[158] Briefe aus Ægypten, p. 23 et seq. Before the Prussian commission left Middle for Upper Egypt they had studied 130 private tombs, of which the principal ones are figured in the Denkmæler.
[159] Lexicographers do not seem to know the origin of this word; they believe it to be foreign, perhaps Persian.
[160] Vol. xix. (1869), pp. 1-22 and 81-89.
[161] Ebers (Ægypten, p. 137) gives this necropolis a length of more than forty-five miles, but in making it extend to Meidoum he seems to be exaggerating.
[162] Upon the plateau which, at Sakkarah, extends westwards of the stepped pyramid the manner in which the necropolis was developed can be readily seen. In walking eastwards, that is, from the pyramid towards the cultivated land, we pass a first zone of tombs which date from the Ancient Empire, a second which possesses sculptures of the twenty-sixth dynasty, and a third which dates from the Greek period.
[163] We may quote as an interesting example of such usurpation the Theban tomb first opened by a Scottish traveller, Henry Rhind, to whose interesting work (Thebes, its Tombs and their Tenants, Ancient and Present, with a Record of Excavations in the Necropolis, Longman, 1862, 8vo.) we shall often have to refer. This tomb seems to have been made in the reign of Amenophis III. by a brother and sister whose statues were found in it, but it also contained Sebau, son of Menkara, a high official of the time of the Ptolemies, with his wife and all his family (c. iv.).
[164] Mariette (Voyage dans la haute Égypte, p. 32) thought that the word Sakkarah was an ancient name derived from Socharis, a Memphite form of Osiris.
[165] The way in which the mastabas were arranged with respect to each other is well shown in plates xiv. and xviii. of Lepsius's first volume (map of the pyramids of Gizeh and panorama taken from the summit of the second pyramid).
[166] The general aspect of this city of the dead, and the regularity of its monuments, made a great impression upon the members of the "Institut d'Égypte." The following are the words of Jomard (Description, vol. v. p. 619): "From the top of the building one sees an infinite quantity of the long rectangular structures extending almost to the Pyramids. They are carefully oriented, and exactly aligned one with another. I counted fourteen rows of them, in each direction, on the west of the Great Pyramid, and as many on the east, making nearly four hundred in all. The sand under which many of them are buried leaves their forms easily distinguishable." Since the time of Jomard many of the mastabas have been changed by the excavations into mere formless heaps of débris, and yet the general arrangement can still be clearly followed.
[167] One of these exceptions is furnished by the tomb of Ti, of which we shall often have to speak ([Fig. 114]). The large public hall near the entrance to the tomb was separated from the two chambers farther in by a corridor closed at two points by doors, some remains of which were found in place when the tomb was opened.