Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/326

 236 A History or Art in Ancient Egypt. pyramids are, so to speak, grouped chronologically from north to south ; those of the fourth dynasty at Gizeh, those of the fifth at Abooseer, those of the twelfth in the Fayoum. The excavations of Mariette as well as his own showed the tombs of the fifth and sixth dynasties to have been at Sakkarah. Hence M. Maspero thinks that the pyramids erected by the sovereigns of the seventh, eighth, ninth, and tenth dynasties are those between Sakkarah and the Fayoum. The future will show whether he is right or wrong. In any case science will profit by the new excavations which he is about to undertake." ^ When cross-examined by such questioners as M. Maspero the pyramids will tell us much. Hitherto they have attracted but little of that examination which discovers the most curious secrets, but their size and the beauty of their masonry will ever make the three great pyramids of Gizeh the most striking objects to the traveller and to the historian of art. Considering their age, these three pyramids are wonderfully well preserved. In their presence, even in their actual state of partial ruin, the oriental hyperbolism of Abd-uI-Latif, an Arab writer of the thirteenth century, seems no more than natural. " All things fear Time," he cries, " but Time fears the Pyramids ! " And yet time has done its work during the last few hundreds of years. The summits of the great structures have been slightly lowered ; the gaping breaches in their flanks have been gradually widened ; and although in spite of their stripped flanks and open wounds they still rear their heads proudly into the Egyptian sky, all those accessory structures which surrounded them, and fulfilled their own well-defined offices in the general monumental ensemble, have either been destroyed by the violence of man or engulfed by the encroaching sand. Where, for example, are those wide and substantial causeways, whose large and carefully adjusted blocks excited the wonder of Herodotus.^ After having afforded an unyielding roadway for the transport of so many heavy materials, they formed truly regal avenues by which the funeral processions of the Egyptians reached the centre of the necropolis as long as ' Moniteur Egyptien, March 15, 1881. 2 The causeway which led to the Pyramid of Cheops still exists for some 400 yards of its length ; here and there it rises as much as eighty-six feet above the surface of the plateau, A similar causeway is to be distinguished on the eastern side of the Third Pyramid. At Abou-Roash, at Abousir, and elsewhere, similar remains are to be found.