The real history of the early centuries, therefore, eludes our researches, and no contemporary record traces for us those vicissitudes which Egypt passed through before being consolidated into a single kingdom, under the rule of one man.  Many names, apparently of powerful and illustrious princes, had survived in the memory of the people; these were collected, classified, and grouped in a regular manner into dynasties, but the people were ignorant of any exact facts connected with the names, and the historians, on their own account, were reduced to collect apocryphal traditions for their sacred archives.

The monuments of these remote ages, however, cannot have entirely disappeared:  they existed in places where we have not as yet thought of applying the pick, and chance excavations will some day most certainly bring them to light.  The few which we do possess barely go back beyond the III dynasty:  namely, the hypogeum of Shiri, priest of Sondi and Pirsenu; possibly the tomb of Khuithotpu at Saqqara; the Great Sphinx of Gizeh; a short inscription on the rocks of Wady Maghara, which represents Zosiri (the same king of whom the priests of Khnumu in the Greek period made a precedent) working the turquoise or copper mines of Sinai; and finally the step pyramid where this Pharaoh rests.  It forms a rectangular mass, incorrectly oriented, with a variation from the true north of 4 deg. 35’, 393 ft., 8 in. long from east to west, and 352 ft. deep, with a height of 159 ft. 9 in.  It is composed of six cubes, with sloping sides, each being about 13 ft. less in width than the one below it; that nearest to the ground measures 37 ft. 8 in. in height, and the uppermost one 29 ft. 2 in.

It was entirely constructed of limestone from neighboring mountains.  The blocks are small and badly cut, the stone courses being concave, to offer a better resistance to downward thrust and to shocks of earthquake.  When breaches in the masonry are examined, it can be seen that the external surface of the steps has, as it were, a double stone facing, each facing being carefully dressed.  The body of the pyramid is solid, the chambers being cut in the rock beneath.  These chambers have often been enlarged, restored, and reworked in the course of centuries, and the passages which connect them form a perfect labyrinth into which it is dangerous to venture without a guide.  The columned porch, the galleries and halls, all lead to a sort of enormous shaft, at the bottom of which the architect had contrived a hiding-place, destined, no doubt, to contain the more precious objects of the funerary furniture.  Until the beginning of this century the vault had preserved its original lining of glazed pottery.  Three quarters of the wall surface was covered with green tiles, oblong and lightly convex on the outer side, but flat on the inner:  a square projection pierced with a hole served to fix them at the back in a horizontal line by means of flexible wooden rods.  Three bands which frame one of the doors are inscribed with the titles of the Pharaoh.  The hieroglyphs are raised in either blue, red, green, or yellow, on a fawn-colored ground.