transferred its residence northwards to the neighbourhood of the ancient Northern capital.  We have, in fact, reached the end of the Old Kingdom at Sakkara; at Dashur begin the sepulchres of the Middle Kingdom.  Pyramids are still built, but they are not always of stone; brick is used, usually with stone in the interior.  The general effect of these brick pyramids, when new, must have been indistinguishable from that of the stone ones, and even now, when it has become half-ruined, such a great brick pyramid as that of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Dashur is not without impressiveness.  After all, there is no reason why a brick building should be less admirable than a stone one.  And in its own way the construction of such colossal masses of bricks as the two eastern pyramids of Dashur must have been as arduous, even as difficult, as that of building a moderate-sized stone pyramid.  The photograph of the brick pyramids of Dashur on this page shows well the great size of these masses of brickwork, which are as impressive as any of the great brick structures of Babylonia and Assyria.

[Illustration:  109.jpg EXTERIOR OF THE SOUTHERN BRICK PYRAMID OF DASHUR]

     XIITH DYNASTY.  Excavated by M. de Morgan, 1895.  This is the
     secondary tomb of Amenemhat III; about 2200 B.C.

The XIIth Dynasty use of brick for the royal tombs was a return to the custom of earlier days, for from the time of Aha to that Tjeser, from the 1st Dynasty to the Hid, brick had been used for the building of the royal mastaba-tombs, out of which the pyramids had developed.

At this point, where we take leave of the great pyramids of the Old Kingdom, we may notice the latest theory as to the building of these monuments, which has of late years been enunciated by Dr. Borchardt, and is now generally accepted.  The great Prussian explorer Lepsius, when he examined the pyramids in the ’forties, came to the conclusion that each king, when he ascended the throne, planned a small pyramid for himself.  This was built in a few years’ time, and if his reign were short, or if he were unable to enlarge the pyramid for other reasons, it sufficed for his tomb.  If, however, his reign seemed likely to be one of some length, after the first plan was completed he enlarged his pyramid by building another and a larger one around it and over it.  Then again, when this addition was finished, and the king still reigned and was in possession of great resources, yet another coating, so to speak, was put on to the pyramid, and so on till colossal structures like the First and Second Pyramid of Giza, which, we know, belonged to kings who were unusually long-lived, were completed.  And finally the aged monarch died, and was buried in the huge tomb which his long life and his great power had enabled him to erect.  This view appeared eminently reasonable at the time, and it seemed almost as though we ought to be able to tell whether a king had reigned long or not by the size of his pyramid, and even to obtain a rough idea of the length of his reign by counting the successive coats or accretions which it had received, much as we tell the age of a tree by the rings in its bole.  A pyramid seemed to have been constructed something after the manner of an onion or a Chinese puzzle-box.