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124.
They said that Egypt until the time of King Rhampsinitus was altogether well-governed and prospered greatly, but that Kheops, who was the next king, brought the people to utter misery. For first he closed all the temples, so that no one could sacrifice there; and next, he compelled all the Egyptians to work for him.
[2]
To some, he assigned the task of dragging stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile; and after the stones were ferried across the river in boats, he organized others to receive and drag them to the mountains called Libyan.
[3]
They worked in gangs of a hundred thousand men, each gang for three months. For ten years the people wore themselves out building the road over which the stones were dragged, work which was in my opinion not much lighter at all than the building of the pyramid1
[4]
(for the road is nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards, and it is all of stone polished and carved with figures). The aforesaid ten years went to the building of this road and of the underground chambers in the hill where the pyramids stand; these, the king meant to be burial-places for himself, and surrounded them with water, bringing in a channel from the Nile.
[5]
The pyramid itself was twenty years in the making. Its base is square, each side eight hundred feet long, and its height is the same; the whole is of stone polished and most exactly fitted; there is no block of less than thirty feet in length.
1 The “Great Pyramid.”
Herodotus, with an English translation by A. D. Godley. Cambridge. Harvard University Press. 1920.
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References (22 total)
- Commentary references to this page
(1):
- Sir Richard C. Jebb, Commentary on Sophocles: Oedipus Tyrannus, 1110-1185
- Cross-references to this page
(1):
- Smith's Bio, Cheops
- Cross-references in general dictionaries to this page
(20):
- LSJ, ἁρμόζω
- LSJ, ἀπείργω
- LSJ, ἀποδείκ-νυ_μι
- LSJ, ξεστός
- LSJ, δέμω
- LSJ, διαπεραι-όω
- LSJ, ἐλαύνω
- LSJ, ἐργάζομαι
- LSJ, εὐνομ-ία
- LSJ, κατα-κλείω
- LSJ, λόφος
- LSJ, μέτωπ-ον
- LSJ, παντα^χῆ
- LSJ, πλέθρ-ον
- LSJ, τάσσω
- LSJ, τετράγων-ος
- LSJ, τρίβω
- LSJ, τρι?́μην-ος
- LSJ, ὑπό
- LSJ, ὡς
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