The Story of Egypt 31 first great age of Egyptian civilization after the land was united under one king.^ We may call it the Pyramid Age and it lasted about five hundred years, from 3000 to 2500 B.C. It was an age of great prosperity and splendor. Otherwise it would have been impossible to erect buildings of such grandeur as these in the Gizeh cemetery. ■ In the Pyramid Age the Pharaoh was powerful enough to seek wealth beyond the boundaries of Egypt. A few surviving blocks Fig. 15. Restoration of a Group of Tombs of the Nobles IN THE Pyramid Age These tombs are grouped about the royal pyramids, as seen in Plate I. They are sometimes of vast size. The square openings in the top are shafts leading down to the burial chambers in the native rock far below the tomb structures. These structures are solid except for a chapel in the east side, of which the door can be seen in the front of each tomb. The reliefs in Figs. 16^20 adorn the inside walls of these chapels from a fallen pyramid-temple (Fig. 22) south of Gizeh bear carved Northern and painted reliefs (Fig. 1 4) showing us the ships which he dared to send beyond the shelter of the Nile mouths far across the end ^^^so of the Mediterranean to the coast of Phoenicia (see map, p. 56). This was in the middle of the twenty-eighth century B.C., and 1 Before this, little kingdoms scattered up and down the valley had long existed but were finally united into one kingdom, under a single king. The first king to establish this union permanently was Menes, who united Egypt under his rule about 3400 B.C. But it was four centuries or more after Menes that the united kingdom became powerful and wealthy enough to build these royal pyramid- tombs, marking for us the first great age of Egyptian civilization. commerce and earliest
