There are endless entertainment
and instruction for us in these pictures of old Egyptian life. Yet
no more here than in the portrait statues do we find a feeling for
beauty of form or a poetic, idealizing touch.
As from the Old Empire, so from the Middle Empire, almost the only
works of man surviving to us are tombs and their contents. These
tombs have no longer the simple mastaba form, but are either built
up of sun-dried brick in the form of a block capped by a pyramid
or are excavated in the rock. The former class offers little
interest from the architectural point of view. But some of the
rock-cut tombs of Beni-hasan, belonging to the Twelfth Dynasty,
exhibit a feature which calls for mention. These tombs have been
so made as to leave pillars of the living rock standing, both at
the entrance and in the chapel. The simplest of these pillars are
square in plan and somewhat tapering. Others, by the chamfering
off of their edges, have been made eight-sided. A repetition of
the process gave sixteen-sided pillars.
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