highest parts of it were finished
first, and afterwards they proceeded to finish that which came next to
them, and lastly they finished the parts of it near the ground and the
lowest ranges. On the pyramid it is declared in Egyptian writing how
much was spent on radishes and onions and leeks for the workmen, and if
I rightly remember that which the interpreter said in reading to me this
inscription, a sum of one thousand six hundred talents of silver was
spent; and if this is so, how much besides is likely to have been
expended upon the iron with which they worked, and upon bread and
clothing for the workmen, seeing that they were building the works for
the time which has been mentioned and were occupied for no small time
besides, as I suppose, in the cutting and bringing of the stones and in
working at the excavation under the ground? Cheops moreover came, they
said, to such a pitch of wickedness, that being in want of money he
caused his own daughter to sit in the stews, and ordered her to obtain
from those who came a certain amount of money (how much it was they did
not tell me): and she not only obtained the sum appointed by her father,
but also she formed a design for herself privately to leave behind her
a memorial, and she requested each man who came in to give her one stone
upon her building: and of these stones, they told me, the pyramid was
built which stands in front of the great pyramid in the middle of the
three, each side being one hundred and fifty feet in length.

This Cheops, the Egyptians said, reigned fifty years; and after he was
dead his brother Chephren succeeded to the kingdom. This king followed
the same manner of dealing as the other, both in all the rest and also
in that he made a pyramid, not indeed attaining to the measurements
of that which was built by the former (this I know, having myself also
measured it), and moreover there are no underground chambers beneath nor
does a channel come from the Nile flowing to this one as to the other,
in which the water coming through a conduit built for it flows round
an island within, where they say that Cheops himself is laid: but for a
basement he built the first course of Ethiopian stone of divers colours;
and this pyramid he made forty feet lower than the other as regards
size, building it close to the great pyramid. These stand both upon the
same hill, which is about a hundred feet high. And Chephren they said
reigned fifty and six years. Here then