Position 18 - King Khufu's Tomb, The Great Pyramid Of Gizeh, And The Sepulchers Of His Nobles, From The Northwest

Here we are standing at a point of view, the diametrical opposite of that which we occupied at Position 17 (Map 5). We are looking at the northwest corner of the great pyramid, with Cairo on our left and Memphis in our front, behind the pyramid. The mass of the vast pile begins to grow and we are ready to credit Herodotus' statement that its erection consumed the labor of 100,000 men for twenty years.

At the other corner, from which we have just come, we were able to contrast this tomb of Khufu with those of his modern descendants; here we may draw a similar contrast between his and those of his contemporaries, whose low and unpretentious tombs we see close to the pyramid on our right. These are but a few of the many masonry structures erected in this cemetery by the nobles and officials of Khufu, who lived at his court and carried on the practical administration of his realm.

Here lie military commanders, mining and building engineers, architects, chief treasurers and chancellors of the exchequer, judges and chief justices, viziers and prime ministers, all of whom lived and flourished in that vanished world, and never dreamed of the day when not only their civilization, but even their language should be extinct and forgotten, only to be revived again by the labor of whole generations of scholars.

In one of these tombs lies, or rather once lay, Khufu-onekh, the architect who built this great pyramid, and the massive granite sarcophagus in which his coffin was deposited is now in the museum, which we visited in Cairo.

These masonry tombs themselves look like truncated pyramids, for the exterior of the wall slants inward, or, as the architect would say, has an inward batter of about 75°; this is a much steeper slant than that of the pyramids, which is usually about 52°. They are rectangular, with the longest dimension in a north and south line, and with their flat roofs, they so remind the natives of the benches or terraces in their own modern courts and bazaars, that they call them by the same name, that is, “mastaba,” a bench or terrace.

These mastabas are not solid masonry, as you would suppose in looking at them here; but this solid exterior is only a revetment of masonry, covering and holding in place a core of loose sand and rubble. In the east front there is a door giving access to a chamber, where the deceased was supposed to live, and to enjoy the offerings of food, drink and clothing necessary for his subsistence, which his surviving relatives placed there for him. The walls of this chamber, which we may call the chapel, were sculptured with beautiful relief scenes, representing the deceased and his servants and slaves, engaged in all those employments which had occupied them in life: plowing, sowing, reaping, hunting, fishing, cattle-herding, poultry-raising, the work of the craftsmen in metal, stone, wood, ivory, leather, etc.

Potent charms were pronounced over these scenes by the mortuary priests, and it was thought that long after the relatives of the deceased had passed on to join him, and could no longer bring offerings to the chapel, these scenes would be as effective as the realities which they represent, in producing for him all the necessities, as well as furnishing him all the pastimes and diversions, to which an Egyptian gentleman was accustomed. These relief-scenes now furnish us with almost all that we know regarding the life of this remote period, and afford a fuller and more complete picture than is available for any other people at so remote an age.

On the west wall of these chapel chambers is the false door, which we noticed in the Cairo Museum (Position 10); the entrance through which the dead passed in gaining access to the chapel. Beside this chapel chamber, and connected with it or with the outer world at most by a small tubular orifice, or a mere slit in the masonry, is a second chamber, intended to serve as a secret repository for the portrait statue of the deceased, of which we saw some of the best specimens at the museum in Cairo (Positions 10 and 11). Thus only the false body of the dead was concealed in this superstructure of masonry; the real body, the mummy, lies far down in a chamber hewn in the heart of the native rock beneath the superstructure.

This sepulcher chamber is reached by a shaft, which, passing down through the masonry vertically into the rock beneath, is sometimes eighty or ninety feet deep, but usually much less. Down this shaft the mummy was lowered on the day of burial, to the sepulcher chamber in which the shaft terminates, and once safely deposited there, the chamber was walled up and the entire shaft was filled to the top with sand, rubble and mortar. Yet nearly all the shafts of this cemetery have been cleared out and the chambers robbed in antiquity, for the sake of the ornaments, jewelry and often valuable mortuary furniture, with which such a departed noble was supplied.

You will see that these tombs embody the beliefs of the Egyptian regarding the hereafter; while not all his notions of the future life can thus find expression in stone and mortar, several of his fundamental conceptions concerning it are here brought out, especially the idea that the tomb was the dwelling-place of the dead, or as the Egyptian called it, his “eternal house.”

The essential parts which we have described in the mastaba, we shall expect to find likewise in the pyramid, though the different form of the pyramid necessitates some modification in their arrangement. Thus it is impossible for the shaft leading to the sepulcher-chamber to pass down through the top of the pyramid; hence it is there an inclined passage, and if you will look along the north side of this first pyramid you will discern on our extreme left a rough depression in the face of the masonry. There is the entrance to the inclined passage leading into the pyramid, and there we shall later enter.

But first we must pass over these heaps of masonry, along this north face of the pyramid, past the rough opening, to the northeast corner, where we shall find many questions to engage us before we make the ascent of the pyramid, after which we shall enter it. Standing at the very corner of the pyramid we shall first throw back our heads and look toward its summit. We shall be near enough almost to touch the stone. This position is given on Map 5 by the red lines numbered 19.