e the favourite residence of the kings;
perhaps he improvised for himself a city in the plain between El-Wastah
and Kafr el-Ayat. His pyramid, at the present time, is composed of three
large unequal cubes with slightly inclined sides, arranged in steps one
above the other. Some centuries ago five could be still determined, and
in ancient times, before ruin had set in, as many as seven. Each block
marked a progressive increase of the total mass, and bad its external
face polished--a fact which we can still determine by examining the
slabs one behind another; a facing of large blocks, of which many of the
courses still exist towards the base, covered the whole, at one angle
from the apex to the foot, and brought it into conformity with the type
of the classic pyramid. The passage had its orifice in the middle of the
north face about sixty feet above the ground: it is five feet high, and
dips at a tolerably steep angle through the solid masonry. At a depth of
a hundred and ninety-seven feet it becomes level, without increasing
in aperture, runs for forty feet on this plane, traversing two low and
narrow chambers, then making a sharp turn it ascends perpendicularly
until it reaches the floor of the vault. The latter is hewn out of the
mountain rock, and is small, rough, and devoid of ornament: the ceiling
appears to be in three heavy horizontal courses of masonry, which
project one beyond the other corbel-wise, and give the impression of a
sort of acutely pointed arch. Snofrui slept there for ages; then robbers
found a way to him, despoiled and broke up his mummy, scattered the
fragments of his coffin upon the ground, and carried off the stone
sarcophagus. The apparatus of beams and cords of which they made use for
the descent, hung in their place above the mouth of the shaft until ten
years ago. The rifling of the tomb took place at a remote date, for from
the XXth dynasty onwards the curious were accustomed to penetrate into
the passage: two scribes have scrawled their names in ink on the back
of the framework in which the stone cover was originally inserted.
The sepulchral chapel was built a little in front of the east face; it
consisted of two small-sized rooms with bare surfaces, a court whose
walls abutted on the pyramid, and in the court, facing the door,
a massive table of offerings flanked by two large stelo without
inscriptions, as if the death of the king had put a stop to the
decoration before the period determine