United States or Gambia ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If the craftsmen of Graeco-Roman time who attired the dead of Ekhmîm for their last resting places were less skilful than those of earlier date, their bad taste was, at all events, not surpassed by the Theban coffin-makers who lived and worked under the latest princes of the royal line of Rameses. Panel portrait from the Graeco-Roman Cemetery at Hawara, now in the National Gallery, London.
South of Lisht is Illahun, and at the entrance to the province of the Fayyûm, and west of this, nearer the Fayyûm, is Hawara, where Prof.
The extraordinary sepulchral chamber of the Hawara pyramid, which, though it is over twenty-two feet long by ten feet wide over all, is hewn out of one solid block of hard yellow quartzite, gives some idea of the remarkable facility of dealing with huge stones and the love of utilizing them which is especially characteristic of the XIIth Dynasty.
Apart, however, from any mere question of names, there appears the interesting parallel that the two most famous Labyrinths, the first palace at Knossos, and the great Hawara temple, actually belong to the same period a period when, as we know from the other evidence, there was certainly active intercourse between the two nations. Mr.
The Set were frankly disappointed in the few remains of granite columns and carvings; but vague memories of jewels seen at the Egyptian Museum waked an interest in the brick pyramid tomb at Hawara where King Amenemhat and his daughter Ptah-nefru lay for a few thousand years.
Glimpsed through the red flame of blowing, ruby dust, the scene was a vision of Inferno; we on our mount looking down on it were in company of Dante and Virgil. The rest of the day we gave to a light-railway excursion to Illahun and the brick Pyramid of Hawara.
Actually, one of the most prominent characteristics of the Knossian palace is its mazy and labyrinthine system of passages and chambers. The parallel between the two buildings, which originally caused the Greek visitors to give the pyramid-temple of Hawara the name of "labyrinth," has been traced still further.
The pyramid of Hawara was provided with a funerary temple the like of which had never been known in Egypt before and was never known afterwards. It was a huge building far larger than the pyramid itself, and built of fine limestone and crystalline white quartzite, in a style eminently characteristic of the XIIth Dynasty.
During the following season of 1888-89, Petrie resumed his excavations round the pyramid of Hawara, which was supposed to be the site of the famous Labyrinth. Work had been begun here in the season previous, and it was now to be crowned with great success.
Such family sacrifices were the occasions of social feasts and family reunions; of later times the remains of the feasts were found strewing the cemetery at Hawara in the tomb chapels; and to this day both Copts and Mohammedans hold family feasts and spend the night at the tombs of their ancestors.
Word Of The Day