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According to the account of Herodotus, the dead cats were embalmed in sacred tombs at Bubastis, the hawks at Buto, the ibis at Hermopolis.114 Mummies of cats have been discovered at Thebes and Sheikhassan; mummies of bulls, cows, jackals, dogs, and vultures at Thebes and Sioot; of hawks and ibises at Thebes, Hermopolis, Abydus, and Memphis; of crocodiles at Thebes and Manfalut.115
This reverence for beasts, the excessive regard for the nourishment of the sacred kinds and the preservation of their bodies, the offering of prayers to them, the worship of bulls, birds, and crocodiles as living gods, the royal honours with which these selected examples were buried, would of necessity be regarded as a very rude superstition or degraded fetichism, hardly compatible with the general level of civilisation and culture in the country, had not the Egyptians united a deeper feeling with their worship of animals. In the living and yet typical forms of beasts as contrasted with the deadness of nature, they saw not only creations of the deities, but manifestations of the divine life itself. The consecrated race of animals participated in the nature of the god to whom it belonged, and the specimens in the temples were an unbroken series of incarnations of the deity.
In a different sense from the sacred animals, man also was in the eyes of the Egyptians a manifestation of the divine life and nature. If we set aside the position of the kings (see below), we find no indication that man was regarded as the incarnation of particular deities or their attributes. Yet man had a share in the immortality of the gods; and he who studied and desired the divine was thought by his bodily death to arrive at a complete divine existence. The primary result of this feeling was that the body must be preserved as the vehicle of personality even when life and soul have left it; it must be protected from decay and ruin and any external disturbance by nature or man. Beyond the reach of beasts of prey, safe from the enemy and the destroyer, the corpses must rest uncorrupted and uninjured in cool, secure, inaccessible, unpolluted, indestructible graves. No nation has devoted so much care and labour to the preservation of the corpses, whether of men or of sacred animals, as the Egyptians. It was almost the first duty of the living to attend to the dead. And with his body must be preserved all that the deceased person had done or acquired in life: his occupation, his actions must live on in the grave, like his corpse. Pictures in his tomb must represent his life, and inscriptions must give an account of it. "The Egyptians," says Diodorus, "speak of the dwellings of the living as a lodging; but of the tombs of the dead as eternal habitations, because the dead pass an endless time in Hades. Hence they bestow less toil upon their houses; but their tombs they furnish in a most extraordinary manner."116
The tombs are always turned towards the west, and are deeply hollowed out in soil, or hewn in the rocks of the Libyan mountains. Those of the wealthier sort generally consist of two chambers, an upper and a lower, or a front and a back one. The upper or front chamber is furnished with a description of the life of the dead person, his possessions, his office, his occupation, and the most important results of his life exhibited in relief and pictures. It served as a chapel in which the offerings to the dead were made. In the lower or hinder chamber lay the corpse. The corpses of the poorer inhabitants found their resting-place in the common sepulchres. The preservation of the corpse was accomplished in various ways. Either the entrails were taken out through an aperture and placed in separate vessels, or the corpse was protected against corruption by the injection of various substances; or finally it was allowed to lie for a considerable time in saltpetre.
Like the embalmment and the tomb, the cerements and the coffin were more or less costly, according to the rank and wealth of the deceased. The dead person was placed in a receptacle adapted to the shape of the corpse, provided with a mask to represent his face, and adorned with inscriptions and pictures. On the breast was generally depicted the beetle of Ptah, or an open eye, the symbol of Osiris. This receptacle was then placed in two or more coffins, each inclosing the other, which were made of more or less costly wood. Rich persons added to their coffins the stone sarcophagus, a hollow block of granite, the heavy lid of which was then made so fast to the lower part that it could not be opened without destroying the whole.
The sarcophagus was carried to the sepulchre in solemn procession, led by the temple-servants, with the necessary implements, and the bull destined for sacrifice to the dead. Next were seen the implements used by the deceased in his lifetime; the insignia of his order, if he had been a priest, or in any office; or, if he had held any military command, his chariot followed. After this came the waiting-women, hired for this purpose according to the custom of the East; and men with palm-branches, the servants of the dead, and the priests; last of all followed the sarcophagus on a boat – for the soul of the dead passed like the sun-god on a boat to the under world. This boat was on rollers, and drawn by oxen. The procession was closed by the mourners of the family and the friends. When the bull had been sacrificed and frankincense burned to the gods, libations were poured in honour of the dead. He was praised, as Diodorus assures us, not because he was born of a noble race, but because he had been carefully educated and well instructed, because he had been pious towards the gods, and had lived a just and sober life. Then the kinsfolk implored the gods to receive the dead into the society of the good. The accompanying multitude joined in the prayer, and extolled the faith of the deceased, who now would for ever pass his life in the company of the good.117 The coffin was then brought into the upper chamber, and from thence, when the ceremonies were completed, it was carried to its proper resting-place, and placed on the west side of it; the place was then closed and sealed.
According to the Egyptian story, Osiris was not slain by Typhon. He did not die; he was only taken away from men, as Diodorus says;118 he descended into the under world; he passed away into the invisible region, while in the visible world he continued to live and work in the vigorous strength of his son Horus. In the shape of Horus, or Ra, Osiris wandered through the visible world. He changed only his name and shape when, every evening, he went back to his distant home in order to be alone. Thus, by descending from earth and dying, he had received the sovereignty of the lower world, and left to the youthful Ra, his son Horus, the empire of this world. As the sun goes down every evening, and every morning awakes to new life, as the vegetation dies away in the heat of summer and in autumn, and again in the spring attains to new life, so to the minds of the Egyptians death, in all its shapes, was only death in appearance, in reality it was a transition to a new life. And as Osiris remained alive in death, and was the source of new life, so through him and in him the soul of man was aroused out of death to a new life. The sacred animals and men were of divine nature and origin; they could not, therefore, end with death; death could only carry them back to their divine origin, to that other world, from which they had come; and in that other world they must awake to a new life.
Owing to this power of awakening life out of death, Osiris became to the Egyptians the special god of the human soul. As lord of the under world, Osiris is often found on the monuments in the shape of a mummy. His colour was in this case black, like his bull in Memphis; his clothing was white;119 his symbol, a wide-open eye, signifying the second beholding of light. In this form of Osiris the Greeks recognised the Dionysus of their Mysteries, whom they could also compare with Osiris as the giver of fruits.120
The Egyptians, says Herodotus, were the first to maintain that the soul of man was immortal.121 Plutarch, as we have already seen, informs us that to the Egyptian Osiris was the embodiment not only of all that is in heaven, but also of all that is in the under world. "His soul," he continues, "was regarded by the Egyptians as eternal and indestructible, and, according to the doctrine of the priests, Osiris ruled over the dead, as Hades and Pluto among the Greeks. In reality, he was free and untouched by everything subject to change and death. When men are delivered from the body, and from pain, and pass into the eternal and invisible world, where pain is unknown, then Osiris becomes their king and leader. They are his retainers, who desire him, and are spectators of a beauty inconceivable and inexpressible to men. This is the explanation of the story most suitable to the deities."122
The inscriptions on the sarcophagi, the wraps round the corpses, but above all a papyrus roll placed in the coffin with the dead body, the so-called "Book of the Dead," enable us to ascertain with considerable accuracy the views of the Egyptians on the fate of the soul after death. The greater part of the known manuscripts of this book belong to the seventh or sixth century B.C. The contents show that rubrics and prayers of the same purport, but differently drawn up, proceeding from different times, and with different commentaries, are collected together in order to provide the dead person with everything he can want in the next world. All the prayers and invocations for that world are also given, in order that the most effective may be at hand, just as at the end of these manuscripts all the names under which Osiris can be invoked – and they are more than a hundred – are gathered together. But fragments of this Book of the Dead, or, more strictly, this Book of the Resurrection, which forms the core of the Egyptian doctrine of the world to come, are found hewn in sarcophagi – already with a triple commentary – which belong to a date previous to the year 2000 B.C.
After death the soul of man descends with the setting sun under the earth into the nether world. Here, on the day of the "valuation of words," the day of "justification," the soul is examined, and its actions weighed in the hall of double justice, i. e. the justice which rewards and the justice which punishes. Osiris, with a crown upon his head, and holding in his hand a crosier and a whip, sits upon a throne surrounded by the water of life, out of which spring up lotus-flowers. Beside him sit forty-two spirits; Anubis, the god with a jackal's head, the leader and keeper of the dead, and Horus, with a hawk's head, are busied with a balance; in one scale is the heart of the deceased, in the other an ostrich-feather, the symbol of truth and justice. The god with the head of an ibis, the scribe of truth, takes down the result of the weighing. As Osiris, according to the legend, was once justified by Horus and Thoth, so is every human soul justified by those deities. The deceased assures them that he has committed no sins; he enumerates forty-two errors into which he has not fallen. He has done no wickedness; he has not stolen, nor slain any one intentionally; he has not allowed his devotions to be seen; he has not been guilty of hypocrisy, or lying; he has not stolen the property of the gods, or the sacrificial food; he has not calumniated any one, or fallen into drunkenness or adultery; he has not turned away his ear from the words of truth; he has been no idle talker; he has not slighted the king or his father; he has not contemned the gods, or torn from the dead their linen wraps.
The departed spirit was not allowed to enter the other world in ignorance: he must know what awaits him there; the path which he has to tread, and the prayers which opened for him the gates of the various regions, which gave him power to overcome whatever spirits and monsters might meet him in the way and attempt to hold him back; he must know the charm which will at last unlock for him the fields of Ra. He must know and recognise the gods to whom he returns; the nature from which he has sprung, and which he now again assumes. As in him divinity has been made human, so is he now in turn deified. To secure this knowledge for the dead, the book is placed in his coffin, the important passages were written on the wraps, and engraved on the coffin.
If the heart of the dead man was not found too light and his soul was pure,123 he was acquitted in the other world, he received back from the gods his heart and members renewed and deified, and the goddesses of life and the sky – Hathor and Nut – poured out upon him the water of life. His prayer opened for him the gates of the dwellings in the world to come; he was enabled to strike with his lance the evil spirits and monsters, the crocodiles, snakes, tortoises, the two vipers, and the serpent Apep, to keep at a distance all impurity, and finally to reach the fields of the sun-god.124 Here the blessed planted the heavenly wheat – of which the ears were two cubits in length – wandered at will in shady avenues with odours in their hair, and bathed in pools of water.
Arrived among the gods, the soul receives the power of assuming various existences – that is, apparently, of entering into the bodies of men and beasts, and returning finally into the divine substance from which it sprang. Hence to the Egyptians death is the "going up to heaven," the "entrance into heaven," the "entrance into the place of the gods."125 The first chapter of the Book of the Dead was to be pronounced by the deceased on the day of his burial when going forth from the grave at the western gate of the under-world, in order to find immediate entrance there. "By learning this chapter when on earth," so runs the close of it in the book, "or by setting it forth in writing on his tomb, he will emerge on the day, and on entering into his dwelling he will not be thrust back. Food and drink will be given to him, much flesh also on the table of Ra; he will work in the fields on the plain of Aanro (Paradise), where corn and wheat will be given to him; he will live happily as he lived upon earth." On the day of justification, the dead has to say: "I am one of the initiated; thy name I know; I know the names of thy forty-two gods, who dwell with thee in the hall of twofold justice." Then comes the answer: "Enter! thou knowest us."126 On a sarcophagus of the time of the Amenemha and Sesurtesen the deceased utters the following words, which are found detailed at greater length and commented upon in the seventeenth chapter of the Book of the Dead. "I am Tum (p. 51), a being, which I alone am. I am Ra in his first sovereignty. I am the great self-existing god, the creator of his name, the ruler of all gods, whom none of the gods restrains. I was yesterday; I know the morrow. When I spoke a battle-field was prepared for the gods. I know the name of that great god who is there. Glory of Ra is his name. I am the great Bennu which is worshipped in On. I am Chem in his manifestation; on me have been placed the two feathers on my head; I have arrived at my land, I have arrived at my dwelling-place."127 "The sun-mountain (horizon) of his father Tum is meant," – so run the commentaries, both old and late, and at the same time they remark that the great god, existing by his own power, is Osiris; and the great Bennu also is Osiris (p. 69). By Chem is meant Chemhor, i. e., the Horus, who by his own power renews his own youth every day. On the cover of the sarcophagus we find the formula, "When this chapter has been pronounced, he (the dead man) enters into the western land at the time of his resurrection: if entirely unacquainted with it, he cannot enter; for him, as for one uninitiated, there is no resurrection."128
Thus we must assume that the Egyptians believed in man's return to his divine origin in the sense that a soul which was not found wanting in weight, and was conscious of its own true nature, was not only received, after the completion of the proper cycle, into the bosom of the godhead, and allowed to be absorbed into the divine power, but was so far deified that it could adopt divine attributes and power, and even assume a divine title.
According to the account of Herodotus, the Egyptians believed that the soul of the dead passed into an animal, born at the time; from this it wandered into all the other animals on earth, in the air and the sea, and after 3,000 years it was again born with a human body.129 That this account is incorrect is proved by the records already quoted; it may perhaps have arisen from the Egyptian conception that the soul of the justified obtained the power to assume every shape. But a purification of the unclean and ignorant soul by passing through the bodies of all kinds of animals could never have been assumed by the Egyptians, since the sacred races were pre-eminent manifestations, and the selected animals continuous incarnations, of the gods. If a pilgrimage through the bodies of beasts was really regarded by the Egyptians as a course of punishment and amelioration, the beasts meant can only be such as were not sacred. But as yet the examination of the monuments and records has by no means completely cleared up the relation of the soul to the body it has left, nor has it attained to any result on the fate in store for the souls which were found wanting when weighed in the balance.
CHAPTER IV.
THE KINGDOM OF MEMPHIS
The lists of the Egyptians place Menes (Mena) at the head of their series of kings. They describe him as a native of This, a place in the neighbourhood of Abydus, below Thebes, a district which Diodorus considers the oldest part of Egypt. Menes passes for the founder of the kingdom and the builder of Memphis (Mennefer); he is said to have taught the Egyptians the worship of the gods and the offering of sacrifice.130 Herodotus informs us that he learnt from the Egyptian priests that Menes had thrown a dam across the Nile about 100 stades above Memphis, and thus forced the stream which previously flowed at the foot of the Libyan chain of hills to leave its ancient channel, and flow at an equal distance between the two ranges. When the land thus gained by the dam had become firm, he built upon it the city, now called Memphis, and still situated in the narrow part of Egypt. Towards the north and west sides of the city, Menes had excavated a lake, and filled it with water from the river – which was itself a protection to the city on the east, – and in the city he built the greatest and most remarkable temple of Hephæstus (Ptah).131 Diodorus observes: – The founder of Memphis, the most splendid city in Egypt, selected the most suitable site by founding the city in the place where the Nile separates into several arms, so that the city, lying on the pass, commanded the navigation up the Nile. He also obtained for the place a wonderful advantage and security by throwing a huge dam in front of it towards the south, as the Nile at the time of inundation overflows the district. This dam was a protection against the rising water, and at the same time served as an acropolis and defence from the attack of enemies. On all the other sides of the city he caused a large and deep lake to be excavated, which received the overflow of the water and afforded the strongest protection for the city. The circuit of the city he placed at 150 stades, and owing to the excellence of the situation, Memphis was generally chosen by the kings as their place of residence.132 The situation, just a little above the place where the river-valley, hitherto enclosed between the two ranges of hills, opens out into the Delta, was certainly the best adapted to form the centre of an empire extending over the narrow valley of the upper river and the broader district of the Delta, with its wealth of corn-land and meadows, and to check the entrance of enemies who came from the north-west or the north-east into the upper valley, even when it was no longer possible to maintain the Delta against them. About fifteen miles above Memphis, at Kafr-el-Yat, the Nile makes a considerable bend to the east, and modern investigations claim to have discovered traces showing that this curve is due to the hand of man.
Menes, whose accession, according to the arrangement of Lepsius, would fall in the year 3892 B.C., was followed on the throne by King Athotis (Ateta), who was said to have built the citadel at Memphis. Next came Kenkenes, whose successor was Uenephes, to whom is ascribed the erection of the pyramids. We have seen what care and labour the Egyptians devoted to their tombs, their "everlasting houses." The west, where the sun sets, and the desert spreads out in boundless expanse beyond the Libyan range, belonged in their minds to the gods of night, of the under-world, and of death. About ten miles to the west of Memphis there rises a desolate and barren plateau of rock, which for many miles runs parallel to the river, about 100 feet above the blooming and animated valley through which the Nile takes its course. In that rocky soil, which separates the fruitful land from the desert, the bodies of the dead were placed in chambers, either hewn in the solid stone, or, where the soil was less firm, built of masonry, and thus secured even from the overflow of the river. Even the kings sought their resting-places on this plateau of rock. They, above all, gave attention to the solidity and durability of their tombs; and in death, as in life, they wished to be kings. The place where a king rested must be marked as royal, and visible from a distance; the grave of a king must tower over the rest; his chamber must be of all most difficult to open. Thus at first blocks of stone were rolled upon the closed burial-place of a king, or a mound of earth was raised over it, if sand and soil were to be obtained in the neighbourhood. The strong winds which blew from the desert made it, however, necessary to secure these mounds, and cover them with stone. Hence by degrees the sepulchral heaps acquired a definite shape: they were rectangular structures, lessening toward the apex; then, by extending the base and sharpening the gradient, they were brought into the form of pyramids, and thus obtained the greatest possible firmness and solidity. For a similar reason the core, or central part, was no longer made of earth, but of brick; where blocks of stone could be obtained they were fitted into the core with more and more regularity, until at last these structures were completed within and without of rectangular hewn blocks of stone in regular layers, and artificial mountains of stone towered over the sepulchral chambers of the kings.
"At a distance of forty stades from Memphis," Strabo tells us, "is a range of hills, on which stand the pyramids, or sepulchres of the kings. Among these, three are especially deserving of notice. Rectangular in shape, they are about one stadium high; and the height is slightly less than the length of either side. The sides are not equal, one is a little longer than the other, and near the middle of the longer side is a stone, which can be taken out. Behind this a winding, hollow passage leads to the tomb. Two of these pyramids stand close to each other on the same level; at a distance, on a higher level, rises the third, which, though much smaller, has been erected at much greater cost." "Like mountains," says Tacitus, "the pyramids have been raised amid impassable quicksands by the emulation and power of the kings."133
About seventy of these structures, which rise in a long line on the plateau of Memphis, from Abu Roash to Dahshur,134 remain as witnesses of the rulers of the old kingdom of Memphis and their dependants, of the artistic skill and laborious industry of their nation. Of some only the bases and a few fragments are in existence; of the largest, the points, and at least a part of the casing, are either decayed, fallen down, or broken off; for at a later time the Arabs used these monuments as quarries. Three pyramids which stand in the neighbourhood of the modern Abusir are formed of rough blocks of stone, both in the cores and in the passages to the sepulchral chambers; and these blocks are fastened together by mud from the Nile poured in between them; their casings, now decayed, were of lime-stone blocks, and in height they extended from 150 to 200 feet. Others, originally at least, of an equal height, of which the core was regularly built of brick, are found farther to the south near Dahshur. The architecture of these remains shows that the kings of Memphis commenced building their tombs soon after their accession. They began, it would seem, with a core of moderate size, and in this they probably constructed a sort of temporary chamber. If time sufficed, the first plan was overlaid with new strata, and thus it gradually increased in size. Should the builder die before the whole was completed, the casing of the structure thus raised in the form of steps was left to the successor.135 Between seven smaller pyramids, built regularly of stone blocks, which are about 150 feet in height, and of similar plan and structure, rise the three largest at Gizeh; the highest was originally 480 feet in height, though now it measures only 450 feet; the next greatest, standing south-west of the highest, is now 447 feet, and was originally 457 feet in height; the third measures but 218 feet. The second largest, originally twenty-three feet lower than the largest, is on a slightly higher level, the masonry is inferior to the largest, and the chamber lies immediately under the area of the structure. The largest measures 716 feet, or 500 Egyptian cubits,136 on each side of the area; the height along the slope is 574 feet, and the structure contains about ninety million cubic feet of masonry. Fifty feet above the original area, now covered with the sand of the desert, in the middle of the north side, there commences a gradually descending passage, about three feet broad and four feet high, leading to a chamber hewn deep in the foundation rock. This chamber lies more than one hundred feet below the level of the pyramid, exactly 600 feet under the apex, and in a perpendicular line with it; it is thirty-six feet above the level of the Nile. From this passage to the chamber there branches off, just behind the entrance, a horizontal shaft, and from this rises an ascending passage leading to two chambers, one over the other, which, like the sepulchral chamber below, lie in the axis of the pyramid. The third and smaller pyramid – its sides measure 333 feet, and the height of the slope is 262 feet – being built upon looser soil, required a greater substructure, on which it rose in five or six perpendicular and gradually diminishing stories, the spaces between being filled up with bevelled masonry. Up to a considerable height the casing consists of polished slabs of granite. Under this structure in the native rock lies a larger chamber, and behind this the sepulchral chamber.
When Herodotus visited Egypt about the middle of the fifth century B.C., and questioned his interpreter and guide about the builders of these three pyramids, he was told in answer that they were built by Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus. He was told that Cheops first caused a road to be made from the stone quarries in the Arabian chain of hills – the range east of the Nile – down to the river, and again from the west side of the river to the high ground above Memphis. The road was built of smoothed stones five stades in length, ten fathoms broad, and at the highest places thirty-two fathoms high; and it was intended to convey the materials from the Arabian side of the river. In making this road and building the subterranean chamber for the grave of Cheops ten years were consumed, although 100,000 men were constantly employed upon it by spaces of three months, when they were relieved by an equal number of fresh workmen. Twenty years were then spent upon the pyramid, of which each side and the height measured 800 feet; it was built in such a manner that the structure was carried out by landings and steps, like a staircase. When the proper height was reached, the landings were covered from top to bottom with smoothed and carefully-fitted stones, and no stone is less than thirty feet. Under the surface was a canal carried in masonry from the Nile round the subterranean chamber. "It is also inscribed on the pyramid," Herodotus continues, "what the workmen consumed in radishes, onions, and garlic, and on these, as I well remember, the interpreter who read the letters told me, 1,600 talents of silver were spent. If this is true, what must have been expended upon iron for the tools, and on food and clothing for the workmen?" When Cheops had reigned fifty years he was succeeded by his brother Chephren, who also built a pyramid, though not equal in size to the other, and without any chamber or subterranean canal. "Both pyramids stand on the same elevation, of about one hundred feet; but the second is forty feet lower than the first; the lower stratum is built of vari-coloured Ethiopian stone." When Chephren had reigned fifty-six years, he was followed by Mycerinus, the son of Cheops. This king also left a pyramid behind him, "but his pyramid was much smaller than that built by his father: the sides are only 280 feet in length; the lower half is built of Ethiopian stone."137
The account of Diodorus is as follows: – King Chemmis of Memphis reigned fifty years, and built the largest of the three pyramids, which in height measures more than six plethra, and along the sides more than seven plethra. It is entirely constructed of solid stone, very difficult to work, and therefore of endless durability. Even now, although not less than a thousand, or as some say even more than 3,400, years have passed, the structure is uninjured, and the joints of the stones unloosened. Besides, we are told that these stones were brought from a considerable distance out of Arabia, and the structure was carried to its present height by means of mounds of earth. Most wonderful of all, no traces of these mounds, no fragments from the hewing and smoothing of the stones remain; so that it would seem that this work was not accomplished gradually by the hand of man, but was planted complete by a god in the midst of the surrounding sand. Though it is said that 360,000 men bestowed their labour on the structure, the work can hardly have been finished in twenty years, and the number of men who erected it must also have removed the mounds of earth and excavated material, and put everything in its original condition. Chemmis was followed by his brother Kephren, who reigned fifty-six years. Other accounts tell us that the kingdom descended on his son, Chabryes, and not on his brother. But all agree that he built the second pyramid, which resembles the first in the art of the execution, though much inferior in size, since on the sides it measures only one stadium (or, according to recent measurement, exactly 700½ Greek feet). And while the money spent in radishes and garden herbs for the builders is inscribed on the larger one, the smaller remains without any inscription. Though both these kings had destined these tombs for their place of burial, neither is buried there. Roused by the burden of their labours, the cruelty and violence of these kings – and in Herodotus also Cheops and Chephren appear as wicked and godless kings – the people threatened to take their bodies out of their graves and insult them. Terrified by this threat, each of the kings in his last moments bade his relations bury him privately in a secret place. After Kephren reigned Mycerinus, whom others call Mencherinus, the son of Chemmis. He built the smallest pyramid. Though less in size, it surpasses the others in the excellence of the work and the beauty of the stone; up to the fifteenth layer it consists of black stone resembling the stone of Thebes; from thence to the top the stone is the same as in the other pyramids. On the north side is written the name of the builder, Mycerinus. Abhorring the cruelty of his predecessors, Mycerinus, as we learn, sought to make his rule moderate and beneficent to his subjects, and did everything to gain the affections of the nation. He paid great attention to the administration of justice; and to the common people who had not received from the tribunals such a sentence as seemed just to him, he made presents. "But as to the building of the pyramids, there is no agreement either among the Egyptians or their historians; some ascribe them to the kings I have mentioned; some to other kings."138
