Histories

They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months. For ten years the people wore themselves out building the road over which the stones were dragged, work which was in my opinion not much lighter at all than the building of the pyramid[*](The “Great Pyramid.”)

(for the road is nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards, and it is all of stone polished and carved with figures). The aforesaid ten years went to the building of this road and of the underground chambers in the hill where the pyramids stand; these, the king meant to be burial-places for himself, and surrounded them with water, bringing in a channel from the Nahr an- Nil [31.1,30.166] (river), AfricaNile.

The pyramid itself was twenty years in the making. Its base is square, each side eight hundred feet long, and its height is the same; the whole is of stone polished and most exactly fitted; there is no block of less than thirty feet in length.

This pyramid was made like stairs, which some call steps and others, tiers.

When this, its first form, was completed, the workmen used short wooden logs as levers to raise the rest of the stones[*](That is, the stones which were to fill up the angles of the steps, and make the side of the pyramid a smooth inclined plane. The Pyramids built by Cheops, Chephren, and Mycerinus respectively are the pyramids of +Giza [31.216,30.16] (inhabited place), Giza, Upper Egypt, Egypt, Africa Gizeh, near +Cairo [31.25,30.5] (inhabited place), Cairo, Urban, Egypt, Africa Cairo.) ; they heaved up the blocks from the ground onto the first tier of steps;