Wilkinson, John Gardner: The Architecture Of Ancient Egypt: In Which The Columns Are Arranged In Orders, And The Temples Classified; With Remarks On The Early Progress Of Architecture, Etc.; With A Large Volume Of Plates Ilustrative Of The Subject, And Containing The Various Columns And details, From Actual Measurement (Text) (London, 1850)

1 10 ARCHITECTURE OF EGYPT. PART II".

bers; and some few have a hall ornamented with
columns, or square pillars. At the end of the
innermost chamber, a figure of the man of the
tomb is frequently seated, with his wife ; illustra-
tive of the domestic habits of the Egyptians; and
in the floor of the inner, or outer, rooms, are large
pits, from twenty to forty feet deep, where the
coffins were deposited in chambers leading off from
them ; * the upper painted apartments being used
for performing the liturgies, or services, for the
deceased; and intended rather to do honor to his
memory, than to be the receptacle of his remains.
I would willingly enter fully into the subject of
Egyptian tombs, and explain them by the aid of
plans and elevations ; but the limited scope of this
work prevents my doing so; and this also obliges
me to confine my remarks, on the architecture
generally, within a very narrow compass. I will
not, however, omit some general observations on
the character of Egyptian tombs; and the resem-
blance they bear to some early monuments in other
countries. The received opinion is that they were
excavated in the rock; and where the mountains
were conveniently at hand, those of the great
people, as kings, and sacerdotal, and military,
chiefs, were so made; but constructed tombs were
also used, and that too at the earliest times, for
persons of rank ; as the pyramids, and the tombs
about them, fully attest. These last may, however,
have been adopted, partly because the rocks there

* " Whose graves are set in the sides of the pit."—Ezek. xxxii, 23.