Note 277 — Chapter III · (continued 3)

Herodotus affirms (ii. 129-132) that Mycerinus caused the body of his daughter to be inclosed in the flank of a wooden cow, richly gilt, and he says that "the cow in question was never placed in the earth." In his time it was exposed to the view of all comers in a magnificently decorated saloon of the royal palace of Sais. We may be allowed to suggest that Herodotus was mistaken in the name of the prince; Mycerinus is not likely to have so far abandoned all the funerary traditions of his time, or to have entombed the body of his daughter in a spot so distant from his own pyramid at Gizeh. There is one hypothesis, however, which may save us from the necessity of once again accusing the Greek historian of misunderstanding what was said to him; in their desire to weld together the present with the past, and to collect into their capital such national monuments as might appeal to the imaginations of their subjects, the Sait princes may have transported such a curiously shaped sarcophagus either from the pyramid of Mycerinus or from some small pyramid in its neighbourhood.