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Updated: May 14, 2025
My spirit is uneasy to-night, and whilst myself I remain in your ivory room and hear you speak another self stands in a vast temple of black gleaming granite before the shrine of a golden bull." "You are possibly thinking of Apis. From Cairo you have proceeded to Sakkâra. Or are the gaudy hue of my hair and the yeoman proportions of my shape responsible for the idea?"
That is the desert that is the mysterious theatre of so many adventures throughout the ages, the receptacle of so much hidden wealth, the great burying-ground of the unknown dead. There, on the horizon, where the yellow sand and the blue sky meet, stand the pyramids of Gheezeh, and farther on, in the purple distance, the pyramids of Sakkara.
Unlike the Step Pyramid of Sakkara, which, even when one is near it, looks like a small mountain, part of the land on which it rests, the Pyramids of Ghizeh look what they are artificial excrescences, invented and carried out by man, expressions of man's greatness.
In addition to the pyramids, Sakkara has many tombs of the greatest interest, two of which I will describe. One is called the "Serapeum," or tomb of the bulls. Here, each in its huge granite coffin, the mummies of the sacred bulls, for so long worshipped at Memphis, have been buried.
In it was found the preserved skeleton of its owner, who was a giant seven feet high. It is remarkable that Manetho chronicles among the kings of the early period a king named Sesokhris, who was five cubits high. This may have been Sa-nekht. Tjeser had two tombs, one, the above-mentioned, near Abydos, the other at Sakkâra, in the Memphite pyramid-field. This is the famous Step-Pyramid.
On the last day of our sail the donkeys of Bedrashen were called into service for a ride through the palm forest and green fields, past the fallen columns of Ramses, to Sakkara, the tombs of the sacred bulls, and the pictured tombs of Ptahhotep and Ti.
I rode a donkey when my feet touched the ground on either side, also mounted a camel that lifted me to a dizzy height. I gazed into the imperturbable face of the Sphinx and wandered among the numerous pyramids of Sakkara. I also viewed the citadel; but the place of most charm was the streets of old Cairo.
The other tablets in this vicinity are chiefly of the time of Rameses II. or III, and are in honour of scribes and other functionaries immediately connected with the court. Two sepulchral tablets from Sakkara are interesting. That marked 184 is in honour of a priestess of Phtha named Tanefer-ho.
The Step-Pyramid at Sakkâra is, so to speak, a series of mastabas of stone, imposed one above the other; it never had the continuous casing of stone which is the mark of a true pyramid. The pyramid of Snefru at Mêdûm is more developed.
In any case both Aha and Narmer must be assigned to the Ist Dynasty, with the result that we know of more kings belonging to the dynasty than appear in the lists. Nor is this improbable. Manetho's list is evidently based upon old Egyptian lists derived from the authorities upon which the king-lists of Abydos and Sakkâra were based.
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