It was an age of conscious and intended archaism, and in
pursuit of the archaistic ideal the Mem-phites of the Saite age had
themselves buried in the ancient necropolis of Sakkara, 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.
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