Ten years' digging in Egypt, 1881-1891

by W. M. Flinders Petrie

The temple of the third pyramid is the most complete, and gives the best notion of the enclosures around the cell or chamber, in which the offerings to the deceased king were presented. This view is from the top of the pyramid, looking down into it. At the end of its causeway are a few trees, and a hill on the right, with remains of another causeway leading from it to the plain.

5. Temple of Third Pyramid.

Of the inside of the pyramids there were already numerous measurements recorded, which showed that small differences and errors existed in the work; but some fresh and more accurate methods of examination were needed. Instead then of simply measuring from wall to wall, and remaining in ignorance of where the discrepancies lay, I always used plumb-lines for measuring all upright faces, and a levelling instrument for all horizontal surfaces. By hanging a plumb-line in each corner of a room, and measuring from it to the walls at many parts of the height, and then observing the distances of the plumb-lines on the floor, it is easy to find the dimensions of the room at any level, and to know exactly where the faults of construction lie. The same principle gives us the readiest way of examining a solid, such as a sarcophagus; and we can thus, in a few hours, do more than in as many days’ work with elaborate apparatus. Some thread, and a piece of wax to stick it on with, are all that is needed beside the plain measuring rods.

The results of thus attacking the subject were, that on the one hand most brilliant workmanship was disclosed, while on the other hand it was intermingled with some astonishing carelessness and clumsiness. The laying out of the base of the great pyramid of Khufu is a triumph of skill; its errors, both in length and in angles, could be covered by placing one’s thumb on them; and to lay out a square of more than a furlong in the side (and with rock in the midst of it, which prevented any diagonal checks being measured) with such accuracy shows surprising care. The work of the casing stones which remain is of the same class; the faces are so straight and so truly square, that when the stones were built together the film of mortar left between them is on an average not thicker than one’s thumb nail, though the joint is a couple of yards long; and the levelling of them over long distances has not any larger errors. In the inside of the pyramid the same fine work is seen: the entrance passage joints are in many cases barely visible when searched for; in the Queen’s chamber, when the encrusting salt is scraped away, the joints are found with cement not thicker than a sheet of paper; while in the King’s chamber the granite courses have been dressed to a fine equality, not varying more than a straw’s breadth in a furlong length of blocks.

6. Casing beneath Rubbish North of Pyramid. Arab Hole above it.

Side by side with this splendid work are the strangest mistakes. After having levelled the casing so finely, the builders made a hundred times the error in levelling the shorter length of the King’s chamber, so that they might have done it far better by just looking at the horizon. After having dressed the casing joints so beautifully, they left the face of the wall in the grand gallery rough chiselled. The design was changed, and a rough shaft was cut from the side of the gallery, down through the building and the rock, to the lower end of the entrance passage. The granite in the ante-chamber is left without its final dressing. And the kernel of the whole, the sarcophagus, has much worse work in it than in the building, or than in other sarcophagi of the same period. The meaning of this curious discrepancy seems to be that the original architect, a true master of accuracy and fine methods, must have ceased to superintend the work when it was but half done. His personal influence gone, the training of his school was not sufficient to carry out the remainder of the building in the first style. Thus the base and the casing around it, the building of the Queen’s chamber, and the preparation of the granite for the King’s chamber, must all have had the master’s eye; but the carelessness of the pupils appears so soon as the control was removed. Mere haste will not account for egregious mistakes, such as that of the King’s chamber level, which the skilful architect would have remedied by five minutes’ observation. This suggests that the exquisite workmanship often found in the early periods, did not so much depend on a large school or widespread ability, as on a few men far above their fellows, whose every touch was a triumph. In this way we can reconcile it with the crude, and often clumsy, work in building and sculpture found in the same ages. There were no trades union rules against ‘besting one’s mates’ in those days, any more than in any business at present where real excellence is wanted.