"Without attempting to solve the mystery connected with these archaic lapidary cups and ring cuttings, I would venture to remark that there is one use for which some of these olden stone carvings were in all probability devoted—namely, ornamentation. From the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., down to our own day, circles, single or double, and spirals, have formed, under various modifications, perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration. In prehistoric times the same taste for circular sculpturings, however rough and rude, seems to have swayed the mind of archaic man. This observation as to the probable ornamental origin of our cup and ring carvings holds, in my opinion, far more strongly in respect to some antique stone cuttings in Ireland and in Brittany, than to the ruder and simpler forms that I have described as existing in Scotland and England. For instance, the cut single and double volutes, the complete and half-concentric circles, the zig-zag, and other patterns which cover almost entirely and completely some stones in those magnificent though rude western Pyramids that constitute the grand old mausolea of Ireland and Brittany, appear to be, in great part at least, of an ornamental character, whatever else their import may be."
In a communication on the Great Pyramid, made to the Royal Society 16th December 1867, Professor Smyth most unexpectedly, and quite out of his way, took occasion to criticise severely the remarks contained in the preceding extract, on two grounds:
First, He laid down that the term pyramid was misapplied, as the term referred only to figures and structures of a special mathematical form; being apparently quite unaware that, as shown in the text and notes, pp. 219 and 220, it was often applied archæologically to sepulchral mounds and erections that were not faced, and which did not consist of a series of triangles meeting in an apex.
Secondly, He objected to the statement that, "from the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., circles and spirals, or modifications of them, constituted perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration;" because, though circles, spirals, etc., occurred in the later architecture of Thebes, etc., yet in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh no such decorations were to be found, nor, indeed, lapidary decorations of any other kind. Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, was, according to Manetho, "arrogant towards the gods." Was it this spirit of religious infidelity or scepticism that led to the rejection of any ornamentation? Professor Smyth notices what he himself terms an "ornament," "a most unique thing certainly," on the upper stone of what Greaves calls "the granite leaf" portcullis, in the interior of the Great Pyramid (ii. 100), and he represents it, it is now said erroneously in plate xii. as a portion of a double circle instead of a general raised elevation.[275]
All the other Pyramids of Gizeh seem, like the Great Pyramid, wonderfully free from lapidary decorations on their interior walls, the exteriors of all of them being now too much dilapidated to offer any distinct proof in relation to the subject; though in Herodotus' time there were hieroglyphics, at least on the external surface of the Great Pyramid. The whole surface of the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus, was sculptured. "It was," to use the words of Baron Bunsen, "very beautifully carved in compartments, in the Doric style" (vol. ii. 168). This carving, in the well-known carpentry form, was, according to Mr. Fergusson, a representation of a palace (Handbook of Architecture, p. 222).
Fragments, however, of lapidary sculpture have been found among the ruins of Egyptian pyramids supposed to be older than those of Gizeh, or than their builders, the Memphite kings of the fourth dynasty. Thus one of the most able and learned of modern Egyptologists, Baron Bunsen, has written at some length to show that the great northern brick pyramid of Dashoor belongs to the preceding or third dynasty of kings. Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, when digging among its ruins, discovered two or three fragments of sculptured casing and other stones, with a few pieces presenting broken hieroglyphic inscriptions. One of the ornamented fragments represents a row of floreated-like decorations, and each decoration shows on its side a concentric circle, consisting of three rings,—the whole ornament being one which is found in later Egyptian eras, not unfrequently along the tops of walls in the interior of chambers, etc. Mr. Perring represents this fragment of sculpturing from the brick Pyramid of Dashoor, in his folio work, The Pyramids of Gizeh, plate xiii. Fig. 7. Hence among the very earliest Egyptian lapidary decorations we have, as in other countries, the appearance of the simple circular ornamentation.
Besides, more complex circular and spiral decorations, in the form of the well-known guilloche and scroll, were made use of in Egypt during the sixth dynasty, or immediately after the Memphite dynasty that reared the larger Pyramids of Gizeh. Thus, speaking of the ancient Egyptian architectural decorations, Sir J. Gardner Wilkinson observes—"The Egyptians did not always confine themselves to the mere imitation of natural objects for ornament; and their ceilings and cornices offer numerous graceful fancy devices, among which are the guilloche, miscalled Tuscan borders, the chevron, and the scroll patterns. They are to be met with in a tomb of the time of the sixth dynasty; they are therefore known in Egypt many ages before they were adopted by the Greeks, and the most complicated form of the guilloche covered a whole Egyptian ceiling, upwards of a thousand years before it was represented on those comparatively late objects found at Nineveh."—Popular account of the Ancient Egyptians, ii. 290.
III.—ERA OF THE ARABIAN HISTORIAN, IBN ABD AL HAKM. (Page[236].)
Professor Smyth owns that the grooves and pin holes which the coffer in the King's Chamber presents, were (to use his own words) "in fact to admit a sliding sarcophagus cover or lid" (see ante, p. 236, footnote). But in his recent communication to the Royal Society on the 20th April, he doubted Al Hakm's account of the mummy having been actually found in the sarcophagus when the King's Chamber was first entered by the Caliph Al Mamoon, in the ninth century, arguing, on the authority of a Glasgow gentleman, that the historian himself, Al Hakm, did not live for three or four centuries afterwards, and, therefore, could not be relied upon. But all this reasoning or assertion is simply a mistake. In a late letter (7th April), Dr. Rieu of the British Museum,—the chief living authority among us on any such Arabic question,—writes, "The statement relating to Al Mamoon's discovery could hardly rest on a better authority than that of Ibn Abd Al Hakm; for not only was he a contemporary writer (having died at Old Cairo, A.H. 269, that is, thirty-eight years after Al Mamoon's death), but he is constantly quoted by later writers as an historian of the highest authority. You will find a notice of him in Khallikan's Biographical Dictionary, vol. ii. etc." He was a native of Egypt, and chief of the Shafite sect. Born in A.D. 799, he died in A.D. 882, or at the age of 83.
IV.—LENGTH OF THE SARCOPHAGUS IN THE KING'S CHAMBER. (Page 236.)