The tunnels running straight into the mountain were low and wide, and were supported at intervals by pillars of sandstone left in situ. These tunnels led into chambers of various sizes, whence they followed the lead of the veins of precious mineral. The turquoise sparkled on every side—on the ceiling and on the walls—and the miners, profiting by the slightest fissures, cut round it, and then with forcible blows detached the blocks, and reduced them to small fragments, which they crushed, and carefully sifted so as not to lose a particle of the gem. The oxides of copper and of manganese which they met with here and elsewhere in moderate quantities, were used in the manufacture of those beautiful blue enamels of various shades which the Egyptians esteemed so highly. The few hundreds of men of which the permanent population was composed, provided for the daily exigencies of industry and commerce. Royal inspectors arrived from time to time to examine into their condition, to rekindle their zeal, and to collect the product of their toil. When Pharaoh had need of a greater quantity than usual of minerals or turquoises, he sent thither one of his officers, with a select body of carriers, mining experts, and stone-dressers. Sometimes as many as two or three thousand men poured suddenly into the peninsula, and remained there one or two months; the work went briskly forward, and advantage was taken of the occasion to extract and transport to Egypt beautiful blocks of diorite, serpentine or granite, to be afterwards manufactured there into sarcophagi or statues. Engraved stelæ, to be seen on the sides of the mountains, recorded the names of the principal chiefs, the different bodies of handicraftsmen who had participated in the campaign, the name of the sovereign who had ordered it and often the year of his reign.
It was not one tomb only which Snofrui had caused to be built, but two. He called them “Khâ,” the Rising, the place where the dead Pharaoh, identified with the sun, is raised above the world for ever. One of these was probably situated near Dahshur; the other, the “Khâ rîsi,” the Southern Rising, appears to be identical with the monument of Mêdûm.
Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the plans of Flinders Petrie,
Medum, pl. ii.
The pyramid, like the mastaba,* represents a tumulus with four sides, in which the earthwork is replaced by a structure of stone or brick. It indicates the place in which lies a prince, chief, or person of rank in his tribe or province. It was built on a base of varying area, and was raised to a greater or less elevation according to the fortune of the deceased or of his family.**
* No satisfactory etymon for the word pyramid, has as yet
been proposed: the least far-fetched is that put forward by
Cantor-Eisenlohr, according to which pyramid is the Greek
form, irupauç, of the compound term “piri-m-ûisi,” which in
Egyptian mathematical phraseology designates the salient
angle, the ridge or height of the pyramid.
** The brick pyramids of Abydos were all built for private
persons. The word “mirit,” which designates a pyramid in
the texts, is elsewhere applied to the tombs of nobles and
commoners as well as to those of kings.
The fashion of burying in a pyramid was not adopted in the environs of Memphis until tolerably late times, and the Pharaohs of the primitive dynasties were interred, as their subjects were, in sepulchral chambers of mastabas. Zosiri was the only exception, if the step-pyramid of Saqqâra, as is probable, served for his tomb.*
* It is difficult to admit that a pyramid of considerable
dimensions could have disappeared without leaving any traces
behind, especially when we see the enormous masses of
masonry which still mark the sites of those which have been
most injured; besides, the inscriptions connect none of the
predecessors of Snofrûi with a pyramid, unless it be Zosiri.
The step-pyramid of Saqqâra, which is attributed to the
latter, belongs to the same type as that of Mêdûm; so does
also the pyramid of Rigah, whose occupant is unknown. If we
admit that this last-mentioned pyramid served as a tomb to
some intermediate Pharaoh between Zosiri and Snofrûi—for
instance, Hûni—the use of pyramids would be merely
exceptional for sovereigns anterior to the IVth dynasty.
The motive which determined Snofrûi’s choice of Mêdûm as a site, is unknown to us: perhaps he dwelt in that city of Heracleopolis, which in course of time frequently became the favourite residence of the kings; perhaps he improvised for himself a city in the plain between El-Wastah and Kafr el-Ayat. His pyramid, at the present time, is composed of three large unequal cubes with slightly inclined sides, arranged in steps one above the other. Some centuries ago five could be still determined, and in ancient times, before ruin had set in, as many as seven. Each block marked a progressive increase of the total mass, and bad its external face polished—a fact which we can still determine by examining the slabs one behind another; a facing of large blocks, of which many of the courses still exist towards the base, covered the whole, at one angle from the apex to the foot, and brought it into conformity with the type of the classic pyramid. The passage had its orifice in the middle of the north face about sixty feèt above the ground: it is five feet high, and dips at a tolerably steep angle through the solid masonry. At a depth of a hundred and ninety-seven feet it becomes level, without increasing in aperture, runs for forty feet on this plane, traversing two low and narrow chambers, then making a sharp turn it ascends perpendicularly until it reaches the floor of the vault. The latter is hewn out of the mountain rock, and is small, rough, and devoid of ornament: the ceiling appears to be in three heavy horizontal courses of masonry, which project one beyond the other corbel-wise, and give the impression of a sort of acutely pointed arch. Snofrûi slept there for ages; then robbers found a way to him, despoiled and broke up his mummy, scattered the fragments of his coffin upon the ground, and carried off the stone sarcophagus. The apparatus of beams and cords of which they made use for the descent, hung in their place above the mouth of the shaft until ten years ago. The rifling of the tomb took place at a remote date, for from the XXth dynasty onwards the curious were accustomed to penetrate into the passage: two scribes have scrawled their names in ink on the back of the framework in which the stone cover was originally inserted. The sepulchral chapel was built a little in front of the east face; it consisted of two small-sized rooms with bare surfaces, a court whose walls abutted on the pyramid, and in the court, facing the door, a massive table of offerings flanked by two large stelo without inscriptions, as if the death of the king had put a stop to the decoration before the period determined on by the architects. It was still accessible to any one during the XVIIIth dynasty, and people came there to render homage to the memory of Snofrûi or his wife Mirisônkhû. Visitors recorded in ink on the walls their enthusiastic, but stereotyped impressions: they compared the “Castle of Snofrûi” with the firmament, “when the sun arises in it; the heaven rains incense there and pours out perfumes on the roof.” Ramses II., who had little respect for the works of his predecessors, demolished a part of the pyramid in order to procure cheaply the materials necessary for the buildings which he restored to Heracleopolis. His workmen threw down the waste stone and mortar beneath the place where they were working, without troubling themselves as to what might be beneath; the court became choked up, the sand borne by the wind gradually invaded the chambers, the chapel disappeared, and remained buried for more than three thousand years.