[Illustration:  282.jpg HEAD OF THE MUMMY OF METESOUPHIS I]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.  The
     mummy is now in the Gizeh Museum (cf.  Maspero, Guide au
     Musee de Boulaq, pp. 347, 348, No. 5250).

Their pyramids, whose familiar designations we have deciphered in the texts, have been uncovered at Saqqara, and the inscriptions which they contain, reveal to us the names of the sovereigns who reposed within.  Unas, Teti III., Papi I., Mete-souphis I., and Papi II. now have as clearly defined a personality for us as Ramses II. or Seti I.; even the mummy of Metesouphis has been discovered near his sarcophagus, and can be seen under glass in the Gizeh Museum.  The body is thin and slender; the head refined, and ornamented with the thick side-lock of boyhood; the features can be easily distinguished, although the lower jaw has disappeared and the pressure of the bandages has flattened the nose.  All the pyramids of the dynasty are of a uniform-type, the model being furnished by that of Unas.  The entrance is in the centre of the northern facade, underneath the lowest course, and on the ground-level.  An inclined passage, obstructed by enormous stones, leads to an antechamber, whose walls are partly bare, and partly covered with long columns of hieroglyphs:  a level passage, blocked towards the middle by three granite barrier, ends in a nearly square chamber; on the left are three low cells devoid of ornament, and on the right an oblong chamber containing the sarcophagus.

[Illustration:  283.jpg PLAN OF THE PYRAMID OF UNAS]

     From drawings by Maspero, La Pyramide d’Ounas, in the
     Recueil de Travaux, vol. iv. p. 177.

These two principal rooms had high-pitched roofs.  They were composed of large slabs of limestone, the upper edges of which leaned one against the other, while the lower edges rested on a continuous ledge which ran round the chamber:  the first row of slabs was surmounted by a second, and that again by a third, and the three together effectively protected the apartments of the dead against the thrust of the superincumbent mass, or from the attacks of robbers.  The wall-surfaces close to the sarcophagus in the pyramid of Unas are decorated with many-coloured ornaments and sculptured and painted doors representing the front of a house:  this was, in fact, the dwelling of the double, in which he resided with the dead body.

[Illustration:  284.jpg THE SEPULCHRAL CHAMBER IN THE PYRAMID OF UNAS, AND HIS SARCOPHAOUS]

     Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph, taken in 1881, by Emil
     Brugsch-Bey.

The inscriptions, like the pictures in the tombs, were meant to furnish the sovereign with provisions, to dispel serpents and malevolent divinities, to keep his soul from death, and to lead him into the bark of the sun or into the Paradise of Osiris.  They constitute a portion of a vast book, whose chapters are found scattered over the monuments of subsequent periods.  They are the means of restoring to us, not only the religion but the most ancient language of Egypt:  the majority of the formulas contained in them were drawn up in the time of the earliest human kings, perhaps even before Menes.