But no
excavations have yet proved the accuracy of this view. Both pyramids
have been entered, but nothing has been found in them. It is very
probable that one of them is the second pyramid of Snefru.
The other two pyramids, those nearest the cultivation, are of very
different appearance. They are half-ruined, they are black in colour,
and their whole effect is quite different from that of the stone
pyramids. For they are built of brick, not of stone. They are pyramids,
it is true, but of a different material and of a different date from
those which we have been describing. They are built above the sepulchres
of kings of the XIIth Dynasty, the Theban house which transferred
its residence northwards to the neighbourhood of the ancient Northern
capital. We have, in fact, reached the end of the Old Kingdom at
Sakkara; at Dashur begin the sepulchres of the Middle Kingdom. Pyramids
are still built, but they are not always of stone; brick is used,
usually with stone in the interior. The general effect of these brick
pyramids, when new, must have been indistinguishable from that of the
stone ones, and even now, when it has become half-ruined, such a great
brick pyramid as that of Usertsen (Senusret) III at Dashur is not
without impressiveness. After all, there is no reason why a brick
building should be less admirable than a stone one.
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