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In the early neolithic period in Sicily, called by Orsi the Sicanian Period, rock-hewn tombs seem not to have been used. It is only at the beginning of the metal age that they begin to appear. In this period, the so-called First Siculan, the tomb-chamber was almost always circular or elliptical, entered by a small door or window in the face of the rock.

In fact, the search for the royal death-chambers lasted from December 5, 1894, till March 17, 1895, when the excavators' gallery finally struck one of the ancient passages, which were found to be unusually extensive, contrasting in this respect with the northern pyramid. The royal tomb-chamber had, of course, been emptied of what it contained.

Prithee, what hath come into thy heart? The king spake, saying: 'As for me, I have remembered the mother of my mother, the mother of my father, the king's great wife and king's mother Teta-shera, deceased, whose tomb-chamber and mer-ahât are at this moment upon the soil of Thebes and Abydos.

The measurements should be taken carefully, not only for the sake of the accuracy of the plan, but also for metrological purposes. The rock outside the entrance of the tomb-chamber should be examined. As a rule such structures have been entirely destroyed for the sake of their stones. The tool-marks of the tomb-quarriers should be examined, as they sometimes reveal interesting technical points.

"Looks as if you'd blown the thing on to the paper this time," Freddy said. "Gad, it's topping!" Michael said nothing, but he glowed inwardly. A word of enthusiastic praise from Freddy was worth all his morning's toil in the breathless, stuffy tomb-chamber of the Pharaoh whose embalmed remains it contained.

The problem was how to cover a large tomb-chamber with a mound and to leave it still accessible for later interments, and the obvious solution was to add a covered passage leading out to the edge of the mound.

In the normal kok tomb-chamber there are nine kokim, three in each wall except the wall containing the entrance doorway. But there are many other arrangements. In the 'Tombs of the Judges' there is a double row of kokim in the entrance chamber. The explorer should not forget that a kok sometimes contains a secret entrance to further chambers at its inner end.

They consist each of a circular mound, to which is added on one side another mound of trapezoidal form. The megalithic tomb-chamber or the sarcophagus which sometimes replaces it lies in the circular part of the mound. The mounds have in most cases terraced sides, and are surrounded by a moat.

He was really buried in a pyramid at Illahun, up in the North, but he had a great rock tomb cut for him in the cliffs at Abydos, which he never occupied, and probably had never intended to occupy. We find exactly the same thing far back at the beginning of Egyptian history, when Aha possessed not only a great mastaba-tomb at Nakâda, but also a tomb-chamber in the great necropolis of Abydos.

All these things, which have done so much to reconstitute for us the history of the earliest period of the Egyptian monarchy, were placed under the care of the dead slaves whose bodies were buried round the empty tomb-chamber of their royal master in Abydos.