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, their gigantic size became evident.”  When Savary first visited these pyramids, he left Jizeh at one o’clock in the morning, and soon reached them.  The full moon illuminated their summits, and they appeared to him “like rough, craggy peaks piercing the clouds.”  Herodotus gives 800 feet as the height of the great pyramid, and says this is likewise the length of its base, on each side; Strabo makes it 625, and Diodorus 600.  Modern measurements agree most nearly with the latter.

The pyramid of Cheops consists of a series of platforms, each of which is smaller than the one on which it rests, and consequently presents the appearance of steps which diminish in length from the bottom to the top.  There are 203 of these steps, and the height of them decreases, but not regularly, the greatest height being about four feet eight inches, and the least about one foot eight inches.  The horizontal lines of the platforms are perfectly straight, the stones are cut and fitted to each other with the greatest accuracy, and joined with a cement of lime, with little or no sand in it.  It has been ascertained that a bed has been cut in the solid rock, eight inches deep, to receive the lowest external course of stones.  The vertical height, measured from this base in the rock to the top of the highest platform now remaining, is 456 feet.  This last platform is thirty two feet eight inches square, and if to this were added what is necessary to complete the pyramid, the total height would be 479 feet.  Each side of the base, measured round the stones let into the rock, is 763 feet 5 inches, and the perimeter of the base is about 3,053 feet.  The measurements of travelers differ