"Hence the peculiar aspect which the necropolis of Abydos must have presented when intact. Imagine a multitude of small pyramids five or six metres high, carelessly oriented or not at all, and uniformly built of crude brick. These pyramids always stand upon a plinth, they are hollow, and within they are formed into a clumsy cupola by means of roughly built off-sets. The pyramid stands directly over a chamber in its foundations which shelters the mummy. As soon as the latter was in place, the door of its chamber was closed by masonry."[235] An exterior chamber was often built in front of the pyramid, and being always left open, served for the performance of the sepulchral rites; but sometimes this chamber was absent and then those rites were carried through in the open air, before the stele of the deceased. This latter was sometimes erected upon the plinth, sometimes let into its face. A little cube of masonry is sometimes found at the foot of the stele, destined, no doubt, for funeral offerings. Sometimes the tomb had a surrounding wall of the same height as its plinth; this served to mark out the ground which belonged to it, and when the friends of the deceased met to do him honour, the entrance could be closed, and comparative privacy assured even in the absence of a funerary chapel.
Fig. 162.—Tomb at Abydos;
drawn in perspective from the elevation of Mariette.
Fig. 163.—Section of the above tomb.
These tombs, which were generally constructed with no great care, were for the most part without casing. The pyramidal form was given by setting each course of bricks slightly back from the one below it. When this part of the work was finished, each face was covered, as a rule, with a coat of rough concrete, which, in its turn, was hidden under a layer of white stucco. This multitude of little monuments, all of the same shape and of much the same size, must, when complete, have looked like the tents of an encamped army.
Fig. 164.—Stele of the eleventh dynasty, Abydos.
Drawn by Bourgoin. (Boulak.)
As these tombs were all upon the surface of the ground they have suffered more than any others from the attacks of man. Those which are reproduced among these lines of text were only recovered by Mariette by dint of patient excavation. And although these ill constructed edifices, so far as their materials are concerned, are still standing, they will soon follow the many thousands which once stood in serried ranks round the sepulchre of Osiris. The only remains of this necropolis which are likely to be preserved are the numberless steles which Mariette rescued from its débris. They form about four-fifths of the total number of those monuments now preserved in the museum at Boulak.[236] We figure two of them, one belonging to the Middle, the other to the New Empire ([Figs. 164] and [165]).