rnacles were turned into shrines, which were
decorated at the top with a concave groove, or with a frieze made up of
repetitions of the uraeus. Egyptian fashions had influenced the better
classes so far as to change even their mode of dealing with the dead, of
which we find in not a few places clear evidence. Travellers arriving in
Egypt at that period must have been as much astonished as the tourist of
to-day by the monuments which the Egyptians erected for their dead.

[Illustration: 111.jpg AMENOTHES I. SEIZING A LION]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin. This monument was in the Louvre
Museum. Analogous figures of gods or kings holding a lion by
the tail are found on various monuments of the Theban
dynasties.

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 Amenothes 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 suggeste