THE STEP-PYRAMID OF SAKKARAH.
The claim to the highest antiquity of the step-pyramid is disputed by some in favour of the "false pyramid" of Mêdûm. It also is a genuine step-pyramid, 115 feet high; its outline, which conceals some of the steps, shows three stages, seventy, twenty, and twenty-five feet high; but in its internal structure it is really a step-pyramid of six stages.
THE PYRAMID OF MÊDÛM.
This pyramid must, according to the important and conclusive researches of Professor Flinders Petrie,[106] be attributed to Seneferu, although De Rougé had furnished evidence to the contrary.[107] Seneferu was a king of the fourth dynasty.
We have at Dashûr the only remaining abnormal pyramid, called the blunted pyramid, for the reason that the inclination changes at about one-third of the height. This pyramid forms one of a group of four, two of stone, and, be it carefully borne in mind, two of brick; their dimensions are 700 × 700 × 326 feet; 620 × 620 × 321 feet; 350 × 350 × 90 feet; and 343 × 343 × 156 feet.
THE "BLUNTED PYRAMID" OF DASHÛR.
One of these pyramids was formerly supposed to have been built by Seneferu; if any of them had been erected by King Usertsen III. of the twelfth dynasty, as was formerly thought, the hypothesis we are considering would have been invalid.
Only after Seneferu, then, do we come to the normal Egyptian pyramid, the two largest at Gîzeh built by Cheops (Chufu) and Chephren (fourth dynasty) being, so far as is accurately known, the oldest of the series. (According to Mariette the date of Mena is 5004 B.C., and the fourth dynasty commenced in 4235.)