Page:Africa by Élisée Reclus, Volume 1.djvu/497

 CAIBO. 405 with which it is faced ore so exquisitely polished that hy the light of the torches the visitor sees himself reflected as in a mirror. The tomh of Meiikera, or Mycerinus, was excavated in the very rock which served as the original core or nucleus above which the pyramid was raised. But the sarcophagus which it con- tuinc<l was lost when the vessel transporting it to England foundered off the Por- tuguese coa.st. In the angle formed in the north-west, between the two colossal monuments of Cheops and Khephren, the irregular and hilly plateau has been excavated in all directions by the tombs and burial-gounds where repose the subjects of the I'huraohs. To the south and east are other remains, wells, and sepulchres, while on the skirt of the plateau, encircled by dunes, is seen the famous sphinx, gigantic guardian of the pyramids. This prodigious statue, contemplating the plain with motionless eye, seems verily the " marvellous work of the gods," as recorded in an ancient inscription recently deciphered. It consists of a sandstone rock, to which chance had given the vague outlines of an animal figure, and the form of which was completed by the Egyptian architects. The spacious cavities were filled with rough stones disposed without art ; but the surface consists of small and regular layers carefully cut and sculptured, so as to produce the very muscles of the animal, which represents the god Ilar-em-Khu, that is to say, " Horus in the bright sun,'* or " Horus of the two horizons." An inscription discovered by Mariette attributes to Cheops the " restoration " of this monument, on which the natives have conferred the titles of " Father of Fear," and " Lion of the Night." The chamber or rooms said to have been seen by Vansleb and other explorers in the back of the sphinx cannot now be traced. But to the south-west, in the immediate vicinity of the colossus, Mariette brought to light from beneath the sands an underground temple, with enormous pink granite and alabaster walls, faced with the largest limestone blocks hitherto discovered. This building, destitute of all ornament, seems to date from a period of transition between the early megalithic monuments and edifices properly so called. The statue of Khephren found in this temple, and now preserved in the Bulaq ^Nluseimi, is perhaps the finest kno^'n work of Egj'ptian statuary. At that period of the national art inflexible forms and conventional tj'pes had not yet been imposed by the hieratic laws on the native sculptors. The statue had been hidden, or perhaps thrown into a well, after the erection of the temple. Cairo. Cairo, the heir of Jilemphis, occupies a situation analogous to that of the old metropolis of Lower Egypt. This " diamond clasp " closing the " fan of the delta," stands like ^lemphis at the apex of the triangle of alluvial lands formed by the main branches of the river, and consequently occupies the natural converging I)oint of all the routes across Lower Egypt, between Alexandria and El Arish. But although lying near the bifurcation of the Nile, its site has been displaced towards the north with the channel of the river itaelf. Were it removed to tho