ara, side by side
with their ancestors of the time of the Vth and VIth Dynasties. Several
of these tombs have lately been discovered and opened, and fitted with
modern improvements. One or two of them, of the Persian period, have
wells (leading to the sepulchral chamber) of enormous depth, down which
the modern tourist is enabled to descend by a spiral iron staircase. The
Serapeum itself is lit with electricity, and in the Tombs of the Kings
at Thebes nothing disturbs the silence but the steady thumping pulsation
of the dynamo-engine which lights the ancient sepulchres of the
Pharaohs. Thus do modern ideas and inventions help us to see and so to
understand better the works of ancient Egypt. But it is perhaps a little
too much like the Yankee at the Court of King Arthur. The interiors of
the later tombs are often decorated with reliefs which imitate those of
the early period, but with a kind of delicate grace which at once marks
them for what they are, so that it is impossible to confound them with
the genuine ancient originals from which they were adapted.

Riding from Sakkara southwards to Dashur, we pass on the way the
gigantic stone mastaba known as the _Mastabat el-Fara'un_, "Pharaoh's
Bench." This was considered to be the tomb of the Vth Dynasty king,
Unas, until his pyramid was found by Prof. Maspero at Sakkara. From its
form it might be thought to belong to a monarch of the Hid Dynasty, but
the great size of the stone blocks of which it is built seems to point
rather to the XIIth. All attempts to penetrate its secret by actual
excavation have been unavailing.

Further south across the desert we see from the Mastabat el-Fara'un
four distinct pyramids, symmetrically arranged in two lines, two in each
line. The two to the right are great stone erections of the usual
type, like those of Giza and Abusir, and the southernmost of them has a
peculiar broken-backed appearance, due to the alteration of the angle
of inclination of its sides during construction. Further, it is covered
almost to the ground by the original casing of polished white limestone
blocks, so that it gives a very good idea of the original appearance
of the other pyramids, which have lost their casing. These two
pyramids very probably belong to kings of the Hid Dynasty, as does the
Step-Pyramid of Sakkara. They strongly resemble the Giza type, and
the northernmost of the two looks very like an understudy of the Great
Pyramid. It seems to mark the step