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Updated: May 14, 2025
This temple is a most interesting monument of the civilization of the "Old Kingdom" at the time of the Vth Dynasty. At Sakkâra itself, which lies a short distance south of Abusir, no new royal tombs have, as has been said, been discovered of late years.
Butheita's heart is oppressed; the sarechsme, Mohammed Ali, is thoughtful and grave. Once Butheita raises her arm and points to some towering objects defined sharply against the sky in the distance. "See, stranger, see; those are the grand monuments of our kings, the Pharaohs, the pyramids, and there lies Sakkara, where the graves of the holy oxen are to be seen.
Yet these tombs of Sakkara are hidden in a desolation of the sands, peculiarly blanched and mournful; and as you wander from tomb to tomb, descending and ascending, stealing through great galleries beneath the sands, creeping through tubes of stone, crouching almost on hands and knees in the sultry chambers of the dead, the awfulness of the passing away of dynasties and of race comes, like a cloud, upon your spirit.
Back again at Assuan, they embarked on a luxurious river steamer, the Sakkara, and immediately cast off, for down river. This method of seeing the country took a lot of beating, meditated Mac, as he lounged back in a low chair on the cool deck, with his sleeves rolled up, smoking a cigar.
The setting sun illumined the silver line of the Nile, touched the distant pyramids resting on the desert, and revealed the far-away step pyramid of Sakkara. Its glory seemed all to be gathered here, suffusing the whole panorama, and resting upon the scene like a silent benediction.
Riding from Sakkâra southwards to Dashûr, we pass on the way the gigantic stone mastaba known as the Mastabat el-Fara'ûn, "Pharaoh's Bench." This was considered to be the tomb of the Vth Dynasty king, Unas, until his pyramid was found by Prof. Maspero at Sakkâra.
In Egypt, a land I was glad to revisit, we only stopped a week while the Star of the South, which we rejoined at Suez, coaled and went through the Canal. This, however, gave us time to spend a few days in Cairo, visit the Pyramids and Sakkara which Bastin and Bickley had never seen before, and inspect the great Museum. The journey up the Nile was postponed until our return.
It was an age of conscious and intended archaism, and in pursuit of the archaistic ideal the Mem-phites of the Saïte age had themselves buried in the ancient necropolis of Sakkâra, side by side with their ancestors of the time of the Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several of these tombs have lately been discovered and opened, and fitted with modern improvements.
Further, it is covered almost to the ground by the original casing of polished white limestone blocks, so that it gives a very good idea of the original appearance of the other pyramids, which have lost their casing. These two pyramids very probably belong to kings of the Hid Dynasty, as does the Step-Pyramid of Sakkâra.
If Osiris-Khentamenti at Abydos had his tablet of kings, so should Osiris-Seker at Sakkâra. But Tunure does not begin his list with Mena; his initial king is Merpeba. For him Merpeba was the first monarch to be commemorated at Sakkâra. Does not this look very much as if the strictly historical Merpeba, not the rather legendary and confused Mena, was regarded as the first Memphite king?
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