Till the death of Rhampsinitus, the priests said, Egypt was
excellently governed, and flourished greatly; but after him Cheops
succeeded to the throne, and plunged into all manner of wickedness. He
closed the temples and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice,
compelling them instead to labor, one and all, in his service. Some
were required to drag blocks of stone down to the Nile from the
quarries in the Arabian range of hills; others received the blocks
after they had been conveyed in boats across the river, and drew them
to the range of hills called the Libyan. A hundred thousand men
labored constantly, and were relieved every three months by a fresh
lot. It took ten years' oppression of the people to make the causeway
for the conveyance of the stones, a work not much inferior, in my
judgment, to the pyramid itself. This causeway is five furlongs in
length, ten fathoms wide, and in height, at the highest part, eight
fathoms. It is built of polished stone, and is covered with carvings
of animals. To make it took ten years, as I said--or rather to make
the causeway, the works on the mound where the pyramid stands, and the
underground chambers, which Cheops intended as vaults for his own use;
these last were built on a sort of island, surrounded by water
introduced from the Nile by a canal. The pyramid itself was twenty
years in building. It is a square, eight hundred feet each way, and
the height the game, built entirely of polished stone, fitted together
with the utmost care. The stones of which it is composed are none of
them less than thirty feet in length.
The pyramid was built in steps, battlement-wise, as it is called, or,
according to others, altar-wise. After laying the stones for the base,
they raised the remaining stones to their places by means of machines
formed of short wooden planks. The first machine raised them from the
ground to the top of the first step. On this there was another
machine, which received the stone upon its arrival, and conveyed it to
the second step, whence a third machine advanced it still higher.
Either they had as many machines as there were steps in the pyramid or
possibly they had but a single machine, which, being easily moved,
was transferred from tier to tier as the stone rose--both accounts are
given, and therefore I mention both. The upper portion of the pyramid
was finished first, then the middle, and finally the part which was
lowest and nearest the ground. There is an inscription in Egyptian
characters on the pyramid which records the quantity of radishes,
onions, and garlic consumed by the laborers who constructed it; and I
perfectly well remember that the interpreter who read the writing to
me said that the money expended in this way was 1,600 talents of
silver. If this then is a true record, what a vast sum must have been
spent on the iron tools used in the work, and on the feeding and
clothing of the laborers, considering the length of time the work
lasted, which has already been stated, and the additional time--no
small space, I imagine--which must have been occupied by the quarrying
of the stones, their conveyance, and the formation of the underground
apartments!