The claim to the highest antiquity of the step-pyramid is disputed by some in favour of the "false pyramid" of Mêdûm. It also is a genuine step-pyramid, 115 feet high; its outline, which conceals some of the steps, shows three stages, seventy, twenty, and twenty-five feet high; but in its internal structure it is really a step-pyramid of six stages. [Illustration: THE PYRAMID OF MÊDÛM.] This pyramid must, according to the important and conclusive researches of Professor Flinders Petrie,[106] be attributed to Seneferu, although De Rougé had furnished evidence to the contrary.[107] Seneferu was a king of the fourth dynasty. We have at Dashûr the only remaining abnormal pyramid, called the blunted pyramid, for the reason that the inclination changes at about one-third of the height. This pyramid forms one of a group of four, two of stone, and, be it carefully borne in mind, two of brick; their dimensions are 700 × 700 × 326 feet; 620 × 620 × 321 feet; 350 × 350 × 90 feet; and 343 × 343 × 156 feet. [Illustration: THE "BLUNTED PYRAMID" OF DASHÛR.] One of these pyramids was formerly supposed to have been built by Seneferu; if any of them had been erected by King Usertsen III. of the twelfth dynasty, as was formerly thought, the hypothesis we are considering would have been invalid. Only after Seneferu, then, do we come to the normal Egyptian pyramid, the two largest at Gîzeh built by Cheops (Chufu) and Chephren (fourth dynasty) being, so far as is accurately known, the oldest of the series. (According to Mariette the date of Mena is 5004 B.C., and the fourth dynasty commenced in 4235.) Associated with the cities with east and west walls and these pyramids are temples facing due east, fit, therefore, to receive the rays from a star on the equator or of the morning sun rising at an equinox. According to Professor Flinders Petrie, at the pyramid of Mêdûm there is a small temple open to the west on the east side of the pyramid. At sunset at the equinox the sepulchral chamber and the sun were in line from the adytum. The priest faced a double Osiris. Other pyramids were built at Sakkarah during the sixth dynasty, but it is remarkable that such a king as Pepi-Meri-Rā should not have imitated the majestic structures of the fourth dynasty. He is said to have built a pyramid at Sakkarah, but its obscurity is evidence that the pyramid idea was giving way, and it looks as if this dynasty were really on the side of the southern cult, for the authority of Memphis declined, and Abydos was preferred, while abroad Sinai was reconquered, and Ethiopia was kept in order.[108] The sphinx (oriented true east) may possibly be ascribed to the earliest pyramid builders; it could only have been sculptured by a race with an equinoctial cult. _The Buildings of the Eleventh and Twelfth Dynasties._