Tombs.
Around the Pyramids from Abouraash, north of Gizeh to Medum, south of Sakkara, a distance of over 15 miles, forming the Necropolis of Memphis, numberless smaller sepulchres are found, which appear to have been appropriated to private individuals, as the pyramids were—so far as we can ascertain—reserved for kings, or, at all events, for persons of royal blood. These tombs are now known under the term of mastabas, to which we have already referred. The mastaba is a rectangular building varying in size from 15 to 150 ft. in width and length, and from 10 to 80 ft. in height. Their general form is that of a truncated pyramid with an angle of 75° to the horizon, low, and looking exceedingly like a house with sloping walls, with only one door leading to the interior, though they may contain several apartments, and no attempt is made to conceal the entrance. The chambers consist (1) of reception rooms and (2) of serdabs, which are closed cells containing the terra-cotta statuettes which represent the Ka’s or doubles of the deceased. These chambers occupy a part only of the mastaba, the remainder being solid masonry or brickwork. The body seems to have been hidden from profanation by being hid in a pit sunk in the rock, the entrance to which was concealed, and could be approached only through the solid core of the mastaba.
Unlike the pyramids, the walls are covered with the paintings above alluded to, and everything in this “eternal dwelling”[[38]] of the dead is made to resemble the abodes of the living; as was afterwards the case with the Etruscans. It is owing to this circumstance that we are able not only to realise so perfectly the civil life of the Egyptians at this period, but to fix the dates of the whole series by identifying the names of the kings who built the pyramids with those on the walls of the tombs that surround them.[[39]]
Like all early architecture, that of these tombs shows evident symptoms of having been borrowed from a wooden original. The lintels of the doorways are generally rounded, and the walls mere square posts, grooved and jointed together, every part of it being as unlike a stone architecture as can possibly be conceived. Yet the pyramids themselves, and those tombs which are found outside them, are generally far removed from the forms employed in timber structures; and it is only when we find the Egyptians indulging in decorative art that we trace this more primitive style. There are two doorways of this class in the British Museum and many in that of Berlin. One engraved in Lepsius’s work (Woodcut No. [11]) gives a fair idea of this style of decorative art, in the most elaborate form in which we now know it. It is possible that some of its forms may have been derived from brick architecture, but the lintel certainly was of wood, and so it may be suspected were the majority of its features. It certainly is a transitional form, and though we only find it in stone, none of its peculiarities were derived from lithic arts. Perhaps one of the best illustrations of the architectural forms of that day was the sarcophagus of Mycerinus, unfortunately lost on its way to England. It represented a palace, with all the peculiarities found on a larger scale in the buildings which surround the pyramid, and with that peculiar cornice and still more singular roll or ligature on the angles, most evidently a carpentry form, but which the style retained to its latest day.
11. Doorway in Tomb at the Pyramids. (From Lepsius.)
12. Sarcophagus of Mycerinus, found in Third Pyramid.
In many of these tombs square piers are found supporting the roofs sometimes, but rarely, with an abacus, and generally without any carved work, though it is more than probable they were originally painted with some device, upon which they depended for their ornament. In most instances they look more like fragments of a wall, of which the intervening spaces had been cut away, than pillars in the sense in which we usually understand the word; and in every case in the early ages they must be looked upon more as utilitarian expedients than as parts of an ornamental style of architecture.