manned

with a crew of 16 men. The ships sailed to the Syrian coast, and one year 40 of them, loaded with cedar wood from Lebanon, arrived in Egypt; some of this wood was used in making the doors of the king's palace. This palace was divided into two parts, in accordance with the fact that Seneferu was lord of the Two Egypts, the South and the North, and each part had its gate with an appropriate title. The king also built 35 houses, but no details of their construction or use are given; the mines of Sinai supplied the copper, Mount Lebanon the cedar wood, the quarries of Turah the stone, and the Sûdân the labourers. Seneferu built the monument that is commonly called by Europeans the pyramid of Mêdûm and by the natives Al-Haram al-Kaddâb, i.e., the False (or Lying) Pyramid. Its general appearance recalls that of a Babylonian ziggurat. It is in three stages and is about 115 feet high. It was opened by Maspero in 1881 and was subsequently excavated by Petrie, who entered the sepulchral chamber. One of the stone pyramids at Dahshûr is also supposed to have been built by Seneferu. He was one of the first to use a " Horus of gold "

name,

The chief wife of Seneferu was called Merit-tefs,

. After her husband's death she passed under the honourable protection of the two great kings Khufu (Cheôps) and Khāfrā (Chephren). In the reign of Seneferu died Methen, a scribe and high administrative official in Lower Egypt; he was buried in a maṣṭabah tomb near the "stepped tower" of Tcheser. With the death of Seneferu the Archaic Period of Egyptian History came to an end and the era of mighty buildings in stone begins.

The Fourth Dynasty. From Memphis.

According to Manetho the first king of the IVth dynasty was Sōris, in Egyptian Shaȧru

but nothing is

known about him. His successor was Khufu, or Khnemu Khufu, the Suphis of Manetho and the Cheôps of Herodotus, who will be for ever famous as the builder of the largest of the three great Pyramids1 of Gîzah (for details see the section on Egyptian Tombs). The pyramid was probably connected by means of a causeway with a funerary temple in which the liturgies for the dead king were recited, but it is doubtful if this temple is

1 The word pyramid is perhaps derived, through the Greek, from the Egyptian PEREMUS, , which is said by some to mean the

slope of a pyramidal building, and by others the vertical height. See Aeg. Zeit., 1874, p. 148.

represented by the so-called Temple of the Sphinx,1 as some have supposed. It seems that all the resources of the king and all the energies of his people were devoted to the building of this pyramid, which was to contain the king's tomb, for there is no evidence to show that Khufu made any attempt to "enlarge the borders" of Egypt by means of wars of conquest. A figure of King Khufu in ivory is preserved in the British Museum. Tetefra, the successor of Khufu, reigned but a few years, and he was followed by Khāfrā, or Chephren, the Suphis of Manetho. He built a great pyramid side by side with that of Khufu, but it was a little smaller, and the lower parts of its sides were cased in granite. The funerary temple, like that of Khufu, was on the east side, and a slightly raised embankment led from it to the granite and limestone building which is commonly called the "temple of the Sphinx." When Mariette excavated this temple (or perhaps gate) in 1853 he found at the bottom of a pit in one of the chambers seven statues of Khāfrā, and we may therefore assume that he built it. Near this temple stands that mysterious monument the Sphinx, in Egyptian Hu , which was at once the symbol of the god Ḥer-emȧakhut, ,i.e., "Horus on the horizon" (the Harmakhis of the Greeks), and of the king, the earthly representative of this god.* An inscription found by Mariettes in the temple of Isis near the pyramid of Khufu states that Khufu built (rebuilt ?) this temple of Isis, and some have supposed that it was he who had the spur of rock carved into the form of a man-headed lion and parts of it filled up with masonry to make the contour of the body more perfect. Others take the view that the Sphinx is a pre-dynastic monument, but this theory has no foundation. Between the paws of the Sphinx is a long inscription of Thothmes IV, which seems to associate the monument with Khafrā, but the cartouche-if indeed there be oneis broken, and the inscription itself is a "pious fraud " that was composed at a late period by the priests of the temple there who wished to enhance the importance of the object of their cult. The name of the king who made the Sphinx is unknown, and modern Egyptologists know as little about its history as did the Egyptians under the New Kingdom. It is possible that if the whole monument were entirely cleared of sand some information about its age might be obtained. The reign of Khāfrā is remarkable for a wonderful development in the skill of architects and workers in stone, and

1 This building lies a little to the S.E. of the Sphinx, and is about 150 feet square; the hall measures 60 feet by 30 feet, and contains 10 pillars, and the narrow part of the temple measures 80 feet by 25 feet, and contains 6 pillars.

The Sphinx is hewn out of the living rock, and is about 150 feet long; the head is 30 feet long, the face 14 feet wide; the paws are 50 feet long, and the total height of the monument is 70 feet.

For the text see Monuments Divers, pl. 53.

the diorite statue of the king now in the Cairo Museum is probably the finest work of any Egyptian sculptor.

Khafrā was succeeded by Menkaura, the Mencherês of Manetho, who built a great pyramid, which was cased in granite, side by side with those of Khufu and Khāfrā. But the resources of the royal house must have become reduced, for Menkaurā's pyramid is less than half as high as those of his two great predecessors.1 No wars of conquest were undertaken by him, and the building of his pyramid seems to have exhausted his energies. Some versions of the Rubrics of Chapters XXXB and LXIV state that these important sections of the Book of the Dead were "found" by Hertaṭaf at Khemenu (Hermopolis), the city of Thoth, whilst on a tour of inspection of the temples of Egypt. Variant versions ascribe the finding" of these Chapters to the reign of Semti, a king of the Ist dynasty. Menkaurā was succeeded by Shepseskaf, of whom practically nothing is known, and the two or three other kings of the dynasty were unimportant. Manetho mentions Ratoeses, Bicherês, Sebercherês and Thamphthis as the last kings of the dynasty, but the Tablet of Ṣakkârah only gives us Sebekkarā, who may be Sebercherês. Of portrait figures in wood made under the IVth dynasty the most striking is undoubtedly the so-called Shêkh al-Balad.

The Fifth Dynasty.

Under the IVth dynasty the priests of Ra of Heliopolis, a form of the Sun-god of foreign (probably Syrian) origin, consolidated their power considerably, and their influence was strong enough to make all the kings of that dynasty after Khufu insert the name of Ra in their Nesu-båt names. The kings of the Vth dynasty did not come from Elephantine, as Manetho says, but from Heliopolis, and the first of them, Userkaf, the Usercheris of Manetho, was high priest of Ra. He and Saḥurā and Kakaȧ were the sons of Userra, a priest of Ra, by his wife Rut-tetet, and all three reigned over Egypt. It was a dogma of the priesthood of Ra at that time that Userkaf and his brothers were begotten by Rā himself, who visited Userra's wife and companied with her, and that the King of Egypt was in very truth the " son of Rā." As such he must add a fifth name to his names as (1) Horus, (2) the Horus of gold, (3) the lord of Nekhen and Per-Uatchit, and (4) as the King of the South and the North. From this time onward every king of Egypt, whether of Egyptian origin or not, called himself the "son of Râ.' In later days, when Amen, or Amen-Rā, became the King of the Gods, it was asserted by his priesthood that the god assumed the human form of a man and begot the king of Egypt. Alexander

1 I.c., 215 feet as against 451 and 450 feet.

the Great owed his success in Egypt to the fact that the god of the Oasis of Sîwah acknowledged him to be his son.

Userkaf seems to have opened up communication with the Northern Sûdân or Nubia, for his name has been found on several rocks in the First Cataract. His successor, Saḥurā, who was probably unable to control the caravan roads to the South, sent an expedition to Punt by sea, in order to obtain anti and other vegetable ingredients for balsams, unguents and perfumes, which were employed in funerary and other ceremonies. The exact position of Punt is unknown, but it lay probably a little to the South of Somaliland. The expedition was very successful, for, according to the Palermo Stele, the Egyptians brought back in their ships 80,000 bundles of anti (myrrh), 6,000 bars (?) of whitecoloured gold, and 2,600 pieces of precious wood (ebony ?). The rocks of Sinai show that he made an expedition to the region of the copper mines, and he is represented as smashing the skull of a typical native in the usual fashion. The Palermo Stele shows that as a result of this expedition his officers brought back 6,000 [pieces of turquoise stone]. Saḥurā built a pyramid at Abusîr, which was connected with a tower gate by a causeway about 650 feet long; from this a second causeway led to his funerary temple.

The reigns of Nefer-årikarā, Shepseskarā, Neferfra and Khāneferra, the successors of Saḥurā, were unimportant, and the next king, Enuserrā, or Userenrā, whose son-of-Ra name was Ån, is known chiefly by the pyramid and funerary temple which he built at Abuşîr, near the pyramid of Neferȧrikarā Kakaȧ.1

Passing over Menkauḥeru (the Mencherês of Manetho), whose reign was unimportant, we come to Teṭkara Assȧ (the Tarcherês of Manetho), who succeeded in opening up communication with the south viâ Syene and the First Cataract. According to a letter2 of Pepi II, a king of the VIth dynasty, which he sent to Ḥerkhuf, a great shêkh of the caravans that traded between Elephantine and the remote countries of the Sûdân, King Asså sent an expedition to the Sûdân under the leadership of a high official called Ba-ur-Tet, who brought back a dwarf3 from Punt and was handsomely rewarded. The working of the copper mines in Sinai went on vigorously, and as the name of Asså appears on the rocks in the Wâdî Ḥammâmât, it would seem that the military and mercantile traffic between the Nile and the Red Sea passed through this Valley, which offered a short route to Sinai, Punt and other countries to the south of Egypt. The last king of the Vth dynasty was Unås, who was buried in the

"

1 The funerary temples, with their short pyramids, or sun stones," set on mounds like truncated pyramids were excavated and described by Borchardt in 1907-13.

2 See Aeg. Zeit., 1893, pp. 65–73, and Sethe, Urkunden, Bd. I, pp. 120–131.