Histories

Such is this labyrinth; and still more marvellous is Birkat Qarun [30.666,29.466] (salt lake), Egypt, Africalake Moeris, on which it stands. This lake has a circumference of four hundred and fifty miles, or sixty schoeni: as much as the whole seaboard of Egypt [30,27] (nation), Africa Egypt. Its length is from north to south; the deepest part has a depth of fifty fathoms.

That it has been dug out and made by men's hands the lake shows for itself; for almost in the middle of it stand two pyramids, so built that fifty fathoms of each are below and fifty above the water; atop each is a colossal stone figure seated on a throne.

Thus these pyramids are a hundred fathoms high; and a hundred fathoms equal a furlong of six hundred feet, the fathom measuring six feet or four cubits, the foot four spans and the cubit six spans.

The water of the lake is not natural (for the country here is exceedingly arid) but brought by a channel from the Nahr an- Nil [31.1,30.166] (river), AfricaNile; six months it flows into the lake, and six back into the river.

For the six months that it flows out of the lake, the daily take of fish brings a silver talent into the royal treasury, and twenty minae for each day of the flow into the lake.

Furthermore, the natives said that this lake drains underground into the Golfe de Gabes [10.417,34.000] (gulf), Tunis, AfricaLibyan Syrtis, and extends under the mountains that are above Mit Rahina [31.25,29.85] (inhabited place), Giza, Upper Egypt, Egypt, AfricaMemphis, having the inland country on its west.

When I could not see anywhere the earth taken from the digging of this lake, since this was curious to me, I asked those who live nearest the lake where the stuff was that had been dug out. They told me where it had been carried, and I readily believed them, for I had heard of a similar thing happening in the Assyrian city of Nineveh (deserted settlement), Ninawa, Iraq, Asia Ninus.