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κατὰ δέκα. This must mean that a gang of 100,000 worked for three months, and were then relieved by another gang. For relays of workers cf. 1 Kings v. 13-15, and for forced labour ib. ix. 21 (both of Solomon). Meyer (i. 233; so too Petrie, Pyramids, p. 210), however, thinks the three months are those of the rising of the Nile; the blocks were cut all the year round, but transported during the period when field-work was impossible. Petrie says: ‘Such a scale of work would suffice for the complete building in twenty years as stated by H.’ H.'s informant may have meant this, but if so H. certainly misunderstood him.

δέκα ἔτεα. The μέν corresponds to the δέ of § 5; the road and the ‘chambers’ (§ 4 οἰκημάτων) took ten years, the pyramid itself twenty.

τῆς ὁδοῦ. Two roads can still be traced, one to the first, the other to the third pyramid; their object was to serve as an inclined plane, up which the stones could be dragged from the Nile level to the edge of the plateau, which is a hundred feet above the plain (cf. ἐπὶ τοῦ λόφοι).

πυραμίς: an Egyptian word = ‘a building with a sloping side’; B. M. G. p. 170.

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