uction of ships and gates of cedar-wood
which must have been brought from the forests of the Lebanon. Snefru
also set up a tablet at Wadi Maghara in Sinai. He built two pyramids,
one of them at Medum in steps, the other, probably in the perfected
form, at Dahshur, both lying between Memphis and the Fayum.

The pyramid period.

Pyramids did not cease to be built in Egypt till the New Kingdom; but
from the end of the IIIrd to the VIth Dynasty is pre-eminently the time
when the royal pyramid in stone was the chief monument left by each
successive king. Zoser and Snefru have been already noticed. The
personal name enclosed in a cartouche [HRG] is henceforth the commonest
title of the king. We now reach the IVth Dynasty containing the famous
names of Cheops (q.v.), Chephren (Khafre) and Mycerinus (Menkeure),
builders respectively of the Great, the Second and the Third Pyramids of
Giza. In the best art of this time there was a grandeur which was never
again attained. Perhaps the noblest example of Egyptian sculpture in the
round is a diorite statue of Chephren, one of several found by Mariette
in the so-called Temple of the Sphinx. This "temple" proves to be a
monumental gate at the lower end of the great causeway leading to the
plateau on which the pyramids were built. A king Dedefre, between Cheops
and Chephren, built a pyramid at Abu-Roash. Shepseskaf is one of the
last in the dynasty. Tablets of most of these kings have been found at
the mines of Wadi Maghara. In the neighbourhood of the pyramids there
are numerous mastabas of the court officials with fine sculpture in the
chapels, and a few decorated tombs from the end of this centralized
dynasty of absolute monarchs are known in Upper Egypt. A tablet which
describes Cheops as the builder of various shrines about the Great
Sphinx has been shown to be a priestly forgery, but the Sphinx itself
may have been carved out of the rock under the splendid rule of the IVth
Dynasty.

The Vth Dynasty is said to be of Elephantine, but this must be a
mistake. Its kings worshipped Re, the sun, rather than Horus, as their
ancestor, and the title [HRG: zA-hrw] "son of the Sun" began to be
written by them before the cartouche containing the personal name, while
another "solar" cartouche, containing a name compounded with Re,
followed the title [HRG: sw:t-bit:t] "king of Upper and Lower Egypt."
Sahure and the other kings of the dynasty built magnificent temples with
obelisks dedicat