AFRICA.

CHAP. IV.

rately fin

the pyra

mids of

Chephren.

discovered

Vyse.

The only suggestion I can offer is, that his measurement applies not to the length of each side, but to the inclined height, which we see was anciently More elabo- 278 feet 2 inches. Though of much smaller dimenished than sions than the two others, this pyramid was the most elaborately finished. The site was levelled, not by Cheops and cutting away the rock, but by raising, on the eastern side, a superstructure ten feet in height, composed Entrance of two tiers of immense blocks. There was no vesby Caviglia tige of an entrance, nor tradition of the pyramid and Colonel having ever been opened, until the operations begun by Caviglia, and concluded by Col. Vyse in 1837, upon which it appeared that, like the others, it had been previously opened in the time of the caliphs. The entrance was found as usual on the north side, and about 13 feet above the base. The The passage descends at the same angle as that of the Great Pyramid for a distance of 104 feet, when it reaches an ante-room, the walls of which are panelled with Upper Se- Sculptured partitions. Beyond the ante-room are the usual portcullises of granite, and a horizontal passage terminating in a large chamber, 46 feet long and 12 broad, lying nearly under the centre of the pyramid.

pulchral Chamber.

Two passages lead from the chamber; one, near the top of the side-wall, returns toward the exterior, and probably reached it, but was closed again by the builders themselves; the other descends from Lower the floor for about 30 feet, and ends in a Lower SeChamber. pulchral Chamber, 21 feet long, 8 broad, and 11 high. The following diagram exhibits the course of the passages and position of the Upper and Lower Chambers.

Sepulchral

1 Seven steps further down from the lower chamber is a third room, with two niches on each side, which were probably designed for the reception of upright mummies. This niche room is not represented in the diagram. It is 17 feet long, and 6 feet in breadth and height.

It may here be remarked, that the pyramid has been enlarged from its original dimensions, and upon that occasion the mouth of the upper passage was closed up by the added masonry, and the lower passage was extended, being, as Mr. Perring observes, cut outwards from within.'

gus in the

The two apartments included in this pyramid Sarcophaconsist, as we have seen, of an Upper and Lower Lower Chamber. At one end of the Upper Chamber there Chamber. is a depression in the floor evidently designed for the reception of a sarcophagus, though nothing was found in it. The Lower Chamber, which is lined with granite, contained a sarcophagus of basalt without inscriptions or hieroglyphics, but sculptured in slender and graceful compartments, and having a deep cornice. The sarcophagus had evidently been

The reader must not fall into the error of supposing that this enlargement took place since the time of Herodotus, and that it would account for his calculating the base of the pyramid so much less than its actual size. We shall have occasion to return to the subject further on, when we mention the discovery of Lepsius, in connexion with pyramid architecture.

2 This sarcophagus, which weighed nearly three tons, was got out with great difficulty, for it was not much smaller than the passages through which it had been introduced. It was sent to England, but the vessel in which it was embarked was lost off Carthagena in 1839.

ary disco

mummycase and

bones of

Mycerinus

per Chamber.

AFRICA. violated and the mummy removed by some previous CHAP. IV. visitor. The lid was broken, and the greater part of it was found near the entrance of the passage Extraordin- which descends from the Upper Chamber. In the very of the Upper Chamber itself were also discovered the fragments of the top of a mummy-case inscribed with hieroglyphics, and lying on a block of stone; in the Up- and close by were a skeleton consisting of ribs, vertebrae, and bones of the feet and legs, enveloped in a coarse woollen mummy cloth of yellow colour, which exhibited some remains of the resinous gum in which the body had been embalmed. It therefore seems that the previous visitors had opened the sarcophagus in the Lower Chamber, but being unable to move it up the inclined passage, had taken out the wooden case containing the body, and carried it into the Upper Chamber, which was nearly twice as large, for more minute examination.

Undoubted identity of

There is every reason for believing that the the remains. remains thus discovered are those of the king whom Herodotus names Mycerinus. The masses of granite and calcareous stone which filled up the entrance, together with the portcullises and in some places solid masonry, which secured the apartments, sufficiently indicate the veneration in which the sepulchre was held, and therefore the importance of the personage to Mr. Birch's whom it belonged. The two lines of hieroglyphics tion of the upon the lid of the mummy-case have been made hierogly the out by Mr. Birch of the British Museum. In these the king Mycerinus is called Men-kah-re, but we append the literal meaning of the hieroglyphics as given by Mr. Birch.

interpreta

phics on

lid of the

mummycase.

who

Osirian, king Menkahre of eternal life, engendered of the Heaven, child of Netpe extends thy mother. "Netpe over thee, may she watch thy abode of rest in Heaven, revealing thee to the God (chastiser?)

1 Edrisi, quoted by Vyse, says that the Red Pyramid (the name which the Arabian writers applied to the present one) had been opened a few years before, and in the sarcophagus the decayed body of a man had been found, with golden tablets beside him, inscribed with characters which no one could read.

thy impure enemies, king Menkahre living for AFRICA.

Men-kah-re, or Mycerinus, belonged to the fourth dynasty of the old monarchy of Menes, and as he must have lived some time before the invasion of the Hyksos, we cannot suppose him to have been posterior to the patriarchs. Herodotus, who visited Aegypt about the time of Nehemiah, gazed upon his pyramidal tomb, and tells us the story of his reignhis love for his daughter, and his efforts to falsify the oracle. The reader of the present volume may now Bones and enter the mummy-room of the British Museum, and mummy there, amid embalmed cats, and painted coffins, and seen in the other relics of a bygone world, he will see on a plain shelf on his right hand all that remains of the bones and coffin of Men-kah-re; a monarch who reigned long ere the siege of Troy, and probably before the little ark of Moses was set adrift upon the ancient Nile.

case to be

British Mu

seum.

construc

tion adopt

Pyramid.

But to return to our description. The Aethi- Mode of opian stone of which, according to Herodotus, the op pyramid was cased to half its height, was apparently ed in the the red granite from the cataracts between Syene and Philae, hence it is called the Red Pyramid by the Arabian writers. Diodorus' describes the first fifteen courses as covered with black stone, and Strabo 3 says that half the height of the pyramid from its base upwards was cased with the same material. Both authors however appear to have taken their information from Herodotus, and to have supposed that he meant black stone. A portion of the casing was removed by Osman Bey, as may be seen by the diagram. We thus see that the pyramid was built in steps or stages, gradually diminishing,

1 Osiris was the son of Netpe by Seb, or Chronos. Netpe seems to have presided over births and nursing, and was called the mother of the gods.

2 Diod. i. 64.

3 Strabo, xvii. 808.

If the casing-stones had been really black, they must, as Mr. Kenrick remarks, have been of basalt, which however is not to be found amongst the fragments. Grobert (Denon, vol. i.) speaks of remains of black marble, of which however no mention has been made by subsequent travellers.

AFRICA. the angular spaces being afterwards filled up so as CHAP. IV. to complete the pyramidal form.

The Three

Small Py

ramids in

cluding the

The THREE SMALL PYRAMIDS mentioned by Herodotus, and including the PYRAMID OF the DaughTER OF CHEOPS, are still to be found near the southeastern angle of the Great Pyramid. The centre of ter of the three was the one which, according to our Herodotus's author, was erected by the Aegyptian princess. He description. tells us that Cheops was so pressed for money that

the daugh

Cheops.

Present

state.

Brick pyramid of Asychis.

he even stooped to raise a sum by the prostitution of his daughter, and that the lady in her turn wishing to immortalize herself in the same manner as her father, requested each of her lovers to bring her a stone, (or finished block,) with which she built the pyramid in question. The base he describes as being one plethron and a half,' or 150 feet, which corresponds pretty well with the measurement of Col. Vyse, who makes it 172 feet.

The three pyramids appear to have been originally about 100 feet in height, but are now much lower. They have all inclined passages, beginning either at the base or a little above it, and leading into a subterranean chamber, but in neither of them has anything been found by which the original occupant could be identified. It may be remarked, that a few casing-stones which have been found at the foot of the central pyramid, resemble those which covered the Great Pyramid of Cheops, and therefore afford some countenance to the strange tradition recorded by Herodotus.

A pyramid of brick is also mentioned by Herodotus as having been built by Asychis. This king, says our author, was desirous of surpassing all his predecessors, and therefore left behind him a pyramid made of bricks, upon which the following inscription was carved in stone.

"Despise me not because of the pyramids of stone, for I excel them as much as Zeus surpasses the other gods. For by plunging a pole into a lake and

1 ii. 126.