd-ul-Latif "not a needle, not even a hair, can be introduced into

the joints."[205] These joints are not even to be distinguished

without careful examination. The roof of this gallery is built with no

less care.[206] Each of the upper courses is slightly set off from the

one below it, so that in time they come so near together that the

opening may be closed by a single stone, or rather, row of stones.

These, being held between the two upper courses of a quasi vault, play

the part of key stones. This method of vaulting has been employed in

other parts of the pyramid, especially in what is called the _Queen's

Chamber_, which is almost directly beneath the king's, or

sarcophagus-chamber. The same care is conspicuous in those linings of

red granite which form the walls of the two chambers. Even the fine

limestone used for the walls of the Grand Gallery was not considered

rich and solid enough for the walls of the apartment in which the

prince in whose honour the whole of the colossal edifice was reared

would repose; and it was determined to use the richest and most costly

material of which the Egyptian architect could dispose.[207] The plain

sarcophagus, without either inscription or ornament, which is still in

the King's Chamber, is also of red granite.

[205] This is no exaggeration. JOMARD expresses himself to the

same effect almost in the same terms. (_Description de

l'Égypte_, vol. v. p. 628.)

[206] The extremity of this gallery appears on the right of Fig.

152.

[207] The presence of this lining in the "Queen's Chamber" also

led to its being dubbed a funerary chamber, for no trace of a

sarcophagus was found in it. If we had any reason to believe

that the pyramid was built in successive wedges, we should look

upon this as a provisional chamber, made before it was certain

that the pyramid would attain its present dimensions. As the

work went on, it would be decided that another, larger, and

better defended chamber should be built. In this case the first

may never have been used, and may always have been as empty as

it is now.

The external casing of the pyramid has entirely disappeared, as we

have already said. On account of their moderate size the stones of

which it was composed would seem to be especially well fitted for use

in building those great cities which, after the collapse of the

ancient civilization, succeeded each other, under different names, in

the neighbourhood of the Memphite necropolis. This casing seems to

have been made of more than one kind of stone, if we may believe an

ancient text which has been interpreted by Letronne with the skill and

sagacity of which he has given so many proofs.[208]

[208] These observations are to be found in one of the early

works of Letronne. Their presence is in no way hinted at by the

title, which is: _Recherches Géographiques et Critiques sur le

Livre 'De mensura orbis terræ'_ (8vo. 1844). The treatise, Περὶ

τῶν ἑπτὰ θεαμάτων, may have been written either by Philo of

Heraclea or Philo of Byzantium. They both belonged to the third

century before our era, but the bombastic style and numerous

errors incline us to believe that the little work must have been

from the pen of some unknown rhetorician of a later date.

The author, named Philo, of a treatise upon the Seven Wonders of the

World, tells us that the Egyptians employed upon this work "the most

brilliant and varied stones, which were carefully fixed." He mentions

as contributing to the splendid result white marble, basalt, porphyry,

and a green breccia from Arabia, which must have been what is called

_verde antique_. And as for his white marble, it must have been the

white limestone from Mokattam, which, in its best strata, is almost as

white and fine in grain as marble. Marble, properly speaking, was only

introduced into Egypt by the Greeks, and that in very small

quantities, for the use of sculptors. Philo says nothing of granite,

but its use was so general that it must have found a place in the

scheme of decoration.[209]

[209] These are the words of Philo, which we have translated

rather freely:-- Ποικίλαι δὲ καὶ πορφυραὶ λίθων φύσεις ἀλλήλαις

ἐπιδεδόμεναι, καὶ τὰ μέν ἐστιν ἡ πέτρα λευκὴ καὶ μαρμαρίτης· τῇ

δὲ Αἰθιοπικὴ καὶ μέλαινα καὶ μετὰ ταύτην ὁ καλούμενος αἱματίτης

λιθος· εἶτα ποικίλος καὶ διάχλωρος ἀπὸ τῆς Ἀραβίας κεκομισμένος,

p. 2,259, A.

The various kinds of stone must have been so placed as to form zones,

and perhaps patterns, of different colours, white, red, black, rose,

green, and so on. To form an idea of the effect we must think of

Giotto's campanile at Florence and various other Italian buildings of

the same kind.

It has been questioned whether the testimony of this Philo is to be

depended upon, as few of those who have busied themselves with the

pyramids seem to have laid much stress upon it. It seems to us to be

worthy of great respect. We do not know when Philo lived, but we know

that the casing of the pyramid was still in place, at least in part,

during the Middle Ages, because in the time of Abd-ul-Latif it had

almost its original height, and its ascent was still very

difficult.[210] On the other hand we have proofs that, although the

author of the Seven Wonders of the World may have written more in the

tone of a rhetorician than of an eyewitness of the wonders which he

describes, he took some of his information from excellent sources. In

fact with the exception of Pliny, he is the only ancient writer who

gives us an approximately true statement of the length of the base

line of Cheops' Pyramid. While the measurements of other writers are

very far from accurate, the figure given by Philo is only 16 feet 6

inches in excess of the truth. The idea of decorating such an expanse

of surface with varied colour was quite in accordance with Egyptian

taste. They loved polychromatic ornaments; they covered every

available surface with the gayest hues; they delighted in the

juxtaposition of the most brilliant tones. They could hardly think of

covering such an immense surface with paint, and as it was necessary,

in any case, to cover it with a smooth casing, it would be no more

difficult to employ many kinds of stone than one. They would thus

obtain a kind of gigantic mosaic which may perhaps have been

heightened in effect by the use of gold. We know that the pyramidion

of an obelisk was frequently gilded, and it is probable enough that

similar means were sometimes taken, in the case of the more

magnificent and carefully finished pyramids, to draw the eye to their

topmost stone and thus to add to the impression made by their height.

No more fitting adornment could be imagined for the sharp peak of a

pyramid rising nearly five hundred feet into the pure blue of an

Egyptian sky.

[210] According to the calculations of Letronne, the Great

Pyramid must have been 482 feet high when it was complete. In

the time of Diodorus it was slightly over 480 feet; in that of

Abd-ul-Latif it measured 477 feet 3 inches. In 1795 it was only

456 feet and a few inches, so that it lost about 24 feet in the

course of eighteen centuries. This lowering of the summit was

mainly caused by the destruction and removal of the outer

casing. Since it disappeared the Arabs have been in the habit of

loosening the stones on the top and launching them down the

sides for the amusement of travellers; the smooth casing alone

could prevent such outrage as this. The common idea that the

Pyramid of Cheops is the highest building in the world is

erroneous. Even if we take its height when complete, it is

surpassed by at least two modern buildings, as may be seen by

the following table of the most lofty buildings now existing:--

Feet.

Spires of Cologne Cathedral 533

Flèche of the Cathedral at Rouen 500

Spire of St. Nicholas, Hamburg 480

Dome of St. Peter's, Rome 476

Spire of Strasbourg Cathedral 473

Pyramid of Cheops 456

Spire of St. Stephen's, Vienna 450

Spire of St. Martin's, Landshut 443

Spire of the Cathedral of Freiburg, Breisgau 417

Spire of Antwerp Cathedral, not including the cross 411

Spire of Salisbury Cathedral 404

Dome of Cathedral at Florence 396

Dome of St. Paul's, London 371

Flèche of Milan Cathedral 363

Tower of Magdeburg Cathedral 344

Victoria Tower, Westminster 336

Rathhaus Tower, Berlin 293

Spire of Trinity Church, New York 287

Pantheon, Paris 266

Towers of Nôtre Dame, Paris 226

But this is a conjecture which can never be verified. Even if the

topmost stone were still in place upon any of the pyramids it would,

after all these ages, have lost all traces of gilding; but the whole

of those edifices have their apex more or less truncated. Even before

our era, Diodorus[211] found the Great Pyramid crowned by a plateau

six cubits square.

[211] DIODORUS, i. 63, 64.

It has sometimes been supposed that the pyramids, when complete, were

terminated by such a plateau as that described by Diodorus, and that

it bore a statue of the king whose mummy rested below. This hypothesis

is founded upon the passage of Herodotus which treats of the Lake

Mœris. "There are," he says, "in the middle of the lake, two

pyramids, each fifty fathoms high (309 feet) ... each of them is

surmounted by a colossal stone statue seated upon a throne."[212]

Herodotus insists so often upon having seen the Labyrinth and Lake

Mœris with his own eyes, that we cannot affect to doubt his

assertions; we shall therefore confine ourselves to a few observations

upon them.

[212] HERODOTUS, ii. 49.

In the descriptions which he gives of the three great pyramids, and

among his comments upon the methods employed in their construction,

Herodotus does not say a word which can be construed into the most

distant allusion to statues upon their summits. If he had seen colossi

perched upon those lofty pedestals, or if he had heard from his

dragomans--whose exaggerations he has elsewhere so naïvely

reproduced--that they had formerly existed, would he not have made

some allusion to them in that passage, at least, where he explains how

they raised such huge stones to so great a height, and describes the

successive stages in the construction of a pyramid?[213] Would he not

have found room, in the elaborate antithetical passage in which he

contrasts the virtues of Mycerinus with the imaginary wickedness of

Cheops and Chephren, for moral and critical reflections called up by

the sight of their statues upon their respective pyramids; still more

if one of them had happened to be missing? Would he not have

attempted, through some popular tradition, to have accounted for the

presence of one statue and the absence of another? It is evident,

therefore, that Herodotus neither saw any statues upon the Pyramids of

Memphis nor had he any reason to suppose those structures had ever

been crowned in such a fashion. He lays stress upon the seated statues

of the pyramids in Lake Mœris because they were new to him, because

he had seen nothing of the same kind in the neighbourhood of the

ancient capital.

[213] M. MASPERO has given in the _Annuaire de l' Association

pour l'Encouragement des Études Grecques_ and elsewhere, several

extracts from a commentary upon the second book of Herodotus,

which we should like to see published in its entirety. We may

point out more particularly his remarks upon the text of the

Greek historian in the matter of the 1,600 talents of silver

which, he says, was the value of the onions, radishes, and

garlic consumed by the workmen employed upon the Great Pyramid

(ii. 125). He has no difficulty in showing that Herodotus made a

mistake, for which he gives an ingenious and probable

explanation. (_Annuaire de 1875_, p. 16.)

Unless we are very much mistaken, this superposition of a colossus

upon a pyramid was a novelty devised by the architects of the middle

empire, when, under the Ousourtesens and Amenemhats, it was proposed

to revive the pyramidal form of tomb with which the early Pharaohs had

obtained such imposing results. Although most conservative on the

whole, the art of Egypt attempted, at each period of renascence, to

introduce new combinations into the details, at least, of the ancient

forms, and this was one of the number.

Another innovation of the same kind is to be found in the decoration

which covered, again according to Herodotus,[214] another pyramid

constructed at about the same time, namely, that which formed one side

of the Labyrinth. "It had," says the historian, "forty fathoms, and it

was sculptured with animals of large size. The entrance was by a

subterranean passage." From the Greek word used (ἐγγέγλυπται) we see

that Herodotus means that the faces, or perhaps only the principal

face, of this pyramid about two hundred and fifty feet high, were

covered with bas-reliefs. There is in Egypt no other example of a

pyramid so decorated. The architectural works of this period have

almost entirely vanished, but we may, perhaps, look upon it as one of

their characteristics that the bareness which they had inherited from

the early creators of Egyptian art, was relieved and adorned by the

intervention of the sculptor.

[214] HERODOTUS, ii. 148. DIODORUS (l. 89) speaks of the same

and STRABO, who also appears to have seen it, asserts its

funerary character (p. 1165, C). He says it was four plethra

(393 feet) both in width and height. This last dimension is

obviously exaggerated, because in all the Egyptian pyramids that

are known to us the shortest diameter of the base is far in

excess of the height.

It was the desire for such ornament that made them convert their

pyramids into gigantic pedestals for statues. According to all the

analogies afforded by later ages, these statues must have been those

of the princes who built the pyramids in question. We have no reason

to suppose that any of the kings of the first six dynasties erected

any colossal figures like those which were set up in such numbers by

the Theban dynasties; with the single exception of the Sphinx, none of

the statues left to us by the ancient empire greatly exceed the

natural size. But it is evident that such figures as would be fit to

crown the pyramids of Cheops and Chephren would have to be of

extravagant size even if no more than their general outlines were to

be visible from below. Seen from a point nearly 500 feet below, and in

consequence of the inclination of the pyramid faces, at some

considerable distance laterally, even a statue fifty feet high, like

the two colossi of Amenophis III. on the plain of Thebes, would appear

small enough to a spectator. Its artistic results would be very

slender, and yet its erection would require prodigious mechanical

efforts. It would have required all the multitudes of labourers, the

patience, and the time, which the Egyptians alone dared to expend upon

their monuments. But perhaps it may be said that these colossi were

statues built-up of comparatively small stones. To this we must answer

that every colossus as yet discovered in Egypt is a monolith. A

statue, of whatever size, made in different pieces would form an

exception to the whole practice of Egyptian sculpture as we know it.

Until such works are proved to exist we decline to believe in them.

The problem was a much simpler one in the cases of the pyramids in

Lake Mœris. They were not nearly so lofty. According to Herodotus

they were about 309 feet high, doubtless including their statues.

Situated as they were in the middle of the lake, Herodotus could not

himself have measured them, and his statement that they sank as far

below the level of the water as they rose above it is an obvious

exaggeration. When the bed of the lake was formed, two masses of rock

were no doubt reserved, as in the cases of the other pyramids, to form

the core of the projected edifices, and therefore it is likely enough

that the lowest courses of the constructions themselves dipped but

little below the surface of the lake.[215] In his amazement at the

scale upon which the Egyptian buildings were conceived, Herodotus has

too often attributed excessive dimensions to them; thus he says that

the height of the Great Pyramid was eight plethra, or about 820 feet,

nearly 340 feet in excess of the truth. It is therefore probable that

the figures which he gives for the lake pyramids are also exaggerated.

These pyramids were, on account of their comparatively modest

dimensions, much better adapted to the ideas of the Ousourtesens and

Amenemhats than the gigantic piles of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus.

[215] If the passage in which Herodotus makes the statement here

referred to be taken in connection with the remarks of Diodorus,

a probable explanation of the old historian's assertion may be

arrived at. Diodorus says that the king ὀρύττων τάυτην (λίμνην

sub.) κατέλιπεν ἐν μέσῃ τόπον, ἐν ᾧ τάφον ᾠκοδόμησε καὶ δύο

πυραμίδας, τὴν μὲν ἑαυτοῦ, τὴν δὲ τῆς γυναικός, σταδιαίας τὸ

ὕψος. By this it would appear that, in excavating the bed, or a

part of the bed, of the famous lake, a mass of earth was left in

order to bear future witness to the depth of the excavation and

the general magnitude of the work. This mass would probably be

reveted with stone, and, in order that even when surrounded and

almost hidden by water, its significance should not be lost, the

pyramids raised upon it were made exactly equal to it in

height.--ED.

Finally there is not a text to be found, outside the pages of

Herodotus, which mentions pyramids surmounted by statues, and upon

none of those monuments which in one way or another bear

representations of the pyramids are they shown in any other way than

with pointed summits. Thus do we find them in the papyri, upon those

steles of the Memphite necropolis which commemorate the priests

devoted to their service, and in those tombs at Memphis, Abydos, and

Thebes where the pyramid, placed upon rectangular figures of various

heights, is used as a terminal element. Neither in the small number of

pyramids which have come down to us comparatively intact, nor in those

which are represented in reliefs, is there the smallest sign of a

truncated summit or of any platform which could by any possibility

have borne a statue.

[Illustration: FIG. 154.--Pyramidion: Louvre.]

We may say the same of those small pyramidions which have been found

in such great numbers in tombs and which fill our museums. It is well

known that these are votive offerings in connection with the worship

of the sun. "The principal figure," says M. de Rougé, "is generally

shown in a posture of adoration, with his face turned to the sun. On

his left hand is the invocation to the rising, and on his right that

to the setting sun. These arrangements are modified in various ways,

but they are always upon the same genera lines as the orientation of

the tombs themselves."[216] These minute pyramids also end in a point

whether they be of basalt, granite, or calcareous stone, and it is

natural that we should look upon them as the faithful reproductions

upon a small scale of those great funerary monuments which furnished

a type, consecrated by the most venerable of the national traditions,

of that structure facing the four cardinal points which we may call

the normal Egyptian tomb.

[216] _Notice sommaire des Monuments Égyptiens exposés dans les

Galeries du Louvre_ (4th edition, 1865, p. 56).

We may believe, then, that the pyramid of the ancient empire

terminated in a pyramidion. This apex once fixed in place, the workmen

charged with the final completion of the edifice worked downwards from

one course to another, covering the immense steps which each face

displayed five or six thousand years ago and now displays again, with

the final casing which protected them for so many centuries. Even

Herodotus saw that this must have been the method of completion.[217]

Any other way of proceeding would have been too dangerous after the

slope of the sides had been made smooth and continuous by the

completion of the casing of polished granite. Workmen could only have

kept their footing upon such a surface, with its 51 or 52 degrees of

elevation, by means of a complicated arrangement of ropes and ladders.

And again, points of resistance could not have been obtained for the

elevation of the materials to ever increasing heights without cutting

or leaving holes in the casing, which would afterwards have to be

filled up. These difficulties would have unnecessarily complicated an

operation which was a simple matter when begun from the top. The

masons could then make use of the steps for their own locomotion, and

when the stones were too large to be lifted from hand to hand, nothing

could be easier than to fix windlasses by which the largest blocks

could be raised with facility.

[217] Ἐξεποιήθη δ' ὦν τὰ ἀνώτατα αὐτῆς πρῶτα, μετὰ δὲ τὰ ἑπόμενα

τούτων ἐξεποίευν ... (ii. 125).

As the workmen approached the base they left above them an ever

increasing extent of polished surface, sloping at such an angle that

no foot could rest upon it, and forming the only safeguard against the

degradation of the pyramid by removing its copestone or its violation

by breaking into the passages which led to the mummy-chamber. The

casing gave to the pyramid those continuous lines which were necessary

to make its beauty complete, and, if the materials employed were

varied in the way suggested, it furnished colour effects which had

their beauty also. But, above all, it was a protection, a defensive

armour. So long as the pyramid preserved its cuirass intact, it was

difficult for those who meditated violence to know where to begin

their attack. But this obstacle once pierced it was comparatively easy

to learn all the secrets of the building. The inner mass was much less

carefully built than the casing; the joints were comparatively open,

and the stones were soft and easily cut. Hence we see that some

pyramids, especially those which were built of bricks, have been

reduced by the action of time into heaps of _débris_, in which the

pyramidal form is hardly to be recognised.

Philo, who seems to be so well informed, tells us with what extreme

care the casing was put in place. "The whole work," he says, "is so

well adjusted, and so thoroughly polished, that the whole envelope

seems but one block of stone."[218] The pyramid of Cheops has been

entirely despoiled of its outer covering, and it is to that of

Mycerinus that we must now turn if we wish to have some idea of the

care with which the work was done. The lower part of this pyramid is

still covered with long blocks of the finest granite, fixed and

polished in the most perfect manner. At the foot of the Great Pyramid

several blocks have been found which seem to have formed part of the

casing of that edifice.[219] They are trapezoidal in form, and they

show, as Letronne[220] long ago remarked, that the casing stones were

placed one upon another, and adjusted by their external faces. They

were not, as was at first supposed, sunk into the upper face of the

course below by mortices which would correspond to the trench in the

living rock in which the first course was fixed. As to whether the

external faces of these blocks were dressed to the required angle

before they left the quarry, or whether the work were done after they

were in place we cannot say with any certainty, but it is most likely

that the methods of proceeding changed with the progress of time and

the succession of architects. In such a matter we should find, if we

entered into details, diversity similar to that which we have already

shown to have characterized the forms of the pyramids, their internal

arrangements, and the materials of which they were composed.

[218] Σύναρμον δὲ καὶ κατεξεσμένον τὸ πᾶν ἔργον, ὥστε δοκεῖν

ὅλου τοῦ κατασκευάσματος μίαν εἶναι πέτρας συμφυίαν, p. 2,259, A.

So, too, the elder Pliny, though with rather less precision:

"Est autem saxo naturali elaborata et lubrica" (_Nat. Hist._

xxxvi. 12).

[219] According to Jomard, the casing stones of the Great

Pyramid were "a compact grey limestone, harder and more

homogeneous than those of the body of the building"

(_Description de l'Égypte_, t. v. p. 640); but according to

Philo, this casing was formed, as we have already said, of

various materials, so we need feel no surprise if blocks of

granite or other rock are shown to have formed part of it.

[220] _Journal des Savants_, August, 1841.

Thus some triangular prisms of granite have been found at the foot of

the pyramid of Chephren, which seem to have formed part of its lower

casing.[221] Such a section seems, upon paper, the simplest that could

be adopted for the filling in of the angle between two of the steps,

but it is far inferior in solidity to the trapezoidal section. The

prisms had no alliance one with another; they had to depend for their

security entirely upon their adherence to the faces of the graded

core, so that they could easily be carried off, or become dislocated

from natural causes. This system, unlike the first described, did not

give a homogeneous envelope with a thickness of its own, and partly

independent of the monument which it protected.[222]

[221] BÆDEKER, _Egypt_, part i. p. 338 (ed. of 1878). Herodotus

(ii. 127) says that the first course of the Great Pyramid was

built of a parti-coloured Ethiopian stone (ὑποδείμας τὸν πρῶτον

δόμον λίθου Αἰθιοπικοῦ ποικίλου). By Ethiopian stone we must

understand, as several illustrations prove, the granite of

Syene. The Greek historian seems to have thought that the whole

of the first course, throughout the thickness of the pyramid,

was of this stone. His mistake was a natural one. In his time

the pyramid was in a good state of preservation, and he never

thought of asking whether or no the core was of the same

material as the outer case.

[222] On the other hand, these awkwardly shaped prisms offered

less inducement to those who looked upon the pyramids as open

quarries than the easily squared blocks of Cheops, while their

position in the angles of the internal masonry enabled them to

keep their places independently of the lower courses of the

casing.--ED.

[Illustration: FIG. 155.--The casing of the pyramids; drawn in

perspective from the elevation of Perring.]

The casing of the Second Pyramid, moreover, does not seem to have been

carried out on the same principle from top to bottom. The upper part,

which still remains in place, is composed of a hard cement formed of

chalk, gypsum, and pieces of burnt brick. They may have wished to

obtain the parti-coloured effect of which Philo speaks, by making

simultaneous use of granite and concrete, and it is quite possible

that yet other materials entered into the composition of the

casing.[223]

[223] The determination to use a concrete such as that described

affords a good reason for the prismatic shape of the granite

blocks used in the lower courses. It would evidently be easy

enough to cover the pyramid with a coat of cement--working

downwards--if its surface did not greatly overpass the salient

angles of the steps, while the difficulty would be enormously

increased if the coat were to have a considerable thickness of

its own independently of the pyramid, like the casing shown in

Fig. 155.--ED.

In other pyramids we find different combinations again. In the

double-sloped erection at Dashour, the courses of casing stones are

vertical instead of horizontal,[224] while a brick pyramid--the most

northern--in the same locality, was covered with slabs of limestone,

fixed, no doubt, with mortar.

[224] _Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. v. p. 7.

Sometimes we find the revetment in a state of semi-completion; the

blocks in place, and cut to the proper angle, but without their final

polish. Such is the case with the Second Pyramid, upon which blocks of

granite are to be found which are still rough in face. It would seem

that the patience required for the minute completion of such a

terribly long and tedious piece of work was not forthcoming. But we

ought in fact to be surprised, not so much at the unfinished state of

a pyramid here and there, but rather that they should ever have been

completed.

The variety which is so conspicuous in the architectural construction

of the pyramids is also to be found in their epigraphy. The first

explorers of the Pyramids of Gizeh were surprised at the absence of

all inscriptions beyond the masons' marks; the silence of those

enormous structures seemed amazing; but soon Colonel Vyse discovered

in the pyramid of Mycerinus the sarcophagus of that king, and the

mummy case, now in the British Museum, which bears an inscription of

some length. Recent discoveries, too, of which full details are yet

wanting, prove that some of the pyramids contained long texts, which

contain the names of kings and other information which is of great

importance to the historian of the Egyptian religion. In 1879 and

1880, Mariette caused three pyramids at Sakkarah to be opened, which

until then had remained unexplored. One of them was silent and empty,

but in the others the inscriptions and sarcophagi of two kings of the

sixth dynasty, Papi and his son Merenzi, were found. Fragments of a

Ritual of the Dead were recognized among them. Pleasure at this

discovery, the last which he was destined to make in the soil of

Egypt, brightened the last days of Mariette.[225]

[225] G. CHARMES, in the _Journal des Débats_, February 8,

1881.

In March 1881, M. Maspero, the successor of M. Mariette as director of

the excavations, opened a pyramid belonging to a different group,

which turned out to be the tomb of Ounas, the last Pharaoh of the

fifth dynasty. In this pyramid, portcullis stones similar to those

which have already been figured were found. When these obstacles were

passed "the continuation of the passage was found, the first part of

polished granite, the second of the close-grained limestone of Tourah.

The side walls are covered with fine hieroglyphs painted green, the

roof sprinkled with stars of the same hue. The passage finally opens

into a chamber half filled with débris, upon the walls of which the

inscription is continued.... The mummy-chamber, like that which

precedes it, is covered with hieroglyphs, with the exception of the

wall opposite to the entrance. This wall is of the finest alabaster,

and is effectively decorated with painted ornaments. The sarcophagus

is of black basalt, without inscription.... The text of the

inscription which covers the walls is almost identical with that in

the tomb of Papi, but it has the advantage of being complete. M.

Maspero, whom Mariette had previously entrusted with taking squeezes

from the inscription in the tomb of Papi, recognised certain formulæ

and phrases which had already struck him in another place.... These

texts make up a composition analogous to one which covers the walls of

certain little known Theban tombs. Without presenting any very

considerable difficulties, they demand careful examination from those

who would comprehend their meaning.

"M. Maspero, encouraged by this first success, ordered a second

pyramid to be opened. He wished to verify, upon the spot, a theory

which he had long upheld in spite of the adverse opinions of the

majority of egyptologists. It is well known that between the sixth and

the tenth dynasties a great gap exists, so far as monumental remains

are concerned. M. Maspero has always believed that there is no such

gap. He has observed that the pyramids are, so to speak, grouped

chronologically from north to south; those of the fourth dynasty at

Gizeh, those of the fifth at Abooseer, those of the twelfth in the

Fayoum. The excavations of Mariette as well as his own showed the

tombs of the fifth and sixth dynasties to have been at Sakkarah. Hence

M. Maspero thinks that the pyramids erected by the sovereigns of the

seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth dynasties are those between Sakkarah

and the Fayoum. The future will show whether he is right or wrong. In

any case science will profit by the new excavations which he is about

to undertake."[226]

[226] _Moniteur Égyptien_, March 15, 1881.

When cross-examined by such questioners as M. Maspero the pyramids

will tell us much. Hitherto they have attracted but little of that

examination which discovers the most curious secrets, but their size

and the beauty of their masonry will ever make the three great

pyramids of Gizeh the most striking objects to the traveller and to

the historian of art.

Considering their age, these three pyramids are wonderfully well

preserved. In their presence, even in their actual state of partial

ruin, the oriental hyperbolism of Abd-ul-Latif, an Arab writer of the

thirteenth century, seems no more than natural. "All things fear

Time," he cries, "but Time fears the Pyramids!" And yet time has done

its work during the last few hundreds of years. The summits of the

great structures have been slightly lowered; the gaping breaches in

their flanks have been gradually widened; and although in spite of

their stripped flanks and open wounds they still rear their heads

proudly into the Egyptian sky, all those accessory structures which

surrounded them, and fulfilled their own well-defined offices in the

general monumental _ensemble_, have either been destroyed by the

violence of man or engulfed by the encroaching sand. Where, for

example, are those wide and substantial causeways, whose large and

carefully adjusted blocks excited the wonder of Herodotus.[227] After

having afforded an unyielding roadway for the transport of so many

heavy materials, they formed truly regal avenues by which the funeral

processions of the Egyptians reached the centre of the necropolis as

long as their civilization lasted. In the plain they were above the

level of the highest inundations, and their gentle slope gave easy

access to the western plateau. The great Sphinx, the image of

Harmachis, or the Rising Sun, was placed at the threshold of the

plateau. Immovable among the dead of the vast cemetery, he personified

the idea of the resurrection, of that eternal life which, like the

morning sun, is ever destined to triumph over darkness and death. His

head alone now rises above the sand, but in the days of Herodotus his

vast bulk, cut from a rock nearly 70 feet high, was well calculated to

prepare the eye of the traveller for the still more colossal masses of

the pyramids. His features have now been disfigured by all kinds of

outrage, but in the thirteenth century, although even then he had been

mutilated, Abd-ul-Latif was able to admire his serene smile, his head

enframed in a richly carved wig which added to its size and dignity.

His body was never more than roughly blocked out, but a painted

decoration, of which traces may still be found, compensated in some

degree for the deficiencies in the modelling.

[227] The causeway which led to the Pyramid of Cheops still

exists for some 400 yards of its length; here and there it rises

as much as eighty-six feet above the surface of the plateau. A

similar causeway is to be distinguished on the eastern side of

the Third Pyramid. At Abou-Roash, at Abousir, and elsewhere,

similar remains are to be found.

[Illustration: FIG. 156.--Plan of the Pyramids of Gizeh and of that

part of the necropolis which immediately surrounds them.]

[Illustration: FIG. 157.--The Sphinx.]

The soil around each pyramid was carefully levelled and paved with

dressed limestone slabs. Upon this pavement rested the foundations of

the stylobate surrounding the pyramid. Both stylobate and pavement are

now in almost every case concealed by sand and _débris_, but at the

pyramid of Chephren, which is less banked up than the others, traces

of them have been proved to exist. They added somewhat to the imposing

effect of those monuments upon the eye, and gave additional definition

to their bases.[228] The area thus paved was inclosed with a wall,

which had an opening towards the east, in front of which the temple,

or funerary chapel of the pyramid, was raised. The latter, no doubt,

was magnificently decorated. At the foot of the mountains of stone

under which reposed the ashes of the Pharaohs themselves, smaller

pyramids were raised for their wives and children. Of these some half

dozen still exist upon the plateau of Gizeh. One of them has been

recognized as the tomb of that daughter of Cheops, about whom

Herodotus tells one of those absurd stories invented by the Egyptians

of the decadence, with which his dragomans took such delight in

imposing upon his simple faith.[229] Around the space which was thus

consecrated to the adoration of the dead monarch, the long rows of

mastabas stretched away for miles through the vast necropolis.

[228] _Description de l'Égypte_, vol. v. p. 643. See also in the

plates, _Antiquités_, vol. v. Pl. xvi. Fig. 2. According to

Jomard, the surbase of the second pyramid was in two parts--a

stylobate, 10 feet high and 5 feet thick, and a plinth about 3

feet high.

[229] HERODOTUS, ii. 126.

[Illustration: FIG. 158.--Pyramid with its inclosure, Abousir; from

Perring.]

The great ones of Egypt, all those who had been near the Pharaoh and

had received some of his reflected glory, grouped their tombs as

closely as possible about his. Distributed thus by reigns, the private

tombs were erected in close juxtaposition one with another, each being

provided with a stele, or sepulchral tablet upon which the name of the

deceased was inscribed, most of them being adorned with painted

bas-reliefs, and a few with statues placed upon their façades. Upon

the causeways which connected Memphis with the necropolis, upon the

esplanades erected by the Pharaohs to the memory and for the adoration

of their ancestors, in the countless streets, lanes, and blind alleys

which gave access to the private tombs, advanced endless processions

of mourners, driving before them the bleating and lowing victims for

the funeral rites. Priests in white linen, friends and relations of

the dead with their hands full of fruit and flowers, flitted hither

and thither. On the days appointed for the commemoration of the dead,

all this must have afforded a curiously animated scene. The city of

the dead had its peculiar life, we might almost say its festivals,

like that of the living. But amid the coming and going, amid all the

bustle of the Egyptian _jour des morts_, it was the giant forms of

the pyramids, with their polished slopes[230] and their long shadows

turning with the sun, that gave the scene a peculiar solemnity and a

character of its own. Morning and evening this shadow passed over

hundreds of tombs, and thus, in a fashion, symbolized the royal

dignity and the almost superhuman majesty of the kingly office.

[230] Jomard remarks that the upper part of the second pyramid

still reflects the rays of the sun. "It still possesses," he

says, "a portion of its polished casing, which reflects the rays

of the sun and declares its identity to people at a vast

distance."

Of all this harmonious conception but a few fragments remain. The

necropolis is almost as empty and deserted as the desert which it

adjoins. The silence is only broken by the cry of the jackal, by the

footsteps of a few casual visitors hurrying along its deserted

avenues, and by the harsh voices of the Bedouins who have taken

possession of the Pyramid of Cheops, and, in their own fashion, do its

honours to the curious visitor. But despoiled though they be of their

ornaments and of their proper surroundings, the pyramids are yet among

those monuments of the world which are sure to impress all who possess

sensibility or powers of reflection. In a remarkable passage in the

_Description générale de Memphis et des Pyramides_, Jomard has well

defined the effect which they produce upon the traveller and the

impressions which they leave behind: "The general effect produced by

the pyramids is very curious. Their summits, when seen from a

distance, look like those of high mountains standing out against the

sky. As we approach them this effect diminishes; but when we arrive

within a very short distance of their sides a totally different

impression succeeds; we begin to be amazed, to be oppressed, almost to

be stupefied by their size. When quite close to them their summits and

angles can no longer be seen. The wonder which they cause is not like

that caused by a great work of art. It is the sense of their simple

grandeur of form and of the disproportion between the individual power

and stature of man and these colossal creations of his hands. The eye

can hardly embrace them, nor the imagination grasp their mass. We then

begin to form some idea of the prodigious quantity of dressed stone

which goes to make up their height. We see hundreds of stones each

containing two hundred cubic feet and weighing some thirty tons, and

thousands of others which are but little less. We touch them with our

hands and endeavour to realize the power which must have been

required to quarry, dress, carry, and fix such a number of colossal

blocks, how many men must have been employed on the work, what

machines they used, and how many years it must have taken; and the

less we are able to understand all these things, the greater is our

admiration for the patience and power which overcame such

obstacles."[231]

[231] _Description de l'Égypte, Antiquités_, vol. v. p. 597.

§ 3. _The Tomb under the Middle Empire._

We have shown how the mastaba, that is to say, the most ancient form

of tomb in the necropolis of Memphis, was an expression, both in

arrangement and in decoration, of the ideas of the Egyptians as to a

future life. In literature and in art the works created by a people in

its infancy, or at least in its youth, are the most interesting to the

historian, because they are the results of the sincere and unfettered

expansion of vital forces; this is especially the case when there is

no possibility of a desire to imitate foreign models. The mastaba

deserved therefore to be very carefully studied. No other race has

given birth in its funerary architecture, to a type so pure, a type

which may be explained in every detail by a master-idea at once

original and well defined. We therefore dwelt upon it at some length

and described it with the care which it demanded. We found it again in

the pyramids, the royal tombs of the Ancient Empire, which though

sensibly modified by the great change in proportion, by the colossal

dimensions which the pride of the Pharaohs gave to one part of their

tomb, are yet penetrated by the same spirit. We have yet to follow the

development of the same idea through the later years of Egyptian

civilization, and in localities more or less removed from that in

which she gave her first tokens of power. In one place we shall find

it modified by the nature of the soil to which the corpse had to be

committed, in another by the inevitable progress of ideas, by the

development of art, and by the caprices of fashion, which was no more

stationary in Egypt than elsewhere.

* * * * *

The most important necropolis of the First Theban Empire was that of

Abydos in Upper Egypt, upon the left bank of the river. The great

number of sepultures which took place in it, from the first years of

the monarchy until the end of the ancient civilization, is to be

explained by the peculiarly sacred character of the city of Abydos,

and by the great popularity, from one end of the Nile valley to the

other, of the myths which centred in it. According to the Egyptian

belief, the opening through which the setting sun sank into the bowels

of the earth for its nightly transit, was situated to the west of

Abydos. We know how the Egyptian intellect had established an analogy

between the career of the sun and that of man; we may therefore

conclude that in choosing a final resting-place as near as possible to

the spot where the great luminary seemed to make its nightly plunge,

they believed they were making more completely sure of triumphing,

like him, over darkness and death.

The sun is not extinguished, he is but hidden for a moment from the

eyes of man. This sun of the infernal regions is Osiris, who, of all

the Egyptian gods, was most universally adored. Although many Egyptian

towns could show tombs in which the members of Osiris, which had been

dispersed by Set, were re-united by Isis and Nephthys, none of them

were so famous, or the object of such deep devotion, as that at

Abydos. It was, if we may be permitted to use such a phrase, the _Holy

Sepulchre of Egypt_. As, in the early centuries of Christianity, the

faithful laid great stress upon burial in the neighbourhood of some

holy martyr, "The richest and most influential Egyptians," says a well

informed Greek writer, "were ambitious of a common tomb with

Osiris."[232]

[232] PSEUDO-PLUTARCH, _On Isis and Osiris_, c. xx. M. Maspero

finds, however, no confirmation of this statement in the

monuments themselves. "All the tombs which have yet been

discovered at Abydos," he says (_Revue Critique_, January 31,

1881), "are those of Egyptians domiciled at Abydos. But the

author from whom this Plutarch derived his inspiration must have

known the ancient fiction according to which the soul could only

pass into the next world by betaking itself to Abydos, and

thence through the opening to the west of that town which gave

access to the regions of Ament. Hence the voyage of the dead to

Abydos which we find so often represented on tombs; an imaginary

voyage, as the mummy would be reposing safely at Thebes or

Memphis (Fig. 159). At all events, the family, after the death

of its head, or any Egyptian during his own life, could deposit

upon the _ladder of Osiris_ a stele, upon which the tomb

actually containing his body could be represented and

unmistakably identified with its original by the formula

inscribed upon it."

Under such conditions it may readily be understood why Mariette should

have concentrated so much of his attention upon Abydos. In spite of

all his researches he did not succeed in discovering the tomb of

Osiris itself, but yet his digging campaigns afforded results which

are most interesting and important from every point of view.[233]

[233] MARIETTE, _Abydos, Description des Fouilles exécutées sur

l'Emplacement de cette Ville_, folio, vol. i. 1869; vol. ii.

1880. Mariette thought that the sacred tomb was probably in the

immediate neighbourhood of the artificial mound called

_Koum-es-Soultan_, which may cover its very site. In the article

which we quote above, M. Maspero has set forth the

considerations which lead him to think that the staircase of

Osiris, upon which the consecrated steles were placed, was the

flight of steps which led up to the temple of that god.

Consequently the tomb of Osiris, at Abydos as at Denderah, would

be upon the roof of his temple.

[Illustration: FIG. 159.--The river transport of the Mummy.

(Champollion, pl. 173.)]

One district of this necropolis is made up by a vast number of tombs

dating from the time of the ancient empire, and particularly from the

sixth dynasty. Arrangements similar to those of the mastabas at

Sakkarah are found, but on a smaller scale--the same funerary

chambers, the same wells, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal as

in the tomb of Ti and the pyramids, the same materials. The situation

of this tomb-district, which Mariette calls the central cemetery, has

allowed arrangements to be adopted similar to those on the plateau of

Memphis, where the sand is the only covering to a stratum of living

rock in which it was easy to cut the well and the mummy-chamber.

In the remainder of the space occupied by the tombs the subsoil is of

a very different nature. "The hard and impenetrable rock is there

covered with a sandstone in course of formation; this is friable at

some points, at others so soft that but few mummies have been

entrusted to it."[234] This formation extends over nearly the whole of

the ground upon which the tombs of the eleventh, twelfth, and

especially of the thirteenth, dynasties, are packed closely together.

This Mariette calls the northern cemetery. The tombs of Abydos have

no subterranean story, properly speaking. Well, mummy-chamber, and

funerary chapel are all constructed, not dug. In the few instances in

which the ground has been excavated down to the friable sandstone

which over-lies the hard rock, the opening has been lined with rubble.

[234] MARIETTE, _Voyage dans la Haute-Égypte_, vol. i. 1879.

[Illustration: FIG. 160.--Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from

the elevation of Mariette.]

[Illustration: FIG. 161.--Section of the above tomb.]

"Hence the peculiar aspect which the necropolis of Abydos must have

presented when intact. Imagine a multitude of small pyramids five or

six metres high, carelessly oriented or not at all, and uniformly

built of crude brick. These pyramids always stand upon a plinth, they

are hollow, and within they are formed into a clumsy cupola by means

of roughly built off-sets. The pyramid stands directly over a chamber

in its foundations which shelters the mummy. As soon as the latter was

in place, the door of its chamber was closed by masonry."[235] An

exterior chamber was often built in front of the pyramid, and being

always left open, served for the performance of the sepulchral rites;

but sometimes this chamber was absent and then those rites were

carried through in the open air, before the stele of the deceased.

This latter was sometimes erected upon the plinth, sometimes let into

its face. A little cube of masonry is sometimes found at the foot of

the stele, destined, no doubt, for funeral offerings. Sometimes the

tomb had a surrounding wall of the same height as its plinth; this

served to mark out the ground which belonged to it, and when the

friends of the deceased met to do him honour, the entrance could be

closed, and comparative privacy assured even in the absence of a

funerary chapel.

[235] _Ibidem._

[Illustration: FIG. 162.--Tomb at Abydos; drawn in perspective from

the elevation of Mariette.]

[Illustration: FIG. 163.--Section of the above tomb.]

These tombs, which were generally constructed with no great care, were

for the most part without casing. The pyramidal form was given by

setting each course of bricks slightly back from the one below it.

When this part of the work was finished, each face was covered, as a

rule, with a coat of rough concrete, which, in its turn, was hidden

under a layer of white stucco. This multitude of little monuments, all

of the same shape and of much the same size, must, when complete, have

looked like the tents of an encamped army.

[Illustration: FIG. 164.--Stele of the eleventh dynasty, Abydos. Drawn

by Bourgoin. (Boulak.)]