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 the external blocks are of a size with which modern builders scarcely ever venture to deal, though the massiveness diminishes as the pyramid is ascended.  The bulk of the interior is, however, of comparatively small stones; but even these are carefully hewn and squared, so as to fit together compactly.

[Illustration:  SECTION OF THE GREAT PYRAMID.]

[Illustration:  KING’S CHAMBER AND CHAMBERS OF CONSTRUCTION, GREAT PYRAMID.]