Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/281

 The Tomb under the Ancient Empire. 191 fantastic invention, the same want of reflection and common sense. If such a costly barrier had been either useful or necessary it should at least have been prolonged from one end of Egypt to the other, and all the pyramids would not have been found assembled, with but few exceptions, in the neighbourhood of Memphis.^ No one in our day thinks of either starting or discussing such theories as these. There are, of course, several obscure points in the history of the pyramids, several details of their construction, which stimulate to fresh research and lend themselves to many different explanations ; but there can be no doubt as to their general character. Their exploration and the interpretations of the Egyptian texts have confirmed the assertions of those Greek writers who were most familiar with Egypt, such as Herodotus,^ Diodorus Siculus,^ and Strabo.* The Pyramids are sepulchres. " They are massive, simply conceived, carefully sealed up tombs. All entrance is forbidden even to their most carefully built corridors. They are tombs without windows, without doors, without exterior openings of any kind. They are the gigantic and impregnable dwellings of the mummy ; . . . their colossal dimensions have been invoked to bear out the arguments of those who would attribute to them some other destination, but they are in fact to be found of all sizes, some being no more than twenty feet high. Besides this, it must be remembered that in all Egypt no pyramid, or rather group of pyramids, is to be found, which is not the centre of a necropolis, a fact which is enough by itself to indicate their funerary character." ^ It is proved still more definitely, if that be possible, by the sarcophagi which have been found in the internal chambers, empty in most cases, because those chambers had been entered and despoiled, either in the days of antiquity or in those of the middle ages, but sometimes intact, as in the pyramid of Mycerinus. The pyramids were hermetically sealed. Even with- out direct evidence we might assert that it was so, knowing as we 1 FiALiN DE Persigny, De la Destinatmi et de /' Utilitc per7na7iente des Pyramides d' Egypte et de Niibie centre les Irruptions sablonneiises du Desert, Dh'eloppements du Mcmoire adresse a V Acadcmie des Sciences /e 14 Juillet, 1844, suivie d^une nouveUe inte7prttation de la Fable d Osiris et d'Isis. Paris, 1845, gr. in-8. - Herodotus, ii. 127. ^ Diodorus, 1. 64, 4. ^ Strabo, xvii. p. 1161, c. ^ Mariette, liineraire de la Hatite-Egypte, pp. 96, 97. [An excellent translation of this work into English, by M. Alphonse Mariette, has been published (Trubner, 1877, 8vo.)— Ed.] I