tion, however, which ascribed it to the
immediate predecessor of Men-kau-ra, may be accepted as sufficient
evidence of its author.

[Illustration: SARCOPHAGUS OF MYCERINUS.]

[Illustration: SECTION OF THE SECOND PYRAMID.]

Come we now to the "Great Pyramid," "which is still," says Lenormant,
"at least in respect of its mass, _the most prodigious of all human
constructions_," The "Great Pyramid," or "First Pyramid of Ghizeh," as
it is indifferently termed, is situated almost due north-east of the
"Second Pyramid," at the distance of about two hundred yards. The length
of each side at the base was originally seven hundred and sixty-four
feet, or fifty-seven feet more than that of the sides of the "Second
Pyramid." Its original perpendicular height was something over four
hundred and eighty feet, its cubic contents exceeded eighty-nine million
feet, and the weight of its mass 6,840,000 tons. In height it thus
exceeded Strasburg Cathedral by above six feet, St. Peter's at Rome by
above thirty feet, St. Stephen's at Vienna by fifty feet St. Paul's,
London, by a hundred and twenty feet, and the Capitol at Washington by
nearly two hundred feet. Its area was thirteen acres, one rood, and
twenty-two poles, or nearly two acres more than the area of the "Second
Pyramid." which was fourfold that of the "Third Pyramid," which, as we
have seen, was that of an ordinary London square. Its cubic contents
would build a city of twenty-two thousand such houses as were above
described, and laid in a line of cubic squares would reach a distance of
nearly seventeen thousand miles, or girdle two-thirds of the earth's
circumference at the equator. Herodotus says that its construction
required the continuous labour of a hundred thousand men for the space
of twenty years, and moderns do not regard the estimate as exaggerated.

The "Great Pyramid" presents, moreover, many other marvels besides its
size. First, there is the massiveness of the blocks of which it is
composed. The basement stones are in many cases thirty feet long by
five feet high, and four or five wide: they must contain from six
hundred to seven hundred and fifty cubic feet each, and weigh from
forty-six to fifty-seven tons. The granite blocks which roof over the
upper sepulchral chamber are nearly nineteen feet long, by two broad and
from three to four deep. The relieving stones above the same chamber,
and those of the entrance passage, are almost equally massive. Generally
th