The pyramids which met their gaze, as soon as they had reached the apex of the Delta, must have far surpassed their ideas of them, no matter how frequently they may have been told about them, and they must have been at a loss to know why such a number of stones should have been brought together to cover a single corpse. At the foot of these colossal monuments, lying like a pack of hounds asleep around their master, the mastabas of the early dynasties were ranged, half buried under the sand, but still visible, and still visited on certain days by the descendants of their inhabitants, or by priests charged with the duty of keeping them up. Chapels of more recent generations extended as a sort of screen before the ancient tombs, affording examples of the two archaic types combined--the mastaba more or less curtailed in its proportions, and the pyramid with a more or less acute point. The majority of these monuments are no longer in existence, and only one of them has come down to us intact--that which Amenôthes III. erected in the Serapeum at Memphis in honour of an Apis which had died in his reign. [Illustration: 112.jpg A PHOENICIAN MASTABA AT ARVAD] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from the restoration by Thobois, as given in Renan. The cuttings made in the lower stonework appear to be traces of unfinished steps. The pyramid at the top is no longer in existence, but its remains are scattered about the foot of the monument, and furnished M. Thobois with the means of reconstructing with exactness the original form. Phoenicians visiting the Nile valley must have carried back with them to their native country a remembrance of this kind of burying-place, and have suggested it to their architects as a model. One of the cemeteries at Arvad contains a splendid specimen of this imported design.* * Pietschmann thinks that the monument is not older than the Greek epoch, and it must be admitted that the cornice is not such as we usually meet with in Egypt in Theban times; nevertheless, the very marked resemblance to the Theban mastaba shows that it must have been directly connected with the Egyptian type which prevailed from the XVIIIth to the XXth dynasties. [Illustration: 113.jpg TWO OF THE TOMBS AT ARVAD] Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a water-colour by Thobois, reproduced in Renan.