d on by the architects. It was
still accessible to any one during the XVIIIth dynasty, and people came
there to render homage to the memory of Snofrui or his wife Mirisonkhu.
Visitors recorded in ink on the walls their enthusiastic, but
stereotyped impressions: they compared the "Castle of Snofrui" with the
firmament, "when the sun arises in it; the heaven rains incense there
and pours out perfumes on the roof." Ramses II., who had little respect
for the works of his predecessors, demolished a part of the pyramid in
order to procure cheaply the materials necessary for the buildings which
he restored to Heracleopolis. His workmen threw down the waste stone
and mortar beneath the place where they were working, without troubling
themselves as to what might be beneath; the court became choked up,
the sand borne by the wind gradually invaded the chambers, the chapel
disappeared, and remained buried for more than three thousand years.

The officers of Snofrui, his servants, and the people of his city
wished, according to custom, to rest beside him, and thus to form a
court for him in the other world as they had done in this. The menials
were buried in roughly made trenches, frequently in the ground merely,
without coffins or sarcophagi. The body was not laid out its whole
length on its back in the attitude of repose: it more frequently rested
on its left side, the head to the north, the face to the east, the legs
bent, the right arm brought up against the breast, the left following
the outline of the chest and legs.*

* W. Fl. Petrie, _Medum_, pp. 21, 22. Many of these mummies
were mutilated, some lacking a leg, others an arm or a hand;
these were probably workmen who had fallen victims to an
accident during the building of the pyramid. In the majority
of cases the detached limb had been carefully placed with
the body, doubtless in order that the double might find it
in the other world, and complete himself when he pleased for
the exigencies of his new existence.

The people who were interred in a posture so different from that with
which we are familiar in the case of ordinary mummies, belonged to
a foreign race, who had retained in the treatment of their dead the
customs of their native country.

[Illustration: 171.jpg THE COURT AND THE TWO STELAE OF THE CHAPEL
ADJOINING THE PYRAMID OF MEDUM]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from a sketch by Fl. Petrie, _Ten
Years' Digging in