Pyramid of Mycerinus. Sections from North to South. It may here be remarked, that the pyramid has been enlarged from its original dimensions, and that occasion the mouth of the upper passage upon was closed up by the added masonry, and the lower passage was extended, being, as Mr. Perring observes, cut outwards from within.' The two apartments included in this pyramid Sarcophaconsist, as we have seen, of an Upper and Lower fus in the 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 1833. 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 phics on the out by Mr. Birch of the British Museum. In these interpreta hierogly lid of the mummycase. the king Mycerinus is called Men-kah-re, but we append the literal meaning of the hieroglyphics as given by Mr. Birch. "Osirian, king Menkahre of eternal life, engendered of the Heaven, child of Netpe. who 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. ever." CHAP. IV. 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 m 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 But to return to our description. The Aethi- Mode of opian stone of which, according to Herodotus, the tion adoptpyramid 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, 4 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. Pyramid. AFRICA. the angular spaces being afterwards filled up so as CHAP. IV. to complete the pyramidal form. The Three ramids in The THREE SMALL PYRAMIDS mentioned by He Small Py- rodotus, and including the PYRAMID OF THE DAUGH cluding the TER OF CHEOPS, are still to be found near the southPyramid of eastern 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 pyra chis. 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 Hemid of Asy-rodotus 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. collecting the mud which hung to the pole, men AFRICA. made bricks and erected me."1 CHAP. IV. Probably the northern pyramid of This pyramid cannot be identified with the same certainty as the others. The most northern of the the same as pyramids of Dashoor, which are situated some little distance to the south of those of Gizeh, has, however, Dashoor. been generally supposed to be the one mentioned by Herodotus. It is composed of crude bricks, and cased with stone from the Mokattam quarries, and is not only the most considerable of all the brick pyramids, but is also within a short distance of the temple of Hephaestus which Asychis assisted to embellish. The solidity of its construction is most remarkable, and almost justifies the boasting inscription preserved by our author; for it is difficult to imagine a mass more solid, and also more durable, as long as it was protected by an external casing of stone from the effects of the atmosphere. As however the whole of the bricks are not composed of alluvial soil, the latter part of the inscription can only refer to those formed of the mud or clay drawn out of one of the sacred lakes.2 Herodotus's of the pyra his various Such then were the pyramids of Aegypt, as seen Character of and described by Herodotus. That they excited in description him an extraordinary interest cannot be questioned, mids, and though a feeling of religious awe probably restrained reasons for him from imparting much information, which he omissions. might otherwise have given. Moreover, it is remarkable that he describes only those of whose builders he is enabled to give some account; and he only names the three little pyramids before the Great Pyramid of Cheops, because he wished to describe the central one, which he had been told was erected by Cheops's daughter. Such omissions however are in perfect keeping with the general tone of his narrative. He only cared for antiquities so far as they illustrated or explained his history; and his description of the pyramids and other public works in Aegypt are not included in his account of the 1 ii. 136. 2 Vyse, vol. iii. 3 ii. 126. |