THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN possible to foresee how far they might extend, it was decided to abandon the shaft, at least temporarily. The work which was done at the other pyramids subsequently convinced me that no addition would be made to our knowledge by digging out the remainder of the passage and the chamber under that particular pyramid, and, as we did not consider it worth the time and labour which would have to be expended on it, the shaft was left as it was.

After a careful examination of the other pyramids, we made arrangements to carry on work next at No. 2 (Cailliaud B, Hoskins V, Lepsius No. 19). This pyramid is the most southerly of the northern group of pyramids except one ; its north and south sides at the base are nearly forty feet long, and its east and west sides nearly thirty-eight feet long. We found the upper half of the pyramid in ruins, and as the pylon of the chapel had completely disappeared, it was thought that the investigations which we wanted to make beneath it could not add greatly to the damage which it had already suffered. The triad of figures at the west end of the chapel was mutilated even in Cailliaud's time ( Voyage, tom. ii., p. 155), and the decorations on the walls are so poor that Lepsius did not consider them worth recording in his Denkmdler. We first removed the stones which had fallen from the pyramid on to the chapel, and then cleared away the blocks from the chapel walls outside, making visible the fine reliefs of bulls with which they are decorated. The next work was to clear out the chapel, which was filled nearly to the roof with fallen stones and drift-sand. The hill immediately in front of the chapel falls away somewhat abruptly, and this was the cause of the destruction of the pylon of the chapel ; the builders of the pyramid made a small platform to support the pylon, but it was not sufficiently well bonded into the bed-rock, and it slipped away, carrying the pylon with it. Some fifteen or twenty feet below the level of the floor of the chapel there was a hollow in the side of the hill, which was due evidently to the settlement of some artificial filling, and it suggested that the entrance to a passage leading towards and under the pyramid might be found here. When we had cleared away the stones from this hollow we saw a level surface, much resembling the bed of a small lake or pool which had dried up, 352