in the development of the royal
pyramid which was immediately followed by the Great Pyramid. But no
excavations have yet proved the accuracy of this view. Both pyramids
have been entered, but nothing has been found in them. It is very
probable that one of them is the second pyramid of Snefru.

The other two pyramids, those nearest the cultivation, are of very
different appearance. They are half-ruined, they are black in colour,
and their whole effect is quite different from that of the stone
pyramids. For they are built of brick, not of stone. They are pyramids,
it is true, but of a different material and of a different date from
those which we have been describing. They are built above the sepulchres
of kings of the XIIth Dynasty, the Theban house which transferred
its residence northwards to the neighbourhood of the ancient Northern
capital. We have, in fact, reached the end of the Old Kingdom at
Sakkara; at Dashur begin the sepulchres of the Middle Kingdom. Pyramids
are still built, but they are not always of stone; brick is used,
usually with stone in the interior. The general effect of these brick
pyramids, when new, must have been indistinguishable from that of the
stone ones, and even now, when it has become half-ruined, such a great
brick pyramid as that of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Dashur is not
without impressiveness. After all, there is no reason why a brick
building should be less admirable than a stone one. And in its own way
the construction of such colossal masses of bricks as the two eastern
pyramids of Dashur must have been as arduous, even as difficult, as that
of building a moderate-sized stone pyramid. The photograph of the brick
pyramids of Dashur on this page shows well the great size of these
masses of brickwork, which are as impressive as any of the great brick
structures of Babylonia and Assyria.

[Illustration: 109.jpg EXTERIOR OF THE SOUTHERN BRICK PYRAMID OF DASHUR]

XIITH DYNASTY. Excavated by M. de Morgan, 1895. This is the
secondary tomb of Amenemhat III; about 2200 B.C.

The XIIth Dynasty use of brick for the royal tombs was a return to the
custom of earlier days, for from the time of Aha to that Tjeser, from
the 1st Dynasty to the Hid, brick had been used for the building of the
royal mastaba-tombs, out of which the pyramids had developed.

At this point, where we take leave of the great pyramids of the Old
Kingdom, we may notice the latest theory as to the building of th