Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/489

 polished stone better than any other. The seventeen similar structures which are disposed in a line along the foot of the Libyan escarpment above the village of Saqqarah, are all surpassed in elevation by the famous three-storied pyramid, regarded by most Egyptologists as the most ancient of all. Its very form, modelled on the outlines of numerous crags in the Libyan range, appears to have been the primitive type of all these monuments. According to Mariette, it dates from the first dynasty, and must consequently be at least sixty-five centuries old. Several of the recently opened Saqqarah pyramids have been thoroughly explored, and were found to contain the tombs of some of the sovereigns of the sixth dynasty. Square structures in the form of huge sepulchral blocks, standing

on the skirt of the Libyan cliffs, are the so-called mastaba, which are built over the chambers of the dead here excavated in the live rock. The largest of these sepulchral buildings, known to the Arabs by the name of Mastaba-el-Faraun, is traditionally said to have been the seat from the summit of which the early Egyptian monarchs proclaimed their will to the people. But the explorations carried out on the spot have shown that it was the tomb of Unas, a high official of the fifth dynasty. The tombs of this vast necropolis are divided into square groups by streets running at right angles; and Maspero suggests that the pyramids were also disposed in some similar symmetrical order. Those of the first dynasties are situated in the extreme north, those of the twelfth in the Fayum; while between