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V.

of Mem

We saw two Arabs crossing the Nile, where CHAP. it was at least half a mile wide, by means of empty gourds, which they used instead of bladders, with their clothes fastened upon their heads. It was nine o'clock before we steered our djerm into a canal leading towards Saccára. We passed the village which Savary believed Situation to denote the situation of antient Memphis, and phis. concurred with him in his locality of the city3. His description of the place, particularly of the Causeway and the Lake, is very accurate. But the village is not called Menf, or Menph, as he pretends, but Menshee a Dashoot. The Lake at this time was, in great measure, become a part of the general inundation. We sailed the whole way to the Pyramids of Saccára, with the exception of about half a mile, which it was necessary to ride over, to the Mummy Pits.

seen

Just beyond Menshee a Dashoo we were much Tumulus struck by the appearance of a Tumulus, (stand- among the ing to the south of a large graduated pyramid,) which, instead of being pyramidal, exhibits a less artificial and therefore a more antient form of

(3) Pococke also places it near the same spot.

(4) This seems to have been PoсOCKE'S "El Menshieh Dashour." See Deser, of the East, vol. I. p.

49.

CHAP. Sepulchre than any of the Pyramids.

V. simple hemispherical mound.

wards others of the same kind.

It is a

We saw after

[graphic]

antient Se

not pyra

The most Comparing these appearances with that regulapulchres rity of structure which characterizes the Pyramidal. mids of Djiza, and also with another style of architecture observable at Saccára, where a transition be discerned between one and may the other, (the curved outline not having wholly disappeared, nor the rectilinear form prevailing altogether,) we may establish a rule for ascertaining different degrees of antiquity throughout the whole series of these monuments. The most antient lie towards the south. Almost all the buildings of Saccára, of whatever size or shape, whether hemispheroïdal or pyramidal, seem to be older than those of Djiza: and, as we proceed in surveying them from the south towards the north, ending with the principal pyramid of Djiza, we pass from the primeval

V.

mound, through all its modifications, until we CHAP. arrive at the most artificial pyramidal heap; something after the manner represented by the following sketch.

[merged small][merged small][graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small]

The same rule will apply to similar monuments in America, which have been held sacred among the inhabitants of that great continent from the earliest periods of their history. In fact, the Scythian Mound, the Tartar Tépé, the Teutonic Barrow, and the Celtic Cairn, do all of them preserve a monumental form which was more antiently in use than that of a Pyramid, because it is less artificial; and a proof of its alleged antiquity may be deduced from the mere circumstance of its association with the Pyramids

V.

CHAP. of Egypt, even if the testimony of Herodotus were less explicit as to the remote period of its existence among Northern nations'.

Village of
Saccára.

We came to the wretched village of Saccára. Near to this place, towards the south, there is an antient causeway, composed of stones twelve yards wide, leading up the short ascent to the plain on which the Pyramids stand. Several of the Arabs left their huts to accompany us. When we reached the principal cluster of them, which is behind the village towards the west, we were conducted to the mouth of one of the Catacombs; and prepared for a descent, as into the mouth of a well, by means of a rope-ladder which we had brought with us for that purpose. The sandy surface of the soil was covered with a quantity of broken vessels of terra cotta, pieces of human bones, sculls, bits of antient glass, and heaps of ruins.

These Pyramids appear to be a continuation of the same great cœmetery to which those of Djiza also belonged. They extend four or five miles, both to the north and to the south of the

(1) See the account given by Herodotus of the Scythian mode of sepulture. Melpomene, c. 71.

V.

Difference

hil- between

the Pyra

One of these is gra- mids of

Saccára

but and those

village of Saccára. Some of them are rounded CHAP. at the top, and, as it was observed by Pococke, "do not look like pyramids, but more like locks cased with stone." duated, like the principal pyramid of Djiza; with this difference, that the gradations here of Djiza. are much larger, although the pyramid be smaller. It consists only of six tiers or ranges of stone; the pyramid itself being an hundred and fifty feet in height3. The ranges or steps are twenty-five feet high, and eleven feet wide. The rest of these structures are so fully and accurately described by Pococke, that little will be added here to his description of them. There is one, built also with steps, which he believed to be as large as the principal pyramid of Djiza. The works at Saccára, independently of the different forms which characterize them, appear to be older than those of Djiza; the buildings being more decayed, and the stones crumbling, as if they were decomposed by longer exposure to the action of the atmosphere. Four miles to the south of Saccára stands a pyramid built of unburned bricks. This is in a very mouldering state. The bricks contain shells, gravel, and

(2) Descr. of the East, vol. I. p. 50.
(3) Ibid.

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