is the enlarging of the
monument, which appears to me to have been the work of
Mykerinos himself.

The Greeks, who had heard from their dragomans the story of the
"Rosy-cheeked Beauty," metamorphosed the princess into a courtesan,
and for the name of Nitokris, substituted the more harmonious one of
Rhodopis, which was the exact translation of the characteristic epithet
of the Egyptian queen. One day while she was bathing in the river, an
eagle stole one of her gilded sandals, carried it off in the
direction of Memphis, and let it drop in the lap of the king, who was
administering justice in the open air. The king, astonished at the
singular occurrence, and at the beauty of the tiny shoe, caused a search
to be made throughout the country for the woman to whom it belonged:
Rhodopis thus became Queen of Egypt, and could build herself a pyramid.
Even Christianity and the Arab conquest did not entirely efface the
remembrance of the courtesan-princess.

[Illustration: 286.jpg THE ENTRANCE TO THE PYRAMID OF UNAS AT SAQQARA]

Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Emil Brugsch-Bey.

It is said that the spirit of the Southern Pyramid never appears abroad,
except in the form of a naked woman, who is very beautiful, but whose
manner of acting is such, that when she desires to make people fall
in love with her, and lose their wits, she smiles upon them, and
immediately they draw near to her, and she attracts them towards her,
and makes them infatuated with love; so that they at once lose their
wits, and wander aimlessly about the country. Many have seen her moving
round the pyramid about midday and towards sunset. It is Nitokris still
haunting the monument of her shame and her magnificence.*

* The lists of the VIth dynasty, with the approximate dates
of the kings, are as follows:--

[Illustration: 289.jpg TABLE OF THE DATES OF THE KINGS VITH DYNASTY]

After her, even tradition is silent, and the history of Egypt remains
a mere blank for several centuries. Manetho admits the existence of
two other Memphite dynasties, of which the first contains seventy kings
during as many days. Akhthoes, the most cruel of tyrants, followed next,
and oppressed his subjects for a long period: he was at last the victim
of raving madness, and met with his death from the jaws of a crocodile.
It is related that he was of Heracleopolite extraction, and the
two dynasties which succeeded him, the IXth and the Xth, were also