consisted of mud bricks laid in clean yellow sand; outside this was a casing of fine limestone, every stone of which has disappeared. The entrance to the pyramid is on the south side. When the site where the pyramid was to stand had been cleared, a large hollow, which was intended to receive the sarcophagus chamber, was sunk in the sandstone rock, and trenches which were to form the passages leading to it were cut also. Into this hollow in the rock, a huge sandstone monolith, which was hewn out to form the sarcophagus chamber, was sunk, and the sarcophagus and two chests were next placed inside it; round the chamber was built up masonry, on which rested the sloping and horizontal slabs of stone which were to form the roof. Above all this a great brick arch was thrown over the whole of the masonry of the chamber, and the bricks of the pyramid were piled above it all. Passing along the entrance passage, which was on the south side and was provided with steps, an ante-chamber with a roof made of a slab which could be moved along, and so forming a sliding trap-door, is reached. A little beyond is another chamber, in which are openings which lead into two passages; one passage runs due north for a distance of about eighty-four feet, and leads nowhere, but the other runs eastwards, and is the true passage which eventually leads to the sarcophagus chamber. At the end of the true passage is another chamber, with a sliding trap-door roof, and the visitor must follow a passage which runs due north until another chamber with a sliding trap-door roof is reached. The passage then runs from east to west for some distance, and ends in a rectangular chamber with two false wells in it; this chamber measures about 26 ft. x 7 ft. 6 in. x 7 ft. 7 in. In this chamber Prof. Petrie found an alabaster table of offerings made for Ptaḥ-neferu, the daughter of Amenemḥāt III., and the fragments of eight or nine large alabaster bowls. The entrance to the sarcophagus chamber was on the south side of the chamber with two false wells, and it had been effectually barred by means of a huge block of stone, which formed part of the roof, being dropped into it after the mummy had been laid in its last resting-place. The sarcophagus chamber, which is hewn out of a single stone, measures 22 ft. 4 in. x 7 ft. 10 in. × 6 ft. 2 in., and is a beautiful piece of work; it was roofed over with three slabs of hard sandstone, and the original entrance to it was closed by lowering one of these slabs into its place. Until the final closing of the chamber the slab was supported in an upper space or chamber, and when it was lowered into its place a narrow space was left above it by which a man could pass out over it into the chamber with the two wells. The sarcophagus is made of hard limestone and is uninscribed. It has a sub-plinth, and is ornamented with the panel work which was so much liked in the VIth Dynasty; it measures 8 ft. 10 in. × 4 ft. × 2 ft. 7 in., and has a rounded lid of the same length and breadth, but measuring 1 ft. 2 in. in depth. Between the sarco B.C. 2300] PYRAMID OF ḤAWÂRA 63 phagus and the east wall another sarcophagus was improvised, and this was intended to be the restingplace of the princess Ptah-neferu, whose altar and bowls were found in the chamber with the two wells. Near the sarcophagi were the chests which once held the sepulchral vases; fragments of these were found to be inscribed with the prenomen of Amenemḥāt III., Maāt-en-Rā, and thus we may assume that the king was here buried. Traces neither of bodies nor of coffins were found in the sarcophagi, and judging by the calcined fragments of stone which were lying on the floor, these objects had been wholly consumed by fire. All the details connected with the construction of the pyramid are of the greatest interest, for they show what elaborate precautions had to be taken to keep robbers from breaking into the royal tombs and plundering them. But in spite of chambers with sliding roofs which admitted the invader to hollows filled up with masses of stone, and so took him out of the right path, and passages which led nowhere, and wells which contained nothing and ended nowhere, the pyramid was entered, and the thieves managed to gain access to the royal sarcophagus chamber. In the extract from the account of Lake Moeris given by Herodotus, quoted above, mention has been made of two pyramids, each of which rose fifty orgyae above the surface of the water and stood in the middle of the lake, and the historian declares that on each pyramid was a stone statue seated on a throne. Recent investigations have identified with the two pyramids of Herodotus the ruins of two stone buildings which still stand near the modern village of Biyahmu in the Fayyûm, and are called by the natives "Kirâsi Fir'aun," or "Pharaoh's Chairs," and this identification is probably correct; the statues which stood upon them were made of very hard sandstone, and, according to Prof. Petrie, who declares that he found fragments of them, which have since been sent to the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, were about thirty-five feet high. The bases on which they stood were four feet high, and the pedestals were twenty-one feet high, so that from the top of their heads to the ground was a distance of about sixty feet. Each statue stood in a courtyard with a surrounding wall, and was entered by a door on the north side. It is not easy to see what purpose was served by erecting these statues at this place, even though they did not actually stand in the middle of the lake as Herodotus thought; but it is clear that they formed suitable memorials of the great king who built the Labyrinth, or Temple of Lake Moeris, and who did the greater part of the work connected with the formation of the Lake, and who devised plans for making the best use of its waters. In connection with the colossal statues of Åmenemḥāt III. in the Fayyûm mention must be made of the famous sphinxes, which were discovered at Şân or Tanis by Mariette in 1861. These remarkable 1 See Hawara, Biahmu, and Arsinöe, p. 55. |