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)

Chap. VI.] NATURE OF THE ROCK. 335

Besides the three great pyramids are six of
smaller dimensions, and the vestiges of a seventh,*
five of which are built in degrees or terraces.

The rock hereabouts abounds in nummulites and
other fossil remains, common, as Pliny justly
observes, in the rocks of the African chain, but
which Strabo supposed to be a petrified residue of
the lentils of the workmen. If he had merely
noticed lentils as being used by them, we should
have been contented, for they must have constituted
their principal food; and Herodotus mentions three
roots, the figl,\ onions, and garlic, all of which are
in common use among the lower orders of Egyptians
to the present day. And the total expense (says
the historian) for their food amounted to sixteen
hundred talents of silver, which was recorded on
the exterior of the pyramid in the language of the
country.^;

A hundred thousand men§ were employed in the
construction of the Great Pyramid, and in cutting
and transporting the stone from the Arabian moun-
tain ; but these were relieved every three months

* Which is before the Great Pyramid, marked K. It could
not have existed even in Herodotus' time, as he only mentions
three.

f Raphanus sativus, var. edulis, but not horse-radish.

X His expression, " writing," would lead us to infer it was not
in hieroglyphics. This sum is equal to 200,000/. sterling.

§ Herod, ii. 124. Pliny says three hundred and sixty thousand
men were employed for twenty years, and that the three pyramids
were made in seventy-eight years and four months.