Wilkinson, John Gardner: Topographie of Thebes, and general view of Egypt: being a short account of the principal objects worthy of notice in the valley of the Nile, to the second cataracte and Wadi Samneh, with the Fyoom, Oases and eastern desert, from Sooez to Bertenice (London, 1835)

334 THE CAUSEWAY. [Chap.VI.

repaired by the caliphs and Memlook kings, who
made use of this same causeway to carry back to the
Arabian shore those blocks that had before cost so
much time and labor to transport from its mountains ;
and several of the finest mosks of the capital were
constructed with the stones of the quarried pyramids.*

The view from the top of the Great Pyramid is
extensive, and during the inundation particularly
interesting. On the summit of that of Cephren is
an Arabic inscription, which, though four or five
English travellers have ventured to ascend it, has
not yet been copied.

The pyramid said to have been erected by the
daughter of Cheops,f consisting of many hundred
stones, is a hundred and twenty-two feet square, %
and stands in the centre of the three, as Herodotus
observes, before that of her father.

* Among the buildings constructed with the stones of the pyra-
mids, are the mosks of Soltan Hassan, and El Ghdoree, the
Morostan, the citadel, &c.

t The date of the pyramids given by Herodotus is evidently
very erroneous, since he places Cheops after Moeris and Sesostris.
Suphis is also said to have been the founder of the first pyramid,
as Sewsuphis, his brother, of the second; and Moscheris, or Men-
cheres, of the third; and the era of these monarchs, about 2090
B. C, is much more to be trusted to than that of Herodotus.
Diodorus says they were erected one thousand years before his time.
Perhaps this Sesostris is the one I have mentioned in a note on
Remeses II. in my chronological list of kings.

\ Herodotus says one plethrum and a half, about ] 50 feet; its
ruined condition may account for the difference.