_Secondly_, He objected to the statement that, "from the very earliest historic periods in the architecture of Egypt, Assyria, Greece, etc., circles and spirals, or modifications of them, constituted perhaps the most common fundamental types of lapidary decoration;" because, though circles, spirals, etc., occurred in the later architecture of Thebes, etc., yet in the Great Pyramid of Gizeh no such decorations were to be found, nor, indeed, lapidary decorations of any other kind. Cheops, the builder of the Great Pyramid, was, according to Manetho, "arrogant towards the gods." Was it this spirit of religious infidelity or scepticism that led to the rejection of any ornamentation? Professor Smyth notices what he himself terms an "ornament," "a most unique thing certainly," on the upper stone of what Greaves calls "the granite leaf" portcullis, in the interior of the Great Pyramid (ii. 100), and he represents it, it is now said erroneously in plate xii. as a portion of a double circle instead of a general raised elevation.[275] All the other Pyramids of Gizeh seem, like the Great Pyramid, wonderfully free from lapidary decorations on their interior walls, the exteriors of all of them being now too much dilapidated to offer any distinct proof in relation to the subject; though in Herodotus' time there were hieroglyphics, at least on the external surface of the Great Pyramid. The whole surface of the basalt sarcophagus in the Third Pyramid, or that of Mycerinus, was sculptured. "It was," to use the words of Baron Bunsen, "very beautifully carved in compartments, in the Doric style" (vol. ii. 168). This carving, in the well-known carpentry form, was, according to Mr. Fergusson, a representation of a palace (_Handbook of Architecture_, p. 222). Fragments, however, of lapidary sculpture have been found among the ruins of Egyptian pyramids supposed to be older than those of Gizeh, or than their builders, the Memphite kings of the _fourth_ dynasty. Thus one of the most able and learned of modern Egyptologists, Baron Bunsen, has written at some length to show that the great northern brick pyramid of Dashoor belongs to the preceding or _third_ dynasty of kings. Colonel Vyse and Mr. Perring, when digging among its ruins, discovered two or three fragments of sculptured casing and other stones, with a few pieces presenting broken hieroglyphic inscriptions. One of the ornamented fragments represents a row of floreated-like decorations, and each decoration shows on its side a concentric circle, consisting of three rings,--the whole ornament being one which is found in later Egyptian eras, not unfrequently along the tops of walls in the interior of chambers, etc. Mr. Perring represents this fragment of sculpturing from the brick Pyramid of Dashoor, in his folio work, _The Pyramids of Gizeh_, plate xiii. Fig. 7. Hence among the very earliest Egyptian lapidary decorations we have, as in other countries, the appearance of the simple circular ornamentation.