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 Dashûr is not
without impressiveness. After all, there is no reason why a brick
building should be less admirable than a stone one. And in its own way
the construction of such colossal masses of bricks as the two eastern
pyramids of Dashûr must have been as arduous, even as difficult, as that
of building a moderate-sized stone pyramid. The photograph of the brick
pyramids of Dashûr on this page shows well the great size of these
masses of brickwork, which are as impressive as any of the great brick
structures of Babylonia and Assyria.

[Illustration: 109.jpg EXTERIOR OF THE SOUTHERN BRICK PYRAMID OF DASHUR]

XIITH DYNASTY. Excavated by M. de Morgan, 1895. This is the
secondary tomb of Amenemhat III; about 2200 B.C.

The XIIth Dynasty use of brick for the royal tombs was a return to the
custom of earlier days, for from the time of Aha to that Tjeser, from
the 1st Dynasty to the Hid, brick had been used for the building of the
royal mastaba-tombs, out of which the pyramids had developed.

At this point, where we take leave of the great pyramids of the Old
Kingdom, we may notice the latest theory as to the building of these
monuments, which has of late years been enunciated by Dr. Borchardt, and
is now generally accepted. The great Prussian explorer Lepsius, when he
examined the pyramids in the 'forties, came to the conclusion that each
king, when he ascended the throne, planned a small pyramid for himself.