Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/258

 i68 A History of Art in Ancient Egypt. attributed to carelessness on the part of the builder, a common fault in these tombs, and not to a difference of intention. We often find that the northern face is not strictly parallel to the southern, nor that on the west to that on the east. " Although not varying much from true orientation, the mastabas of Sakkarah are not arranged with the symmetry which distin- guishes those on the south and west of the Great Pyramid.^ They are sprinkled about in a rather haphazard fashion. Here we find them well interspaced and there actually placed one upon another. KSii /^ / 7 ^ - I. v::!i /m /._ r Fig. 107. — Three mastabas at Gizeh. Perspective view, after the plan of Lepsius. {Denkmcrlei-, vol. i. pi. 24.) It follows that the chess-board arranofement which is so con- spicuous at Gizeh is not here to be noticed. Even at Sakkarah there were streets between the rows of tombs, but they are so 1 The general aspect of this city of the dead, and the regularity of its monuments, made a great impression upon the members of the " Institut d'Egypte." The fol- lowing are the words of Jomard {Description, vol. v. p. 619) : " From the top of the building one sees an infinite quantity of the long rectangular structures extending almost to the Pyramids. They are carefully oriented, and exactly aligned one with another. I counted fourteen rows of them, in each direction, on the west of the Great Pyramid, and as many on the east, making nearly four hundred in all. The sand under which many of them are buried leaves their forms easily distinguishable." Since the time of Jomard many of the mastabas have been changed by the excava- tions into mere formless heaps of debris, and yet the general arrangement can still be clearly followed.