The mystery of the Great pyramid : traditions concerning it and its connection with the Egyptian Book of the dead : with numerous illustrations

TOMB OR OBSERVATORY ?

As a matter of fact, none of the early pyramids were built as burial-places, but as cenotaphs. Of these there are at least three: Zoser’s pyramid at Sakkara, and two erected by Seneferu. They are not, however, true pyramids, the form of which was not known in Egypt until the advent of the Great Pyramid. It is not surprising, therefore, that when the sarcophagus-chamber of Zoser’s pyramid was entered it was found empty. As a matter of fact, Zoser’s tomb exists at Bet Khallaf, while Seneferu’s two pyramids were known as his ka or “ spirit’, pyramids, in the chambers of which were carried out a ceremony of symbolic burial and resurrection in accordance with the Osirian rites.

The fact that these monarchs apparently erected two tombs for themselves seems to have puzzled Egyptologists, and various reasons have been suggested to account for them. Thus, in the case of Zoser’s tombs, for example, it is supposed that his step-pyramid at Sakkara was intended to be his tomb, but owing to his death taking place in Upper Egypt, the mastaba-tomb was built for his actual burial ; or that the pyramid was to have been his tomb, and the mastaba for his queen. The true explanation, however, is that the pyramid-tombs were cenotaphs erected for the purposes of ritual only.

Zoser’s pyramid, which is oblong in shape (hence the term mastaba-pyramid)—its north and south sides measuring at the base 352 feet; east and west 396 feetis the largest of the step-pyramids (in height it is about 200 feet), and it is also the earliest Egyptian example of this form of structure. It is almost the only step-pyramid which to-day presents anything like its original form, those elsewhere—as at Abusir, for example—being so ruinous as to show hardly any signs of the original steps. These

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