History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12)Maspero, G. (Gaston)
History
History of Egypt, Chaldæa, Syria, Babylonia, and Assyria, Volume 2 (of 12)
Maspero, G. (Gaston)
Civilization, Ancient; Egypt -- History -- To 640 A.D.; History, Ancient; Middle East -- History
Facsimile by Faucher-Gudin of the sketch in Lepsius, Denkm.,
ii., 1 c.
Here the labourers employed on the works came every evening to huddle
together, and the refuse of their occupation still encumbers the ruins
of their dwellings, potsherds, chips of various kinds of hard stone
which they had been cutting, granite, alabaster, diorite, fragments of
statues broken in the process of sculpture, and blocks of smooth granite
ready for use. The chapel commands a view of the eastern face of the
pyramid, and communicated by a paved causeway with the temple of the
Sphinx, to which it must have borne a striking resemblance.* The plan of
it can be still clearly traced on the ground, and the rubbish cannot
be disturbed without bringing to light portions of statues, vases, and
tables of offerings, some of them covered with hieroglyphs, like the
mace-head of white stone which belonged in its day to Khephren himself.
* The connection of the temple of the Sphinx with that of
the second pyramid was discovered in December, 1880, during
the last diggings of Mariette. I ought to say that the whole
of that part of the building into which the passage leads
shows traces of having been hastily executed, and at a time
long after the construction of the rest of the edifice; it
is possible that the present condition of the place does not
date back further than the time of the Antonines, when the
Sphinx was cleared for the last time in ancient days.
[Illustration: 188.jpg ALABASTER STATUE OF KHEPHREN]
Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey. See
on p. 199 the carefully executed drawing of the best
preserved among the diorite statues which the Gîzeh Museum
now possesses of this Pharaoh.
The internal arrangements of the pyramid are of the simplest character;
they consist of a granite-built passage carefully concealed in the north
face, running at first at an angle of 25°, and then horizontally, until
stopped by a granite barrier at a point which indicates a change of
direction; a second passage, which begins on the outside, at a distance
of some yards in advance of the base of the pyramid, and proceeds, after
passing through an unfinished chamber, to rejoin the first; finally, a
chamber hollowed in the rock, but surmounted by a pointed roof of fine
limestone slabs.
[Illustration: 188b.jpg THE PYRAMID OF KHEPHREN]
The sarcophagus was of granite, and, like that of Kheops, bore neither
the name of a king nor the representation of a god. The cover was fitted
so firmly to the trough that the Arabs could not succeed in detaching
it when they rifled the tomb in the year 1200 of our era; they were,
therefore, compelled to break through one of the sides with a hammer
before they could reach the coffin and take from it the mummy of the
Pharaoh.*
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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