Volume I Part 20 (1/2)

FIG 141

FIG 142

FIGS 136-142--Successive states of a pyra to the system advocated in Baedeker's _Guide_]

We are told that the system of construction here set forth is rendered almost certain by the fact that ”the deeper we penetrate into the pyramid the more careful do we find the construction, which becomes more and more careless as the exterior is approached In fact, as each new envelope was co completed becareater, 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 theto conceal all defects of work 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 pyraes would be waiting for their filling in; at Dashour, the upper part of a pyraentle 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 cruh 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, a the southern pyramids, and there is one exaypte_, 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 see appearances, it also, when tested by facts, encounters sorave objections The explorers of the pyraalleries and hidden chah the masonry, but neither in these breaches made by violence, nor in the ancient and carefully constructed passages to which they were the ns been, discovered, or at least, reported, of the junctions of different surfaces and slopes whichto the theory which we are noticing We should expect, at least, to find the nearly upright sides of the cubicwith the coainst 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 yptian work-stones, could those slides and settleeneity in the structure would otherwise be sure to lead? But we are not told that any such junctions of old and neork are to be found even in those points where they would beto 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 exainning, if the intention had been from the first to place the mummy-chamber wherefind it, at about one-third of the whole height, why should the builders have co upon themselves these ever difficult junctions? Would it not have been far better to build the pyra in its thickness the necessary galleries? The sa chaeh vestibule with its wonderful masonry, the chambers and the structural voids above them, appear to have been conceived and carried out at one tin 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 co 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,doors and s to his newly-built house, but we ypt or elsewhere, ever thought of eration to which it would lead ined

We may here call attention to a circumstance which justifies all our reserves There is but one pyrahin soree, we mean the Stepped Pyramid of Sakkarah

Noe find that the whole of the coes in that pyra rock beneath its base, and that they are approached froes The difficulty of deciding upon the position of the chah 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 es 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 s 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 fashi+on shown by the section which we have borrowed fro 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 hiest a rather more probable syste face of each step he found two casing-walls, but these did not extend froher than the single step, so that they found a true resisting base in the flat143) 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 Talls of fine li 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 Pyra 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 fro 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 fores, upon the rock This curious arrangement should be studied upon the spot by some competent observer As we do not knohether 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 ainst the notion that all the great pyramids were built round such a pyra 136 We fear that this syste 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 de 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 pyrae au Teypte_ (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 nize unfinished pyramids, namely, the Pyraree 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 e special notice at our hands

[197] BaeDEKER, _Egypt_, part i 1878 The pages dealing with the reat part by Professor Ebers

The monument which rises so conspicuously froe of Meidoum on the road to the Fayoum, is called by Arabs the Haram-el-Kabbab, or ”the false pyra, as a htly inclined sides superi less in area than the first, and the third than the second The reuished on the summit of the third; some see in theing fro mastabas, which were opened and examined by Mariette, this is the tos of the third dynasty[198]

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

[Illustration: FIG 146--The Pyra]

The Mastabat-el-Faraoun or ”Seat of Pharaoh,” as the Arabs call it, is a huge rectangular , and 240 deep It is oriented like the pyraements which resealleries, the sa 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 his of the fifth dynasty (Figs

109 and 147)