Page:A History of Art in Ancient Egypt Vol 1.djvu/344

 2 54 ^ History of Art in Ancient Egypt. in masonry, and seem at one time to liave been crowned by pyramids. Some idea of their shape may be obtained from our ilkistrations of the tombs at Abydos.^ To complete our observations upon the tombs of the first Theban Empire, it will be sufficient to recall what we have already said about the pyramids in the Fayoum, which were the work of the thirteenth dynasty. It is difficult to form an accurate idea of the appearance of those monuments when complete. Time has treated them w^th great severity, and in their present state it is impossible to verify the assertions of Herodotus as to the peculiarities of their casing and crowning ornaments. But it is quite certain that the Middle Empire made no original inventions in the matter of sepulchral architecture. It appears to have discontinued some of the ancient arrangements, but in those which it preserved its efforts were confined to putting old elements together in a new fashion and with new proportions. It made frequent use of one mode of sepulture which had previously been quite exceptional. No mastaba is known which dates from this epoch, but the kings had not ceased to confide their mummies and the perpetuation of their glory to pyramids, but these were no longer of such colossal dimensions as under the Ancient Empire, while their character was complicated, to some extent, by the colossi with which they are said to have been surmounted, and the figured decoration of their walls. Finally, they were often employed, not as self-contained monuments in themselves, but merely as the culminating points in a more complex ensemble. They were built upon a rectangular platform or tower with walls slightly inclined from the perpendicular. It would seem that the idea of this arrangement had occurred to the primitive Egyptians. So, too, had that of the spcos or rock- cut tomb ; but the Memphite architects have left nothing which at all resembles the orrottos in the mountain sides of Beni-Hassan and Siout. Neither in the neighbourhood of the pyramids nor in any other district where the tombs of the early epoch are found, has any sepulchre been discovered which shows the monumental facades, the large internal development, and the simple and dignified lines of the artificial chambers in the Arab and Libyan chains. 1 Maspero, Rapport sur une Mission en Italic (in the Reateil de Travaux^ vol. ii. p. 1 66). The Abbott Papyrus gives a Ust of these Httle pyramids.