143).
A set of beams and ropes still in place above the opening show that the spoilers drew the sarcophagus out of the chamber in ancient times.

Its small chapel, built against the eastern slope of the pyramid, with courtyard containing a low flat altar between two standing stelae nearly 14 feet high, was found intact.

The walls of the chapel were uninscribed, and bare; but the _graffiti_ found there prove that the place was much visited during the times of the Eighteenth Dynasty by scribes, who recorded their admiration of the beauty of the monument, and believed that King Sneferu had raised it for himself and for his queen Meresankhu.
[Illustration: Fig.

143 .-- Section of passage and vault in pyramid of Medum.] The custom of building pyramids did not end with the Twelfth Dynasty; there are later pyramids at Manfalut, at Hekalli to the south of Abydos, and at Mohammeriyeh to the south of Esneh.

Until the Roman period, the semi- barbarous sovereigns of Ethiopia held it as a point of honour to give the pyramidal form to their tombs.