The moon colors of azure the plain in Dashur, but the man who walks slowly on the sand, doesn’t notice the suggestive beauty of the landscape. He only thinks about the monuments around him, about the mysteries not yet revealed of the site where there are pyramids and tombs from the IV and the XII dynasty. His name is Jacques Jean-Marie de Morgan, the man who walks avoiding the rocks that emerge from the sand. He is a civil engineer, geologist, archaeologist, born in Blesois, in France, in 1857, in a family where the taste for antiques and the curiosity for the Egyptian world are at home, to the point that even his brother Henri is an archaeologist. Even he has worked in Egypt discovering, in El-Mamariya and in El-Adaima, important pre-dynastic materials belonging to the second period in Naqada. And in Naqada Jacques will find, in 1897 queen Neithbotep’s tomb. Jacques isn’t yet forty years old when he becomes general director for antiques in Egypt, but he already has a long past of researches and studies behind him. He has worked in England, on the mysterious megaliti in Stonehenge, he has excavated in Persia, in India, in Caucasian. And in Egypt he has already discovered, in Saqqara, Mereruka’s mastaba (1893). He arrives in Dashur in February 17th 1894. There, about twenty kilometers from Cairo, there is the rhombus pyramid and the site can be compared, for archaeological importance, to Giza, where there ae the Sphinx and the most famous pyramids of the Egyptian history. Others have dug there before: very competent people, as Maspero or Petrie, but there are yet many things to discover. De Morgan begins from a mastaba. He opens six violated tombs with no inscriptions except for one where he finds a name: Khnumhotep and a cartouch by Amenemhat, with references about the XII dynasty. De Morgan is an engineer, but he is also a fussy and patient archaeologist. He measures over and over the pyramids. He knows that with Snefru, founder of the IV dynasty, there are new tendencies in the funeral architecture. The leap toward the sky, made by the great architecture Imhotep to satisfy the pharaohs’ ambition to raise themselves toward the gods, becomes always more direct. The big steps in Saqqara become a real pyramid with triangular facades and the magic and symbolic character is partly abandoned in favor of a more precise rationality of the shapes. De Morgan observes the monument that Snefru ordered to build south of Dahsur: it is, actually, the first real pyramid and its shape recalls benben, the royal stone in Eliopoli. Moreover De Morgan, as others, declares that to Omhotep’s initial idea of ascending toward the sky, it was added an idea of protection from the Sun, the god Ra, for the pharaoh’s tomb. The pyramid, in fact, can remember the triangular stripe of the sun rays that go through the clouds when the star dawns at the horizon. This first monument was built to reach 128 meters of height. But during the work some sinking must have happened. So, changing the inclination of the top part, the height was diminished and the shape of the rhombus pyramid known today, derived. They are observations of a great archaeological importance but De Morgan is not yet lucky. The pyramids belonging to the XII dynasty, built by Amenemhat II, Sesotri II and Amenemhat III, are actually only mounds of rubble, at the most thirty meters high, under which there are still the funeral chambers, although ravaged by thieves, probably thanks to priests and workers that gave them information on how to enter the monumentsDe Morgan opens them, studies them, measures them, and suggests hypothesis about their original size and makes important discoveries about their architecture. He is not a man searching for treasures, but one who looks for news, information. And destiny rewards him with something more. At the beginning of the works in Dalishur, in 1894, he decides to study Sesostri’s III pyramid and he ordered the workers to dig north of it, in the court where there are the rests of ancient tombs (today it’s believed that they weren’t mastaba but small pyramids for queens and princesses). He so discovers a pit that leads to an only, great tunnel, 110 meters long. Here, among the other tombs, he finds the burials of two princesses: Sit-Hator and Mereret. The former lived under Sesostri II and III while the latter under Sesostri III and Amenemh III. These burials held a surprise: the princesses’ beautiful jewels. But Jacques de Morgan’s luck doesn’t end here. In 1895, while he digs near Amenenhat’s II pyramid he finds the princesses’ It and Khnumet tombs and jewels. In Khnumet’s sarcophagus, empty and ruined not only by time but also by the insects, among rags of linen and waste material, there is a real treasure: two heads of a sparrowhawk that are the buckle of a sumptuous collar of five strings of lapislazuli, cornaline, emeralds, nineteen pendants with ornamental stones, a gold brooch with the symbol of life and even pieces of gold and emerald bracelets. There are also hundreds of precious stones abandoned in the bottom of the sarcophagus: Egyptian emeralds (amazonite or feldapato), cornaline, quartz, rests of silver and gold. This way is also princess It’s tomb and those of other royal women, full of treasures and make-up objects. An incalculable treasure, not only for the value of the jewels but also for the information about the princesses’ lives in that epoch, about their way of using make-up, of adorning themselves, of dressing, of making themselves beautiful to be liked by the king.

De Morgan's Jewels