PYRAMIDS OF SACCARA. 229 
** They who have not sepulchres huilt^, make a chap. 
new building in their oivn houses, and place the ■ 
chest upright." Silius Italicus alludes also to this 
standing postured 
After our descent into these catacombs, we 
were taken to other mummy pits; but the smell 
in all of them was offensive, and the appear- 
ances were merely repetitions of what we had 
seen before. Every one of these places had 
been opened, and ransacked, by the Arabs. We 
observed a beautiful crystallization, in diverging 
fibres, of some white substance, upon the wall 
of one of the chambers, perhaps ^Jibrous carbo- 
nat^fsoda; but in our endeavours to remove it, 
the specimen was destroyed: it broke imme- 
diately upon the slightest touch. We were then 
conducted to the mouth of one of those subterra- 
neous repositories in which the embahied birds 
were deposited. Like the entrance to all the other Repository 
catacombs, this resembled that of a well. We e/jjuds 
descended^ as before, by our rope ladder, to the 
depth of twenty feet ; and here found a level, or 
horizontal duct, along which we were compelled 
(5) Kriftis. Ibid. 
(6) " iEgyptia tellus 
Claudit odorato post funus stantia busto 
Corpora," 
