There were many of the Egyptian princes who from want of patience or zeal, or from some other motive, failed to carry on the enterprise of their predecessors to its destined conclusion. We are ignorant as to the condition of the three great pyramids of Gizeh at the death of their projectors. But they appear to have been finished in most of their details with a care which would seem to indicate that Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus, must have been there to overlook the smallest details of their execution. Other pyramids, on the other hand, seem to have been left in a comparatively imperfect state.
These observations furnish us with an initial objection to the theory to which we have referred. Some may refuse to believe that Cheops intended from the beginning that his pyramid should have the dimensions and the internal arrangements which we now see. But why should he not have done so? If he had died at the end of a few years, his pyramid would, perhaps, have presented to us a shape like that of some other edifices of the same kind, a large base which had never received either its cope-stone or its casing. So too with those of Mycerinus and Chephren. Have not absolute monarchs existed at all times, whose infinite power seems to have made them forget the eternal limits of time and space? Sometimes Fortune has been cruel to them: but often she seems to have placed herself entirely at their disposal.
Among the causes which combine to make the royal tombs of the first six dynasties so unequal in height and appearance, the very unequal length of the reigns is the most important. If we were better acquainted with the condition of Egypt in those remote epochs, we should, no doubt, be enabled to give other reasons for their want of uniformity. The chances of completion and even of preservation in its complete state enjoyed by a pyramid must have greatly depended upon the descent of the crown. When king succeeded king in one family those chances were much better than when dynasty succeeded dynasty, whether the break were due to internal revolution or to the failure of the legitimate line. It is even possible that some of those pyramids which are now to outward appearance mere heaps of débris never received the mummy for whose reception they were designed and built.
The pyramids differ also in the materials employed. The great pyramids at Gizeh are built of fine limestone from Mokattam and Toura; the chief one at Sakkarah of a bad clayish limestone from the neighbouring rocks; at Dashour and Abou-Roash there are pyramids of unburnt brick. Finally there are pyramids built chiefly of stone which is kept in place by a carefully constructed skeleton, so to speak, of brick. This construction is to be found in the pyramid of Illahoun, at the entrance to the Fayoum ([Fig. 131]).
There is the same variety in the position of the mummy chamber. Sometimes this is within the sides of the pyramid itself, as in that of Cheops; sometimes, after the example of the mastaba, it is cut out of the living rock upon which the pyramid stands. This arrangement is to be found, for instance, in the pyramid of Mycerinus, where the roof of the mummy chamber is about 33 feet below the lowest course of the pyramid itself. So too in the Stepped Pyramid, where the whole complicated system of corridors and cells, which distinguishes that edifice, is cut in the rock, so that the building itself is absolutely solid. Most of the pyramids have no more than one or two entrances, giving access to narrow galleries, sometimes ascending, sometimes descending, which lead to one or two chambers of very small dimensions when compared to the enormous mass which rises above and around them ([Fig. 132]). In the subterranean part of the Stepped Pyramid the proportion of voids to solids is far less insignificant. This pyramid, which is not nearly so carefully oriented as the others, has four entrances and a series of internal passages, horizontal galleries, staircases and cells, which make it little else than a subterranean labyrinth. It is singular also in having, upon its central axis and at the point upon which, at various heights, all its galleries converge, a sort of large well, a chamber about twenty feet square and eighty feet high, in the pavement of which a huge block of granite cut into the shape of a cork or plug was so placed as to open at will[191] and leave a free passage for the descent into a second chamber, the purpose of which is more than obscure, as it is too small even to have contained a sarcophagus.[192] The end of the long passage which leads to the thirty chambers which have been counted beneath this pyramid has been found in the neighbouring sands ([Fig. 134]).
Fig. 131.—The pyramid of Illahoun, horizontal section in perspective;
from the plan of Perring.
Another point of difference: most of the pyramids are built round a core of living rock, which is embraced by the lower courses of their masonry. But the pyramid of Mycerinus is just the reverse of this. It is built over a hollow in the rock which is filled up with masonry. The inequalities of the surface were usually taken advantage of so as to economize material, and make a greater show with less labour. Mycerinus, however, did not fear to increase his task by rearing his pyramid over a depression in the plateau.
Fig. 132.—Section of the pyramid of Cheops; from Perring.