Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/319

 The Tomb under the Ancient Empire. 2 2< an exception to the whole practice of Egyptian sculpture as we know it. Until such works are proved to exist we decline to believe in them. The problem was a much simpler one in the cases of the pyra- mids in Lake Moeris. They were not nearly so lofty. Accord- ing to Herodotus they were about 309 feet high, doubtless including their statues. Situated as they were in the middle of the lake, Herodotus could not himself have measured them, and his statement that they sank as far below the level of the water as they rose above it is an obvious exaggeration. When the bed of the lake was formed, two masses of rock were no doubt reserved, as in the cases of the other pyramids, to form the core of the projected edifices, and therefore it is likely enough that the lowest courses of the constructions themselves dipped but little below the surface of the lake.^ In his amazement at the scale upon which the Egyptian buildings were conceived, Herodotus has too often attributed excessive dimensions to them ; thus he says that the height of the Great Pyramid was eight plethra, or about 820 feet, nearly 340 feet in excess of the truth. It is therefore probable that the figures which he gives for the lake pyramids are also exaggerated. These pyramids were, on account of their comparatively modest dimen- sions, much better adapted to the ideas of the Ousourtesens and Amenemhats than the gigantic piles of Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus. Finally there is not a text to be found, outside the pages of Herodotus, which mentions pyramids surmounted by statues, and upon none of those monuments which in one way or another bear representations of the pyramids are they shown in any other way than with pointed summits. Thus do we find them in the papyri, upon those steles of the Memphite necropolis which ^ If the passage in which Herodotus makes the statement here referred to be taken in connection with the remarks of Diodorus, a probable explanation of the old historian's assertion may be arrived at. Diodorus says that the king opi'rrwv TavT-qv {XLfjLvrjv sub.) KareXiTrev iv [xio-rj to'ttoi', iv w rdcfiov WKoSofiTjcre kol t)vo 7ri;pa/Atoa?, Tr]v jjikv kavTov, rrjv 8e t-^s yvvatKos, oraStaia? to tJi/^o?. By this it would appear that, ill excavating the bed, or a part of the bed, of the famous lake, a mass of earth was left in order to bear future witness to the depth of the excavation and the general magnitude of the work. This mass would probably be reveted with stone, and, in order that even when surrounded and almost hidden by water, its significance should not be lost, the pyramids raised upon it were made exactly- equal to it in height. —Ed.