Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/333

 The Tomb under the Middle Empire. 24: Abydos. In spite of all his researches he did not succeed in discovering the tomb of Osiris itself, but yet his digging campaigns afforded results which are most interesting and important from every point of view.^ One district of this necropolis is made up by a vast number of tombs dating from the time of the ancient empire, and particularly from the sixth dynasty. Arrangements similar to those of the mastabas at Sakkarah are found, but on a smaller scale — the same funerary chambers, the same wells, sometimes vertical, sometimes horizontal as in the tomb of Ti and the pyramids, the same materials. The situation of this tomb-district, which Fig. 159. — The river transport of the Mummy. (Champollion, pi. 173.) Marlette calls the central cemetery, has allowed arrangements to be adopted similar to those on the plateau of Memphis, where the sand is the only covering to a stratum of living rock in which it was easy to cut the well and the mummy-chamber. In the remainder of the space occupied by the tombs the subsoil is of a very different nature. " The hard and impenetrable ^ Mariette, Abydos^ Description des Foidlles exccutees si/r F Eviplaceincnt de cette Vilie, folio, vol. i. 1869 ; vol. ii. 1880. Mariette thought that the sacred tomb was probably in the immediate neighbourhood of the artificial mound called Koum-es- Soultan, which may cover its very site. In the article which we quote above, M. Maspero has set forth the considerations which lead him to think that the staircase of Osiris, upon which the consecrated steles were placed, was the flight of steps which led up to the temple of that god. Consequently the tomb of Osiris, at Abydos as at Denderah, would be upon the roof of his temple.