Volume I Part 18 (2/2)
[174] _Description de l'egypte_, vol v p 647, and _Atlas, Ant_ vol v pl 16, Figs 3, 4, and 5
THE PYRAMIDS
The _reat lord or rich citizen of priypt; 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 hu mastabas, before the sand had buried theh beside those prodigious masses They were ant-hills at the foot of a palace
Itthe 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 ether, 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 to
Philologists have attey of the word p??a?? to the ancient language of Egypt The tere it has been adopted into that of every civilized nation, with a in has been sought for in the coptic terht, and in the term _pir-aa_, which occurs continually in Exodus, and was used by Moses to signify the reigning Pharaoh But egyptologists now see 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 resch,[175] 'to the term p??a?? Each royal pyramid had its own name, a coest of the of Choufou;”
the second, ”the great;” the third, ”that which is on high” The word _pyramid_ appears therefore to be a purely Greek terested by the siue of flalish version, Murray, 1879), vol
i pp 72, 73
We shall not waste our ti those fantastic explanations of the pyraiven 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 astronoe 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 toyptians; we have already explained itsStill less need we occupy ourselves with the theory, which made, however, some stir in its tiyptians attempted to keep back the sand from the fertile valley of the Nile
The science of M de Persigny orthy 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 froypt to the other, and all the pyramids would not have been found assehbourhood of Memphis[176]
[176] FIALIN DE PERSIGNY, _De la Destination et de l'Utilite perypte et de Nubie contre les Irruptions sablonneuses du Desert, Developpements du Memoire adresse a l'Academie des Sciences le 14 Juillet, 1844_, suivie d'_une nouvelle interpretation 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 ere ypt, 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 tos of any kind They are the gigantic and is of the mummy;their colossal diuments of those ould attribute to them some other destination, but they are in fact to be found of all sizes, soh Besides this, it roup 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 i 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 es, but sometimes intact, as in the pyramid of Mycerinus The pyramids were herht assert that it was so, knowing as we do the precautions which the Egyptians took elsewhere to guard their toainst 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 Pyra into it violently, near the centre of its northern face, and thus stue at some distance from its mouth That he was reduced to e but the solid masonry shows that no external indication had been left of the opening through which theseems to have been then complete and consequently the four sides of the Pyraenerally uniforht side for their attack was perhaps owing to the survival of so the northern side to be that of the entrance, which, as a fact, it has been found to be in all the pyrauided by the traces of previous attempts made either in the time of the Persians or in that of the Romans[181] However this ns of an original doorway, they would have directed their attentions to it Those who seek for treasure do not, like archaeologists, 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, _Itineraire de la Haute-egypte_, pp 96, 97 [An excellent translation of this work into English, by M Alphonse Mariette, has been published (Trubner, 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 ht, the pyramids had a stone which could be e 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 froht above it, and as it would have had to be lighted from the door alone, it must always have been of the ement 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 fros 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 res 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, coilance of the established priesthood of the necropolis, to preserve the august in froht statues of Chephren which were found at the bottom of a pit in what is called the _Te that this want of precaution was so 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 te]
As such vast importance was attached to the preservation of the portrait statues upon which the prolongation of life after death was ely 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 -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 theexplorer Quite lately M Maspero believed that he recognized a serdab in a subterranean chamber with three niches which he found near theof the fifth dynasty[182] Before we could say that such an arrangement does not exist elsewhere, we should have to take soht, however, be asserted that the ies of the deceased would, if hidden in the pyramid, be too far reht their offerings and their pious hoe At such a distance they would not have heard the friendly voices or the ic chants; nor would the scent of the incense have reached their nostrils In a word, they would have been ill placed for the fulfilyptian 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 egyptien_ of March 15, 1881, contains a short account of the opening [Since this note ritten, a full account of the entrance and exploration of this pyraether with the texts discovered, has been published by M MASPERO in the _Recueil de Travaux_, vol iii
liv 3 and 4, 1882--ED]