History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 15 - Vol. 02, Ch. 02: The Memphite Empire, pt. 3

The worship of Snofrûi was perpetuated from century to century.

After the fall of the Memphite empire it passed through periods of intermittence, during which it ceased to be observed, or was observed only in an irregular way; it reappeared under the Ptolemies for the last time before becoming extinct for ever.

Snofrûi was probably, therefore, one of the most popular kings of the good old times; but his fame, however great it may have been among the Egyptians, has been eclipsed in our eyes by that of the Pharaohs who immediately followed him--Kheops, Khephren, and Mykerinos.

Not that we are really better acquainted with their history.

All we know of them is made up of two or three series of facts, always the same, which the contemporaneous monuments teach us concerning these rulers.

Khnûmû-Khûfûi,* abbreviated into Khûfûi, the Kheops** of the Greeks, was probably the son of Snofrûi. *** * The existence of the two cartouches Khûfûi and Khnûmû- Khûfûi on the same monuments has caused much embarrassment to Egyptologists: the majority have been inclined to see here two different kings, the second of whom, according to M.

Robiou, would have been the person who bore the pre-nomen of Dadûfri.

Khnûmû-Khûfûi signifies “the god Khnûmû protects me.

” ** Kheops is the usual form, borrowed from the account of Herodotus; Diodorus writes Khembes or Khemmes, Eratosthenes Saôphis, and Manetho Souphis.

*** The story in the “Westcar” papyrus speaks of Snofrûi as father of Khûfûi; but this is a title of honour, and proves nothing.

The few records which we have of this period give one, however, the impression that Kheops was the son of Snofrûi, and, in spite of the hesitation of de Rougé, this affiliation is adopted by the majority of modern historians.

[175. jpg alabaster statue of kheops] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.

He reigned twenty-three years, and successfully defended the mines of the Sinaitic peninsula against the Bedouin; he may still be seen on the face of the rocks in the Wady Maghara sacrificing his Asiatic prisoners, now before the jackal Anubis, now before the ibis-headed Thot.

The gods reaped advantage from his activity and riches; he restored the temple of Hâ-thor at Den-dera, embellished that of Bubastis, built a stone sanctuary to the Isis of the Sphinx, and consecrated there gold, silver, bronze, and wooden statues of Horus, Nephthys, Selkît, Phtah, Sokhît, Osiris, Thot, and Hâpis.

Scores of other Pharaohs had done as much or more, on whom no one bestowed a thought a century after their death, and Kheops would have succumbed to the same indifference had he not forcibly attracted the continuous attention of posterity by the immensity of his tomb.

* * All the details relating to the Isis of the Sphinx are furnished by a stele of the daughter of Kheops, discovered in the little temple of the XXIst dynasty, situated to the west of the Great Pyramid, and preserved in the Gîzeh Museum.

It was not a work entirely of the XXIst dynasty, as Mr. Petrie asserts, but the inscription, barely readable, engraved on the face of the plinth, indicates that it was remade by a king of the Saïte period, perhaps by Sabaco, in order to replace an ancient stele of the same import which had fallen into decay.

[Illustration: 176. jpg THE TRIUMPHAL BAS-RELIEFS OF KHEOPS ON THE ROCKS OF WADY MAGHARA]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a photograph published in the _Ordnance Survey, Photographs_, vol. iii.

pl.

5. On the left stands the Pharaoh, and knocks down a Monîti before the Ibis-headed Thot; upon the right the picture is destroyed, and we see the royal titles only, without figures.

The statue bears no cartouche, and considerations purely artistic cause me to attribute it to Kheops: it may equally well represent Dadûfrî, the successor of Kheops, or Shopsiskaf, who followed Mykerinos.

[Illustration: 176b.

jpg PROFILE OF HEAD OF A MUMMY, (A MAN) THEBES] [Illustration: 177. jpg PYRAMIDS OF GIZEH] The Egyptians of the Theban period were compelled to form their opinions of the Pharaohs of the Memphite dynasties in the same way as we do, less by the positive evidence of their acts than by the size and number of their monuments: they measured the magnificence of Kheops by the dimensions of his pyramid, and all nations having followed this example, Kheops has continued to be one of the three or four names of former times which sound familiar to our ears.

The hills of Gîzeh in his time terminated in a bare wind-swept table-land.

A few solitary mastabas were scattered here and there on its surface, similar to those whose ruins still crown the hill of Dahshur.

* The Sphinx, buried even in ancient times to its shoulders, raised its head half-way down the eastern slope, at its southern angle;** beside him*** the temple of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, was fast disappearing under the sand; and still further back old abandoned tombs honey-combed the rock.

**** * No one has noticed, I believe, that several of the mastabas constructed under Kheops, around the pyramid, contain in the masonry fragments of stone belonging to some more ancient structures.

Those which I saw bore carvings of the same style as those on the beautiful mastabas of Dahshur.

** The stele of the Sphinx bears, on line 13, the cartouche of Khephren in the middle of a blank.

We have here, I believe, an indication of the clearing of the Sphinx effected under this prince, consequently an almost certain proof that the Sphinx was already buried in sand in the time of Kheops and his predecessors.

*** Mariette identifies the temple which he discovered to the south of the Sphinx with that of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, which is mentioned in the inscription of the daughter of Kheops.

This temple is so placed that it must have been sanded up at the same time as the Sphinx; I believe, therefore, that the restoration effected by Kheops, according to the inscription, was merely a clearing away of the sand from the Sphinx analogous to that accomplished by Khephren.

**** These sepulchral chambers are not decorated in the majority of instances.

The careful scrutiny to which I subjected them in 1885-86 causes me to believe that many of them must be almost contemporaneous with the Sphinx; that is to say, that they had been hollowed out and occupied a considerable time before the period of the IVth dynasty.

Kheops chose a site for his Pyramid on the northern edge of the plateau, whence a view of the city of the White Wall, and at the same time of the holy city of Heliopolis, could be obtained.

[Illustration: 179. jpg KHÛÎT, THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GÎZEH, THE SPHINX, AND THE TEMPLE OF THE SPHINX]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.

The temple of the Sphinx is in the foreground, covered with sand up to the top of the walls.

The second of the little pyramids below the large one is that whose construction is attributed to Honîtsonû, the daughter of Kheops, and with regard to which the dragomans of the Saite period told such strange stories to Herodotus.

A small mound which commanded this prospect was roughly squared, and incorporated into the masonry; the rest of the site was levelled to receive the first course of stones.

The pyramid when completed had a height of 476 feet on a base 764 feet square; but the decaying influence of time has reduced these dimensions to 450 and 730 feet respectively.

It possessed, up to the Arab conquest, its polished facing, coloured by age, and so subtily jointed that one would have said that it was a single slab from top to bottom.

* The work of facing the pyramid began at the top; that of the point was first placed in position, then the courses were successively covered until the bottom was reached.

** * The blocks which still exist are of white limestone.

Letronne, after having asserted in his youth (Recherches sur Dicuil, p. 107), on the authority of a fragment attributed to Philo of Byzantium, that the facing was formed of polychromatic zones of granite, of green breccia and other different kinds of stone, renounced this view owing to the evidence of Vyse.

Perrot and Chipiez have revived it, with some hesitation.

** Herodotus, ii.

125, the word “point” should not be taken literally.

The Great Pyramid terminated, like its neighbour, in a platform, of which each side measured nine English feet (six cubits, according to Diodorus Siculus, i. 63), and which has become larger in the process of time, especially since the destruction of the facing.

The summit viewed from below must have appeared as a sharp point.

“Having regard to the size of the monument, a platform of three metres square would have been a more pointed extremity than that which terminates the obelisks” (Letronne).

In the interior every device had been employed to conceal the exact position of the sarcophagus, and to discourage the excavators whom chance or persistent search might have put upon the right track.

Their first difficulty would be to discover the entrance under the limestone casing.

It lay hidden almost in the middle of the northern face, on the level of the eighteenth course, at about forty-five feet above the ground.

A movable flagstone, working on a stone pivot, disguised it so effectively that no one except the priests and custodians could have distinguished this stone from its neighbours.

When it was tilted up, a yawning passage was revealed,* three and a half feet in height, with a breadth of four feet.

* Strabo expressly states that in his time the subterranean parts of the Great Pyramid were accessible: “It has on its side, at a moderate elevation, a stone which can be moved, [--Greek phrase--]”.

“When it has been lifted up, a tortuous passage is seen which leads to the tomb.

” The meaning of Strabo’s statement had not been mastered until Mr. Petrie showed, what we may still see, at the entrance of one of the pyramids of Dahshur, arrangements which bore witness to the existence of a movable stone mounted on a pivot to serve as a door.

It was a method of closing of the same kind as that described by Strabo, perhaps after he had seen it himself, or had heard of it from the guides, and like that which Mr. Petrie had reinstated, with much probability, at the entrance of the Great Pyramid.

[Illustration: 181a.

jpg THE MOVABLE FLAGSTONE AT THE entrance to the great pyramid] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from Petrie’s The Pyramids and Temples of Gîzeh, pl.

xi.

The passage is an inclined plane, extending partly through the masonry and partly through the solid rock for a distance of 318 feet; it passes through an unfinished chamber and ends in a _cul-de-sac_ 59 feet further on.

The blocks are so nicely adjusted, and the surface so finely polished, that the joints can be determined only with difficulty.

The corridor which leads to the sepulchral chamber meets the roof at an angle of 120° to the descending passage, and at a distance of 62 feet from the entrance.

It ascends for 108 feet to a wide landing-place, where it divides into two branches.

One of these penetrates straight towards the centre, and terminates in a granite chamber with a high-pitched roof.

This is called, but without reason, the “Chamber of the Queen.

” The other passage continues to ascend, but its form and appearance are altered.

It now becomes a gallery 148 feet long and some 28 feet high, constructed of beautiful Mokattam stone.

The lower courses are placed perpendicularly one on the top of the other; each of the upper courses projects above the one beneath, and the last two, which support the ceiling, are only about 1 foot 8 inches distant from each other.

The small horizontal passage which separates the upper landing from the sarcophagus chamber itself, presents features imperfectly explained.

It is intersected almost in the middle by a kind of depressed hall, whose walls are channelled at equal intervals on each side by four longitudinal grooves.

The first of these still supports a fine flagstone of granite which seems to hang 3 feet 7 inches above the ground, and the three others were probably intended to receive similar slabs.

The latter is a kind of rectangular granite box, with a flat roof, 19 feet 10 inches high, 1 foot 5 inches deep, and 17 feet broad.

No figures or hieroglyphs are to be seen, but merely a mutilated granite sarcophagus without a cover.

Such were the precautions taken against man: the result witnessed to their efficacy, for the pyramid preserved its contents intact for more than four thousand years.

* But a more serious danger threatened them in the great weight of the materials above.

In order to prevent the vault from being crushed under the burden of the hundred metres of limestone which surmounted it, they arranged above it five low chambers placed exactly one above the other in order to relieve the superincumbent stress.

The highest of these was protected by a pointed roof consisting of enormous blocks made to lean against each other at the top: this ingenious device served to transfer the perpendicular thrust almost entirely to the lateral faces of the blocks.

Although an earthquake has to some extent dislocated the mass of masonry, not one of the stones which encase the chamber of the king has been crushed, not one has yielded by a hair’s-breadth, since the day when the workmen fixed it in its place.

* Professor Petrie thinks that the pyramids of Gîzeh were rifled, and the mummies which they contained destroyed during the long civil wars which raged in the interval between the VIth and XIIth dynasties.

If this be true, it will be necessary to admit that the kings of one of the subsequent dynasties must have restored what had been damaged, for the workmen of the Caliph Al-Mamoun brought from the sepulchral chamber of the “Horizon” “a stone trough, in which lay a stone statue in human form, enclosing a man who had on his breast a golden pectoral, adorned with precious stones, and a sword of inestimable value, and on his head a carbuncle of the size of an egg, brilliant as the sun, having characters which no man can read.

” All the Arab authors, whose accounts have been collected by Jomard, relate in general the same story; one can easily recognize from this description the sarcophagus still in its place, a stone case in human shape, and the mummy of Kheops loaded with jewels and arms, like the body of Queen Âhhotpû I. [Illustration: 181b.

jpg the interior of the great pyramid] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from pl.

ix.

, Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gîzeh.

A is the descending passage, B the unfinished chamber, and C the horizontal passage pierced in the rock.

D is the narrow passage which provides a communication between chamber B and the landing where the roads divide, and with the passage FG leading to the “Chamber of the Queen.

” E is the ascending passage, H the high gallery, I and J the chamber of barriers, K the sepulchral vault, L indicates the chambers for relieving the stress; finally, a, are vents which served for the aeration of the chambers during construction, and through which libations were introduced on certain feast-days in honour of Kheops.

The draughtsman has endeavoured to render, by lines of unequal thickness, the varying height of the courses of masonry; the facing, which is now wanting, has been reinstated, and the broken line behind it indicates the visible ending of the courses which now form the northern face of the pyramid.

[Illustration: 183. jpg The ascending passage OF THE great pyramid] Facsimile by Boudier of a drawing published in the _Description de l’Egypte, Ant.

_, vol. v.

pl.

xiii.

2. Four barriers in all were thus interposed between the external world and the vault.

* * This appears to me to follow from the analogous arrangements which I met with in the pyramid of Saqqâra.

Mr. Petrie refuses to recognize here a barrier chamber (cf.

the notes which he has appended to the English translation of my _Archéologie égyptienne_, p. 327, note 27,) but he confesses that the arrangement of the grooves and of the flagstone is still an enigma to him.

Perhaps only one of the four intended barriers was inserted in its place--that which still remains.

The Great Pyramid was called Khûît, the “Horizon” in which Khûfûî had to be swallowed up, as his father the Sun was engulfed every evening in the horizon of the west.

It contained only the chambers of the deceased, without a word of inscription, and we should not know to whom it belonged, if the masons, during its construction, had not daubed here and there in red paint among their private marks the name of the king, and the dates of his reign.

* * The workmen often drew on the stones the cartouches of the Pharaoh under whose reign they had been taken from the quarry, with the exact date of their extraction; the inscribed blocks of the pyramid of Kheops bear, among others, a date of the year XVI.

Worship was rendered to this Pharaoh in a temple constructed a little in front of the eastern side of the pyramid, but of which nothing remains but a mass of ruins.

Pharaoh had no need to wait until he was mummified before he became a god; religious rites in his honour were established on his accession; and many of the individuals who made up his court attached themselves to his double long before his double had become disembodied.

They served him faithfully during their life, to repose finally in his shadow in the little pyramids and mastabas which clustered around him.

Of Dadûfri, his immediate successor, we can probably say that he reigned eight years;* but Khephren, the next son who succeeded to the throne,** erected temples and a gigantic pyramid, like his father.

* According to the arrangement proposed by E. de Rougé for the fragments of the Turin Canon.

E.

de Rougé reads the name Râ-tot-ef, and proposes to identify it with the Ratoises of the lists of Manetho, which the copyists had erroneously put out of its proper place.

This identification has been generally accepted.

Analogy compels us to read Dadûfrî, like Khâfrî, Menkaurî, in which case the hypothesis of de Rougé falls to the ground.

The worship of Dadûfrî was renewed towards the Saite period, together with that of Kheops and Khephren, according to some tradition which connected his reign with that of these two kings.

On the general scheme of the Manethonian history of these times, see Maspero, _Notes sur quelques points de Grammaire et d’Histoire dans le Recueil de Travaux_, vol. xvii.

pp. 122-138. ** The Westcar Papyrus considers Khâfri to be the son of Khûfû; this falls in with information given us, in this respect, by Diodorus Siculus.

The form which this historian assigns--I do not know on what authority--to the name of the king, Khabryies, is nearer the original than the Khephren of Herodotus.

He placed it some 394 feet to the south-west of that of Kheops; and called it Ûîrû, the Great.

It is, however, smaller than its neighbour, and attains a height of only 443 feet, but at a distance the difference in height disappears, and many travellers have thus been led to attribute the same elevation to the two.

The facing, of which about one-fourth exists from the summit downwards, is of nummulite limestone, compact, hard, and more homogeneous than that of the courses, with rusty patches here and there due to masses of a reddish lichen, but grey elsewhere, and with a low polish which, at a distance, reflects the sun’s rays.

Thick walls of unwrought stone enclose the monument on three sides, and there may be seen behind the west front, in an oblong enclosure, a row of stone sheds hastily constructed of limestone and Nile mud.

[Illustration: 187. jpg THE NAME OF KHEOPS DRAWN IN RED ON SEVERAL BLOCKS OF THE GREAT PYRAMID]

Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin of the sketch in Lepsius, Denkm.

, ii.

, 1 c. Here the labourers employed on the works came every evening to huddle together, and the refuse of their occupation still encumbers the ruins of their dwellings, potsherds, chips of various kinds of hard stone which they had been cutting, granite, alabaster, diorite, fragments of statues broken in the process of sculpture, and blocks of smooth granite ready for use.

The chapel commands a view of the eastern face of the pyramid, and communicated by a paved causeway with the temple of the Sphinx, to which it must have borne a striking resemblance.

* The plan of it can be still clearly traced on the ground, and the rubbish cannot be disturbed without bringing to light portions of statues, vases, and tables of offerings, some of them covered with hieroglyphs, like the mace-head of white stone which belonged in its day to Khephren himself.

* The connection of the temple of the Sphinx with that of the second pyramid was discovered in December, 1880, during the last diggings of Mariette.

I ought to say that the whole of that part of the building into which the passage leads shows traces of having been hastily executed, and at a time long after the construction of the rest of the edifice; it is possible that the present condition of the place does not date back further than the time of the Antonines, when the Sphinx was cleared for the last time in ancient days.

[Illustration: 188. jpg ALABASTER STATUE OF KHEPHREN] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

See on p. 199 the carefully executed drawing of the best preserved among the diorite statues which the Gîzeh Museum now possesses of this Pharaoh.

The internal arrangements of the pyramid are of the simplest character;

they consist of a granite-built passage carefully concealed in the north face, running at first at an angle of 25°, and then horizontally, until stopped by a granite barrier at a point which indicates a change of direction; a second passage, which begins on the outside, at a distance of some yards in advance of the base of the pyramid, and proceeds, after passing through an unfinished chamber, to rejoin the first; finally, a chamber hollowed in the rock, but surmounted by a pointed roof of fine limestone slabs.

[Illustration: 188b.

jpg THE PYRAMID OF KHEPHREN] The sarcophagus was of granite, and, like that of Kheops, bore neither the name of a king nor the representation of a god.

The cover was fitted so firmly to the trough that the Arabs could not succeed in detaching it when they rifled the tomb in the year 1200 of our era; they were, therefore, compelled to break through one of the sides with a hammer before they could reach the coffin and take from it the mummy of the Pharaoh.

* * The second pyramid was opened to Europeans in 1816 by Belzoni.

The exact date of the entrance of the Arabs is given us by an inscription, written in ink, on one of the walls of the sarcophagus chamber: “Mohammed Ahmed Effendi, the quarryman, opened it; Othman Effendi was present, as well as the King Ali Mohammed, at the beginning and at the closing.

” The King Ali Mohammed was the son and successor of Saladin.