THE EGYPTIAN SUDAN and the blocks used in the walls of the chapels are larger, and the walls themselves are thicker and better built ; the severity and grimness of the Southern Group have no equivalents in the Northern Group. When both Groups have been seen from the highest and most northerly point of the crescent-shaped hill on which the larger group stands, many travellers in recalling the view will agree with Hoskins {Travels, p. 68), who says, " Never *' were my feelings more ardently excited than in approaching, " after so tedious a journey, to this magnificent Necropolis. " The appearance of the Pyramids, in the distance, announced " their importance ; but I was gratified beyond my most " sanguine expectations, when I found myself in the midst of " them. The pyramids of Geezah are magnificent, wonder-" ful for their stupendous magnitude ; but for picturesque " effect and elegance of architectural design, I infinitely prefer ** those of Meroe. I expected to find few such remains " here, and certainly nothing so imposing, so interesting, as these " sepulchres, doubtless of the kings and queens of Ethiopia. I ** stood for some time lost in admiration. From every point *' of view I saw magnificent groups, pyramid rising behind '* pyramid, while the dilapidated state of many did not render " them less interesting, though less beautiful as works of art. " I easily restored them in my imagination ; and these effects *' of the ravages of time carried back my thoughts to more " distant ages."

To the west of these groups, at a distance computed by Hoskins to be 5,600 feet, lies another group of small ruined pyramids, between twenty-five and forty in number. They are more than half buried in sand, and are unimportant. The greater number of them consist of little more than heaps of stones piled carelessly one upon the other, and few, if any, of them ever had any chapels on their east fronts. They stand immediately over the graves of the dead in whose honour they were raised. Some of them are built, obviously, of stones which were taken there from the thirty-five pyramids of the Southern Group, of which little more than the foundation-stones now remain. We thought it useless to make excavations here, for the bodies of the dead under the pyramids have probably been destroyed long ago by 428