History Of Egypt, Chaldea, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Vol. 2 — 16 - Vol. 02, Ch. 02: The Memphite Empire, pt. 4

Of Khephren’s sons, Menkaûrî (Mykerinos), who was his successor, could scarcely dream of excelling his father and grandfather;* his pyramid, the Supreme--Hirû** --barely attained an elevation of 216 feet, and was exceeded in height by those which were built at a later date.

*** Up to one-fourth of its height it was faced with syenite, and the remainder, up to the summit, with limestone.

**** * Classical tradition makes Mykerinos the son of Kheops.

Egyptian tradition regards him as the son of Khephren, and with this agrees a passage in the Westcar Papyrus, in which a magician prophesies that after Kheops his son (Khâfrî) will yet reign, then the son of the latter (Menkaûrî), then a prince of another family.

** An inscription, unfortunately much mutilated, from the tomb of Tabhûni, gives an account of the construction of the pyramid, and of the transport of the sarcophagus.

*** Professor Petrie reckons the exact height of the pyramid at 2564 ±15 or 2580 ± 2 inches; that is to say, 214 or 215 feet in round numbers.

**** According to Herodotus, the casing of granite extended to half the height.

Diodorus states that it did not go beyond the fifteenth course.

Professor Petrie discovered that there were actually sixteen lower courses in red granite.

For lack of time, doubtless, the dressing of the granite was not completed, but the limestone received all the polish it was capable of taking.

The enclosing wall was extended to the north so as to meet, and become one with, that of the second pyramid.

The temple was connected with the plain by a long and almost straight causeway, which ran for the greater part of its course* upon an embankment raised above the neighbouring ground.

This temple was in fair condition in the early years of the eighteenth century,** and so much of it as has escaped the ravages of the Mameluks, bears witness to the scrupulous care and refined art employed in its construction.

* This causeway should not be confounded, as is frequently done, with that which may be seen at some distance to the east in the plain: the latter led to limestone quarries in the mountain to the south of the plateau on which the pyramids stand.

These quarries were worked in very ancient times.

** Benoit de Maillet visited this temple between 1692 and 1708. “It is almost square in form.

There are to be found inside four pillars which doubtless supported a vaulted roof covering the altar of the idol, and one moved around these pillars as in an ambulatory.

These stones were cased with granitic marble.

I found some pieces still unbroken which had been attached to the stones with mastic.

I believe that the exterior as well as the interior of the temple was cased with this marble” (Le Mascrier, Description de l’Egypte, 1735, pp. 223, 224).

[Illustration: 192. jpg DIORITE STATUE OF MENRAÛRÏ] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, by Emil Brugsch-Bey, of a statue preserved in the Museum of Gîzeh.

Coming from the plain, we first meet with an immense halting-place measuring 100 feet by 46 feet, and afterwards enter a large court with an egress on each side: beyond this we can distinguish the ground-plan only of five chambers, the central one, which is in continuation with the hall, terminating at a distance of some 42 feet from the pyramid, exactly opposite the middle point of the eastern face.

The whole mass of the building covers a rectangular area 184 feet long by a little over 177 feet broad.

Its walls, like those of the temple of the Sphinx, contained a core of lime-stone 7 feet 10 inches thick, of which the blocks have been so ingeniously put together as to suggest the idea that the whole is cut out of the rock.

This core was covered with a casing of granite and alabaster, of which the remains preserve no trace of hieroglyphs or of wall scenes: the founder had caused his name to be inscribed on the statues, which received, on his behalf, the offerings, and also on the northern face of the pyramid, where it was still shown to the curious towards the first century of our era.

The arrangement of the interior of the pyramid is somewhat complicated, and bears witness to changes brought unexpectedly about in the course of construction.

The original central mass probably did not exceed 180 feet in breadth at the base, with a vertical height of 154 feet.

It contained a sloping passage cut into the hill itself, and an oblong low-roofed cell devoid of ornament.

The main bulk of the work had been already completed, and the casing not yet begun, when it was decided to alter the proportions of the whole.

[Illustration: 194. jpg THE COFFIN OF MYKERINOS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin.

The coffin is in the British Museum.

The drawing of it was published by Vyse, by Birch-Lenormant, and by Lepsius.

Herr Sethe has recently revived an ancient hypothesis, according to which it had been reworked in the Saite period, and he has added to archaeological considerations, up to that time alone brought to bear upon the question, new philological facts.

Mykerinos was not, it appears, the eldest son and appointed heir of Khephren; while still a mere prince he was preparing for himself a pyramid similar to those which lie near the “Horizon,” when the deaths of his father and brother called him to the throne.

What was sufficient for him as a child, was no longer suitable for him as a Pharaoh; the mass of the structure was increased to its present dimensions, and a new inclined passage was effected in it, at the end of which a hall panelled with granite gave access to a kind of antechamber.

* The latter communicated by a horizontal corridor with the first vault, which was deepened for the occasion; the old entrance, now no longer of use, was roughly filled up.

** * Vyse discovered here fragments of a granite sarcophagus, perhaps that of the queen; the legends which Herodotus (ii.

134, 135), and several Greek authors after him, tell concerning this, show clearly that an ancient tradition assumed the existence of a female mummy in the third pyramid alongside of that of the founder Mykerinos.

** Vyse has noticed, in regard to the details of the structure, that the passage now filled up is the only one driven from the outside to the interior; all the others were made from the inside to the outside, and consequently at a period when this passage, being the only means of penetrating into the interior of the monument, had not yet received its present dimensions.

Mykerinos did not find his last resting-place in this upper level of the interior of the pyramid: a narrow passage, hidden behind the slabbing of the second chamber, descended into a secret crypt, lined with granite and covered with a barrel-vaulted roof.

The sarcophagus was a single block of blue-black basalt, polished, and carved into the form of a house, with a façade having three doors and three openings in the form of windows, the whole framed in a rounded moulding and surmounted by a projecting cornice such as we are accustomed to see on the temples.

* * It was lost off the coast of Spain in the vessel which was bringing it to England.

We have only the drawing remaining which was made at the time of its discovery, and published by Vyse.

M.

Borchardt has attempted to show that it was reworked under the XXVIth Saite dynasty as well as the wooden coffin of the king.

The mummy-case of cedar-wood had a man’s head, and was shaped to the form of the human body; it was neither painted nor gilt, but an inscription in two columns, cut on its front, contained the name of the Pharaoh, and a prayer on his behalf: “Osiris, King of the two Egypts, Menkaûrî, living eternally, given birth to by heaven, conceived by Nûît, flesh of Sibii, thy mother Nûît has spread herself out over thee in her name of ‘Mystery of the Heavens,’ and she has granted that thou shouldest be a god, and that thou shouldest repulse thine enemies, O King of the two Egypts, Menkaûrî, living eternally.

” The Arabs opened the mummy to see if it contained any precious jewels, but found within it only some leaves of gold, probably a mask or a pectoral covered with hieroglyphs.

When Vyse reopened the vault in 1837, the bones lay scattered about in confusion on the dusty floor, mingled with bundles of dirty rags and wrappings of yellowish woollen cloth.

The worship of the three great pyramid-building kings continued in Memphis down to the time of the Greeks and Romans.

Their statues, in granite, limestone, and alabaster, were preserved also in the buildings annexed to the temple of Phtah, where visitors could contemplate these Pharaohs as they were when alive.

[Illustration: 196. jpg THE GRANITE SARCOPHAGUS OF MYKERINOS] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a chromolithograph in Prisse D’Avennes, _Histoire de l’Art Égyptien_.

Those of Khephren show us the king at different ages, when young, mature, or already in his decadence.

They are in most cases cut out of a breccia of green diorite, with long irregular yellowish veins, and of such hardness that it is difficult to determine the tool with which they were worked.

The Pharaoh sits squarely on his royal throne, his hands on his lap, his body firm and upright, and his head thrown back with a look of self-satisfaction.

A sparrow-hawk perched on the back of his seat covers his head with its wings--an image of the god Horus protecting his son.

The modelling of the torso and legs of the largest of these statues, the dignity of its pose, and the animation of its expression, make of it a unique work of art which may be compared with the most perfect products of antiquity.

Even if the cartouches which tell us the name of the king had been hammered away and the insignia of his rank destroyed, we should still be able to determine the Pharaoh by his bearing: his whole appearance indicates a man accustomed from his infancy to feel himself invested with limitless authority.

Mykerinos stands out less impassive and haughty: he does not appear so far removed from humanity as his predecessor, and the expression of his countenance agrees, somewhat singularly, with the account of his piety and good nature preserved by the legends.

The Egyptians of the Theban dynasties, when comparing the two great pyramids with the third, imagined that the disproportion in their size corresponded with a difference of character between their royal occupants.

Accustomed as they were from infancy to gigantic structures, they did not experience before “the Horizon” and “the Great” the feeling of wonder and awe which impresses the beholder of to-day.

They were not the less apt on this account to estimate the amount of labour and effort required to complete them from top to bottom.

This labour seemed to them to surpass the most excessive corvée which a just ruler had a right to impose upon his subjects, and the reputation of Kheops and Khephren suffered much in consequence.

They were accused of sacrilege, of cruelty, and profligacy.

[Illustration: 198. jpg DIORITE STATUE OF KHEPHREN, GÎZEU MUSEUM] Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey.

It is one of the most complete statues found by Mariette in the temple of the Sphinx.

It was urged against them that they had arrested the whole life of their people for more than a century for the erection of their tombs.

Kheops began by closing the temples and by prohibiting the offering of sacrifices: he then compelled all the Egyptians to work for him.

To some he assigned the task of dragging the blocks from the quarries of the Arabian chain to the Nile: once shipped, the duty was incumbent on others of transporting them as far as the Libyan chain.

A hundred thousand men worked at a time, and were relieved every three months.

* * Professor Petrie thinks that this detail rests upon an authentic tradition.

The inundation, he says, lasts three months, during which the mass of the people have nothing to do; it was during these three months that Kheops raised the 100,000 men to work at the transport of the stone.

The explanation is very ingenious, but it is not supported by the text: Herodotus does not relate that 100,000 men were called by the corvée for three months every year; but from three months to three months, possibly four times a year, bodies of 100,000 men relieved each other at the work.

The figures which he quotes are well-known legendary numbers, and we must leave the responsibility for them to the popular imagination (Wiedemann, Herodots Zweites Buck, p. 465).

The period of the people’s suffering was divided as follows: ten years in making the causeway along which the blocks were dragged--a work, in my opinion, very little less onerous than that of erecting the pyramid, for its length was five _stadia_, its breadth ten _orgyio_, its greatest height eight, and it was made of cut stone and covered with figures.

* Ten years, therefore, were consumed in constructing this causeway and the subterranean chambers hollowed out in the hill....

As for the pyramid itself, twenty years were employed in the making of it....

There are recorded on it, in Egyptian characters, the value of the sums paid in turnips, onions, and garlic, for the labourers attached to the works;

if I remember aright, the interpreter who deciphered the inscription told me that the total amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver.

If this were the case, how much must have been expended for iron to make tools, and for provisions and clothing for the workmen?

** * Diodorus Siculus declares that there were no causeways to be seen in his time.

The remains of one of them appear to have been discovered and restored by Vyse.

** Herodotus, ii.

124, 125. The inscriptions which were read upon the pyramids were the graffiti of visitors, some of them carefully executed.

The figures which were shown to Herodotus represented, according to the dragoman, the value of the sums expended for vegetables for the workmen; we ought, probably, to regard them as the thousands which, in many of the votive temples, served to mark the quantities of different things presented to the god, that they might be transmitted to the deceased.

The whole resources of the royal treasure were not sufficient for such necessaries: a tradition represents Kheops as at the end of his means, and as selling his daughter to any one that offered, in order to procure money.

* Another legend, less disrespectful to the royal dignity and to paternal authority, assures us that he repented in his old age, and that he wrote a sacred book much esteemed by the devout.

** * Herodotus, ii.

126. She had profited by what she received to build a pyramid for herself in the neighbourhood of the great one--the middle one of the three small pyramids: it would appear in fact, that this pyramid contained the mummy of a daughter of Kheops, Honîtsonû.

** Manetho, Unger’s edition, p. 91. The ascription of a book to Kheops, or rather the account of the discovery of a “sacred book” under Kheops, is quite in conformity with Egyptian ideas.

The British Museum possesses two books, which were thus discovered under this king; the one, a medical treatise, in a temple at Coptos; the other comes from Tanis.

Among the works on alchemy published by M. Berthelot, there are two small treatises ascribed to Sophé, possibly Souphis or Kheops: they are of the same kind as the book mentioned by Manetho, and which Syncellus says was bought in Egypt.

Khephren had imitated, and thus shared with, him, the hatred of posterity.

The Egyptians avoided naming these wretches: their work was attributed to a shepherd called Philitis, who in ancient times pastured his flocks in the mountain; and even those who did not refuse to them the glory of having built the most enormous sepulchres in the world, related that they had not the satisfaction of reposing in them after their death.

The people, exasperated at the tyranny to which they had been subject, swore that they would tear the bodies of these Pharaohs from their tombs, and scatter their fragments to the winds: they had to be buried in crypts so securely placed that no one has succeeded in finding them.

Like the two older pyramids, “the Supreme” had its anecdotal history, in which the Egyptians gave free rein to their imagination.

We know that its plan had been rearranged in the course of building, that it contained two sepulchral chambers, two sarcophagi, and two mummies: these modifications, it was said, belonged to two distinct reigns; for Mykerinos had left his tomb unfinished, and a woman had finished it at a later date--according to some, Nitokris, the last queen of the VIth dynasty; according to others, Rhodopis, the Ionian who was the mistress of Psammetichus I. or of Ainasis.

* * Zoega had already recognized that the Rhodopis of the Greeks was no other than the Nitokris of Manetho, and his opinion was adopted and developed by Bunsen.

The legend of Rhodopis was completed by the additional ascription to the ancient Egyptian queen of the character of a courtesan: this repugnant trait seems to have been borrowed from the same class of legends as that which concerned itself with the daughter of Kheops and her pyramid.

The narrative thus developed was in a similar manner confounded with another popular story, in which occurs the episode of the slipper, so well known from the tale of Cinderella.

Herodotus connects Rhodopis with his Amasis, Ælian with King Psammetichus of the XXVIth dynasty.