is empty, having been
violated before the Ramesside age. It consists of three square towers (Note
36) with sides slightly sloping, placed in retreating stages one over the
other (fig. 142). The entrance is on the north, at about 53 feet above the
sand. After 60 feet, the passage goes into the rock; at 174 feet it runs
level; at 40 feet farther it stops, and turns perpendicularly towards the
surface, opening in the floor of a vault twenty-one feet higher (fig. 143).
A set of beams and ropes still in place above the opening show that the
spoilers drew the sarcophagus out of the chamber in ancient times. Its
small chapel, built against the eastern slope of the pyramid, with
courtyard containing a low flat altar between two standing stelae nearly 14
feet high, was found intact. The walls of the chapel were uninscribed, and
bare; but the _graffiti_ found there prove that the place was much visited
during the times of the Eighteenth Dynasty by scribes, who recorded their
admiration of the beauty of the monument, and believed that King Sneferu
had raised it for himself and for his queen Meresankhu.

[Illustration: Fig. 143.--Section of passage and vault in pyramid of
Medum.]

The custom of building pyramids did not end with the Twelfth Dynasty; there
are later pyramids at Manfalut, at Hekalli to the south of Abydos, and at
Mohammeriyeh to the south of Esneh. Until the Roman period, the semi-
barbarous sovereigns of Ethiopia held it as a point of honour to give the
pyramidal form to their tombs. The oldest, those of Nurri, where the
Pharaohs of Napata sleep, recall by their style the pyramids of Sakkarah;
the latest, those of Meroe, present fresh characteristics. They are higher
than they are wide, are built of small blocks, and are sometimes decorated
at the angles with rounded borderings. The east face has a false window,
surmounted by a cornice, and is flanked by a chapel, which is preceded by a
pylon. These pyramids are not all dumb. As in ordinary tombs, the walls
contain scenes borrowed from the "Ritual of Burial," or showing the
vicissitudes of the life beyond the grave.

[30] This section is reproduced, by permission of Mr. W.M.F. Petrie, from
Plate VII. of his "_Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh_." The vertical
shaft sunk by Perring is shown going down from the floor of the
subterranean unfinished chamber. The lettering along the base of the
pyramid, though not bearing upon the work of Professor Maspero,