782 Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie [June 3, 



The last stage that we have found in this series is that of Prince 

 Beb, where the well of entrance and the second well are placed near 

 together, and nothing comes between the high-vaulted sloping passage 

 and the funereal chamber. In this last there is no inscription on the 

 outside of the mastaba nor on the chamber ; but the whole care was 

 given to crowding the inside of the coffin with very lengthy magic 

 texts. This seems to mark a change of belief, from the earlier idea 

 of the lea wandering about from the tomb, inhabiting its statue, and 

 accepting its offerings, to the different idea of the importance of the 

 mummy and the need of its having the preservative charms as close 

 to it as possible. Thus in this series of tombs we have seen the 

 earliest at Medum, with a central well and sloping entrance to the 

 chamber ; the long sloping passage of Adu I. prefixed to the well 

 entrance ; the well pushed on to near the chamber in Adu II. ; the 

 start of high-vaulted spaces in the next tomb ; the extension of 

 these large spaces in order to economise material, with barrel and 

 domed roofs ; and, lastly, the rearrangement of the parts. If we 

 could extend this chain onward beyond the century or two which it 

 covers, we should doubtless be able to trace many more changes into 

 diverse forms ; but the lack of material is our difficulty, and it is 

 only this spring in my work at Dendereh that the present series has 

 come to light. 



I do not propose here to deal with the series of changes to be 

 seen in the construction of pyramids, as that alone would be a large 

 subject. But we may notice how the earliest type of pyramid starts 

 from the mastaba with a long sloping passage. The royal mastaba 

 tomb of Seneferu had such a passage, starting — as do these passages 

 of the princes' tombs — from the ground level. The next stage was 

 to add a coat of masonry around the pyramid like the successive coats 

 around Rahotep's mastaba, and to continue the original mass upward. 

 This was done seven successive times, each time supposed to be the 

 last, as the masonry was finely finished off with polished surfaces. 

 Finally came the idea of putting one continuous coat from top to 

 base, and so the first pyramid came into existence. When once this 

 form was started, the later kings designed their pyramids at one 

 stroke and had no such intermediate steps of construction ; this is 

 obvious when we look at the arrangement of the internal passages. 

 So we must by no means sui3pose that because the first pyramid was 

 thus developed, that therefore every pyramid went through the same 

 stages. 



Of the later times of the Egyptian kingdom very little architec- 

 tural material has been examined from the cemeteries. In the 

 XXVIth Dynasty, about 600 B.C., tombs were made with a well shaft, 

 and one chamber or several at the bottom of it under the ground, but 

 we know nothing of the surface buildings. Too often any rich tomb 

 was provided by ejecting the former occupier of some noble structure. 

 The stages of the latest degradation can be traced. The deep well 

 and chamber became shortened and simplified in the Ptolemaic times. 



