* Zoega had already recognized that the Rhodopis of the Greeks was no other than the Nitokris of Manetho, and his opinion was adopted and developed by Bunsen.  The legend of Rhodopis was completed by the additional ascription to the ancient Egyptian queen of the character of a courtesan:  this repugnant trait seems to have been borrowed from the same class of legends as that which concerned itself with the daughter of Kheops and her pyramid.  The narrative thus developed was in a similar manner confounded with another popular story, in which occurs the episode of the slipper, so well known from the tale of Cinderella.  Herodotus connects Rhodopis with his Amasis, AElian with King Psammetichus of the XXVIth dynasty.

The beauty and richness of the granite casing dazzled all eyes, and induced many visitors to prefer the least of the pyramids to its two imposing sisters; its comparatively small size is excused on the ground that its founder had returned to that moderation and piety which ought to characterize a good king.  “The actions of his father were not pleasing to him; he reopened the temples and sent the people, reduced to the extreme of misery, back to their religious observances and their occupations; finally, he administered justice more equitably than all other kings.  On this head he is praised above those who have at any time reigned in Egypt:  for not only did he administer good justice, but if any one complained of his decision he gratified him with some present in order to appease his wrath.”  There was one point, however, which excited the anxiety of many in a country where the mystic virtue of numbers was an article of faith:  in order that the laws of celestial arithmetic should be observed in the construction of the pyramids, it was necessary that three of them should be of the same size.  The anomaly of a third pyramid out of proportion to the two others could be explained only on the hypothesis that Mykerinos, having broken with paternal usage, had ignorantly infringed a decree of destiny—­a deed for which he was mercilessly punished.  He first lost his only daughter; a short time after he learned from an oracle that he had only six more years to remain upon the earth.  He enclosed the corpse of his child in a hollow wooden heifer, which he sent to Sais, where it was honoured with divine worship.*

* Herodotus, ii. 129-133.  The manner in which Herodotus describes the cow which was shown to him in the temple of Sais, proves that he was dealing with Nit, in animal form, Mihi-uirit, the great celestial heifer who had given birth to the Sun.  How the people could have attached to this statue the legend of a daughter of Mykerinos is now difficult to understand.  The idea of a mummy or a corpse shut up in a statue, or in a coffin, was familiar to the Egyptians:  two of the queens interred at Deir el-Bahari, Nofritari Ahhotpu II., were found hidden in the centre of immense Osirian figures of wood, covered with stuccoed fabric.