Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/329

 The Tomb under the Ancient EMpn<E. 239 was magnificently decorated. At the foot of the mountains of 'stone under which reposed the ashes of the Pharaohs themselves, smaller pyramids were raised for their wives and children. Of these some half dozen still exist upon the plateau of Gizeh. One of them has been recognized as the tomb of that daughter of Cheops, about whom Herodotus tells one of those absurd stories invented by the Egyptians of the decadence, with which his dragomans took such delight in imposing upon his simple faith. ^ Around the space which was thus consecrated to the adoration of the dead monarch, the long rows of mastabas stretched away for miles through the vast necropolis. The great ones of Egypt, all those who had been near the Pharaoh and had received some of his reflected glory, grouped their tombs as closely as possible about his. Distributed thus by reigns, the private tombs were erected in close juxtaposition one with another, each being provided with a stele, or sepulchral tablet . y^>7<.'-*^nj:' v.^ •>.^->v.t».'VT- ■^^x T^.-zv i.jvje-%-f-vjy:.rr<-iTT.'.TfrT7Wr ;7 s-=5== b- Fig. 158. — Pj^ramid with its inclosure, Abousir ; from Perring. upon which the name of the deceased was inscribed, most of them being adorned with painted bas-reliefs, and a few with statues placed upon their fagades. Upon the causeways which connected Memphis with the necropolis, upon the esplanades erected by the Pharaohs to the memory and for the adoration of their ancestors, in the countless streets, lanes, and blind alleys which gave access to the private tombs, advanced endless processions of mourners, driving before them the bleatinof and lowinof victims for the funeral rites. Priests in white linen, friends and relations of the dead with their hands full of fruit and flowers, flitted hither and thither. On the days appointed for the commemoration of the dead, all this must have afforded a curiously animated scene. The city of the dead had its peculiar life, we might almost say its festivals, like that of the living. But amid the coming and going, amid all the bustle of the Egyptian jour des morfs, it was the giant forms of ' Herodotus, ii. 126.