Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/301

 The Tomb under the Ancient Empire. 2 1 1 carefully constructed passages to which they were the means of giving access, have any signs been, discovered, or at least, reported, of the junctions of different surfaces and slopes which must have existed according to the theory which we arc noticing. We should expect, at least, to find the nearly upright sides of the cubic mass with which the pyramid began, contrasting with the comparatively gentle slopes which were built against it. These different parts of the pyramid, we are told, were built and fin- ished separately, a proceeding which, if the later parts were to be properly fitted to the earlier and the final stability of the monu- ment assured, would have demanded a minute and scrupulous care which was not common with Egyptian workmen. How, without numerous throuo-h bondinof-stones, could those slides and settle- ments be prevented to which the want of homogeneity in the structure would otherwise be sure to lead '^. But we are not told that any such junctions of old and new work are to be found even in those points where they would be most conspicuous, namely, in the galleries leading to the internal chambers, where a practised eye could hardly fail to note the transition. We do not say that there are no such transitions, but we think the advocates of the new theory should have begun by pointing them out if they exist. There is another difficulty in their way. How is their system to explain the position of the mummy-chamber in certain pyra- mids ? Let us take that of Cheops as an example. If its internal arrangements had been fixed from the beginning, if the intention had been from the first to place the mummy-chamber where we now find it, at about one-third of the whole height, why should the builders have complicated their task by imposing upon themselves these ever difficult junctions ? Would it not have been far better to build the pyramid at once to the required height, leaving in its thickness the necessary galleries ? The same observation applies to the discharging chambers above the mummy-chamber. The whole of these arranQ[-ements, the <y vestibule with its wonderful masonry, the chambers and the structural voids above them, appear to have been conceived and carried out at one time, and by the same brains and hands. Not a sign is to be found of those more or less well-veiled transitions which are never absent when the work of one time and one set of hands has to be united with that of another. Or are we to believe that, they commenced by building a hill of stone composed of those different pyramids one