specially the two largest of the group of Jizeh
or Gize, are the most stupendous masses of buildings in stone that human
labor has ever been known to accomplish, and have been the wonder of
ancient and modern times.--The number of the Egyptian pyramids, large
and small, is very considerable; they are situated on the west bank of
the Nile, and extend in an irregular line, and in groups at some
distance from each other, from the neighborhood of Jizeh, in 30 deg. N.
Latitude, as far as sixty or seventy miles south of that place. The
pyramids of Jizeh are nearly opposite Cairo. They stand on a plateau or
terrace of limestone, which is a projection of the Lybian
mountain-chain. The surface of the terrace is barren and irregular, and
is covered with sand and small fragments of rock; its height, at the
base of the great pyramid, is one hundred and sixty four feet above the
ordinary level of the Nile, from which it is distant about five miles.
There are in this group three large pyramids, and several small ones.
Herodotus, who was born B.C. 484, visited these pyramids. He was
informed by the priests of Memphis, that the great pyramid was built by
Cheops, king of Egypt, about B.C. 900, and that one hundred thousand
workmen were employed twenty years in building it, and that the body of
Cheops was placed in a room beneath the bottom, surrounded by a vault,
to which the waters of the Nile were conveyed through a subterranean
tunnel. A chamber has been discovered under the centre of the pyramid,
but it is about fifty-six feet above the low-water mark of the Nile. The
second pyramid, Herodotus says, was built by Cephren or Cephrenes, the
brother and successor of Cheops, and the third by Mycerinus, the son of
Cheops. Herodotus also says that the two largest pyramids are wholly
covered with white marble; Diodorus and Pliny, that they are built of
this costly material. The account of Herodotus is confirmed by present
appearances. Denon, who accompanied the French expedition to Egypt, was
commissioned by Buonaparte to examine the great pyramid of Jizeh; three
hundred persons were appointed to this duty. They approached the borders
of the desert in boats, to within half a league of the pyramid, by means
of the canals from the Nile. Denon says, "the first impression made on
me by the sight of the pyramids, did not equal my expectations, for I
had no object with which to compare them; but on approaching them, and
seeing men at their base, th