* Professor Petrie thinks that the pyramids of Gizeh were rifled, and the mummies which they contained destroyed during the long civil wars which raged in the interval between the VIth and XIIth dynasties.  If this be true, it will be necessary to admit that the kings of one of the subsequent dynasties must have restored what had been damaged, for the workmen of the Caliph Al-Mamoun brought from the sepulchral chamber of the “Horizon” “a stone trough, in which lay a stone statue in human form, enclosing a man who had on his breast a golden pectoral, adorned with precious stones, and a sword of inestimable value, and on his head a carbuncle of the size of an egg, brilliant as the sun, having characters which no man can read.”  All the Arab authors, whose accounts have been collected by Jomard, relate in general the same story; one can easily recognize from this description the sarcophagus still in its place, a stone case in human shape, and the mummy of Kheops loaded with jewels and arms, like the body of Queen Ahhotpu I.

[Illustration:  181b.jpg the interior of the great pyramid]

Drawn by Faucher-Gudin, from pl. ix., Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh.  A is the descending passage, B the unfinished chamber, and C the horizontal passage pierced in the rock.  D is the narrow passage which provides a communication between chamber B and the landing where the roads divide, and with the passage FG leading to the “Chamber of the Queen.”  E is the ascending passage, H the high gallery, I and J the chamber of barriers, K the sepulchral vault, L indicates the chambers for relieving the stress; finally, a, are vents which served for the aeration of the chambers during construction, and through which libations were introduced on certain feast-days in honour of Kheops.  The draughtsman has endeavoured to render, by lines of unequal thickness, the varying height of the courses of masonry; the facing, which is now wanting, has been reinstated, and the broken line behind it indicates the visible ending of the courses which now form the northern face of the pyramid.

[Illustration:  183.jpg The ascending passage OF THE great pyramid]

     Facsimile by Boudier of a drawing published in the
     Description de l’Egypte, Ant., vol. v. pl. xiii. 2.

Four barriers in all were thus interposed between the external world and the vault.*

* This appears to me to follow from the analogous arrangements which I met with in the pyramid of Saqqara.  Mr. Petrie refuses to recognize here a barrier chamber (cf. the notes which he has appended to the English translation of my Archeologie egyptienne, p. 327, note 27,) but he confesses that the arrangement of the grooves and of the flagstone is still an enigma to him.  Perhaps only one of the four intended barriers was inserted in its place—­that which still remains.

The Great Pyramid was called Khuit, the “Horizon” in which Khufui had to be swallowed up, as his father the Sun was engulfed every evening in the horizon of the west.  It contained only the chambers of the deceased, without a word of inscription, and we should not know to whom it belonged, if the masons, during its construction, had not daubed here and there in red paint among their private marks the name of the king, and the dates of his reign.*