chamber generally decorated with sculptures.  The walls slope at an angle of seventy-five or eighty degrees externally, but in the interior are perpendicular.  The roof is composed of large flat stones.  Strictly speaking, the chambers are not actual tombs, but mortuary chapels.  The embalmed body of the deceased, encased in its wooden coffin (Gen. 1. 26), was not deposited in the chamber, but in an excavation under one of the walls, which was carefully closed up after the coffin had been placed inside it.  The chamber was used by the relations for sacred rites, sacrificial feasts, and the like, held in honour of the deceased, especially on the anniversary of his death and entrance into Amenti.  The early Egyptians indulged, like the Chinese, in a worship of ancestors.  The members of a family met from time to time in the sepulchral chamber of their father, or their grandfather, and went through various ceremonies, sang hymns, poured libations, and made offerings, which were regarded as pleasing to the departed, and which secured their protection and help to such of their descendants as took part in the pious practices.

Sometimes a tomb was more pretentious than those above described.  There is an edifice at Meydoum, improperly termed a pyramid, which is thought to be older than Sneferu, and was probably erected by one of the “shadowy kings” who preceded him on the throne.  Situated on a natural rocky knoll of some considerable height, it rises in three stages at an angle of 74 deg. 10’ to an elevation of a hundred and twenty-five feet.  It is built of a compact limestone, which must have been brought from some distance.  The first stage has a height a little short of seventy feet; the next exceeds thirty-two feet; the third is a little over twenty-two feet.  It is possible that originally there were more stages, and probable that the present highest stage has in part crumbled away; so that we may fairly reckon the original height to have been between a hundred and forty and a hundred and fifty feet The monument is generally regarded as a tomb, from its situation in the Memphian necropolis and its remote resemblance to the pyramids; but as yet it has not been penetrated, and consequently has not been proved to have been sepulchral.

[Illustration:  PYRAMID OF MEYDOUM.]

A construction, which has even a greater appearance of antiquity than the Meydoum tower, exists at Saccarah.  Here the architect carried up a monument to the height of two hundred feet, by constructing it in six or seven sloping stages, having an angle of 73 deg. 30’.  The core of his building was composed of rubble, but this was protected on every side by a thick casing of limestone roughly hewn, and apparently quarried on the spot.  The sepulchral intention of the construction is unquestionable.  It covered a spacious chamber excavated in the rock, whereon the monument was built, which, when first discovered, contained a sarcophagus and was lined with slabs of granite.  Carefully concealed passages connected the chamber with the outer world, and allowed of its being entered by those in possession of the “secrets of the prison-house.”  In this structure we have, no doubt, the tomb of a king more ancient than Sneferu—­though for our own part we should hesitate to assign the monument to one king rather than another.