g out the stones, either in Arabia
or Ethiopia, and in conveying them to Egypt; and twenty years more in
building this immense edifice, the inside of which contained numberless
rooms and apartments. There were expressed on the pyramid, in Egyptian
characters, the sums it cost only for garlic, leeks, onions, and other
vegetables of this description, for the workmen; and the whole amounted to
sixteen hundred talents of silver,(273) that is, four millions five
hundred thousand French livres; from whence it was easy to conjecture what
a vast sum the whole expense must have amounted to.

Such were the famous Egyptian pyramids, which by their figure, as well as
size, have triumphed over the injuries of time and the Barbarians. But
what efforts soever men may make, their nothingness will always appear.
These pyramids were tombs; and there is still to be seen, in the middle of
the largest, an empty sepulchre, cut out of one entire stone, about three
feet deep and broad, and a little above six feet long.(274) Thus all this
bustle, all this expense, and all the labours of so many thousand men for
so many years, ended in procuring for a prince, in this vast and almost
boundless pile of building, a little vault six feet in length. Besides,
the kings who built these pyramids, had it not in their power to be buried
in them; and so did not enjoy the sepulchre they had built. The public
hatred which they incurred, by reason of their unheard-of cruelties to
their subjects, in laying such heavy tasks upon them, occasioned their
being interred in some obscure place, to prevent their bodies from being
exposed to the fury and vengeance of the populace.

This last circumstance, which historians have taken particular notice of,
teaches us what judgment we ought to pass on these edifices, so much
boasted of by the ancients.(275) It is but just to remark and esteem the
noble genius which the Egyptians had for architecture; a genius that
prompted them from the earliest times, and before they could have any
models to imitate, to aim in all things at the grand and magnificent; and
to be intent on real beauties, without deviating in the least from a noble
simplicity, in which the highest perfection of the art consists. But what
idea ought we to form of those princes, who considered as something grand,
the raising by a multitude of hands, and by the help of money, immense
structures, with the sole view of rendering their names immortal; and who
did