28 ANNUAL ADDEESS : 



specialist for every form of disease. Another of the early 

 Pharaohs was celebrated for architectural skill. He built the 

 oldest of thepyramidSj Kochome-of Sakkarah. It was a royal 

 sepulchre, situated in the centre of the Necropolis of the Old 

 Empire, from which, in recent years, have been exhumed 

 many not only of the most ancient, but most important 

 historical records. No less than eleven pyramids stand on 

 the same rocky plateau, and around them are multitudes of 

 rock-hewn tombs. 



To me the object of greatest interest at Sakkarah was the 

 Serapeum, a vase range of subterranean chambers in the sides 

 of a tunnelled avenue, a quarter of a mile long. Each 

 chamber contains a granite sarcophagus, 13 feet long, 11 feet 

 high, and 7 feet 6 inches wide. Twenty-four remain in posi- 

 tion, though all have long since been rifled. There are many 

 other chambers of a similar kind in the rocky hill, but they 

 are covered with drift-sand. 



This remarkable Necropolis was discovered by Mariette in 

 1861. At the entrance ovei^iead there was originally a 

 temple, with avenues of sphinxes leading to it, and wide 

 areas around adorned with statues and smaller temples. One 

 would suppose that such magnificent tombs could only have 

 been prepared for the most illustrious monarchs. Strange to 

 say, however, they were the tombs of bulls — sacred animals 

 which the people worshipped. When living, the Bull-god, 

 Ains, was lodged in a palace, and worshipped in a grand 

 temple in Memphis ; when dead, his embalmed body was laid 

 in state in the princely vaults of Sakkarah, and worshipped 

 still in the temple overhead. In no other place does one get 

 a view, at once so striking and so humiliating, of the splendour, 

 the artistic taste, the religious absurdities, and the degrading 

 superstition of ancient Egypt. 



Some three centuries after Menes, a monarch of another 

 dynasty ascended the throne, whose genius and power raised 

 Egypt to a commanding place among the nations of the East. 

 This was Kufu, better known as Cheops, founder of the great 

 pyramid of Gizeh. The pyramid is the grandest sepulchre in 

 the world. Its base is 746 feet square, and it was 450 feet 

 high. The manner of construction was as follows : — A base 

 was levelled on the platform of rock, just where the fertile 

 Nile Valley borders the sandy desert of Libya. A chamber 

 was excavated in the rock beneath the base, having- a sloping 

 passage leading down to it. The pyramid was then built, 

 layer upon layer of large stones, until the apex was reached. 

 In the centre, sepulchral chambers were constructed, com- 

 municating, with each other and wif-h that below the base, by 



