Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/305

 The Tomb under the Ancient Empire. 215 sepulchres seem to us to represent a different type of funerary architecture, a type created by the ancient empire, and meriting special notice at our hands. The monument which rises so conspicuously from the plain near the village of Meidoum on the road to the Fayoum, is called by Arabs the Haram-el-Kabbab, or "the false pyramid." It is, in fact, not so much a pyramid, strictly speaking, as a mass formed of three square towers with slightly inclined sides superimposed one upon the other, the second being less in area than the first, and the third than the second. The remains of a fourth story may be distinguished on the summit of the third ; some see in them the remains of a small pyramid; others those of a cone. Judging from the names found in the neighbouring mastabas, FiG. 146, — The Pyramid of Meidoum ; from Perrinsj. which were opened and examined by Mariette, this is the tomb of Snefrou I., one of the greatest kings of the third dynasty.^ The Mastabat-el-Faraoun or " Seat of Pharaoh," as the Arabs call it, is a huge rectangular mass with sloping sides ; it is about 66 feet high, 340 long, and 240 deep. It is oriented like the pyramids. It is a royal tomb with internal arrangements which resemble those in the pyramid of Mycerinus ; the same sloping galleries, the same chambers, the same great lateral niches. Upon a block lying at the foot of the structure of which it had once formed a part, Mariette found a quarry-mark traced in red ochre which seemed to him to form part of the name of Ounas, one of the last kings of the fifth dynasty (Figs. 109 and 147). ^ P(?iY74,'-t' (fans la Hai/fc-Egypfe, vol. i. p. 45.