fland very far from the city of Memphis. I fhall take notice here only of the largest of the three. This pyramid, like the reft, was built on a rock, having a fquare bafe, cut on the outfide as fo many fteps, and decreafing gradually quite to the fummit. It was built with ftones of a prodigious fize, the leaft of which were thirty feet, wrought with wonderful art, and covered with hieroglyphics. According to feveral ancient authors, each fide was eight hundred feet broad and as many high. The fummit of the pyra mids, which to those who viewed it from below, feemed a point, was a fine platform, compofed of ten or twelve maffy ftones, and each side of that platform fixteen or eighteen feet long. M. de Chazelles, of the academy of fciences, who went purposely on the fpot in 1693, gives us the following dimenfions: 110 fathoms. The fide of the square base The perpendicular height thoms. 77% fathoms. The folid contents 313,590 cubical fathoms. A hundred thoufand men were conftantly employed about this work, and were relieved every three months by the fame number. Ten complete years .were spent in hewing out the ftones, either in Arabia or Ethiopia, and in conveying them to Egypt; and twenty years more in building this immenfe edifice, the infide of which contained numberlefs rooms and apartments. There was expreffed on the pyramid, in Egyptian, characters, the fums it coft only in garlic, leeks, onions, and the like, for the workmen; and the whole amounted to fixteen hundred talents of filver, that is, four millions five hundred thousand French livres; from whence it was eafy to conjecture what a vaft fum the whole must have amounted to. * * About 25,000l. fterling. Such Such were the famous Egyptian pyramids, which by their figure, as well as fize, have triumphed over the injuries of time and the Barbarians. But what ef forts foever men may make, their nothingnefs will always appear. These pyramids were tombs; and there is ftill to be feen, in the middle of the largeft, an empty fepulchre, cut out of one entire ftone, about three feet deep and broad, and a little above fix feet long * Thus all this buftle, all this expence, and all the labours of fo many thoufand men, ended in procuring a prince, in this vaft and almoft boundless pile of building, a little vault fix feet in length. Befides, the kings who built thefe pyramids, had it not in their power to be buried in them; and fo did not enjoy the fepulchre they had built. The public hatred which they incurred, by reason of their unheard-of cruelties to their fubjects in laying fuch heavy tasks upon them, occafioned their being interred in fome obfcure place, to prevent their bodies from being exposed to the fury and vengeance of the populace. This laf circumftance which hiftorians have taken particular notice of, teaches us what judgment we ought to pafs on thefe edifices, fo much boafted of by. the ancients. It is but juft to remark and esteem the noble genius which the Egyptians had for architecture; a genius that prompted them from the earliest times, and before they could have any models to imitate, to aim in all things at the grand and magnificent; and to be intent on real beauties without deviating in the least from a noble fimplicity, in which the higheft perfection of the art confilts. But what idea ought we to form of thofe princes who confidered as fomething grand, the raifing by a multitude of hands, and by the help of money, immenfe ftructures, with the fole view of rendering their names immortal; and who did not fcruple to destroy thousands of their subjects to satisfy their vain glory! They differed very much from the Diod. lib. i. p. 40. * Strabo mentions the fepulchre, lib. xvii. p. 808. Romans, Romans, who fought to immortalife themselves by works of a magnificent kind, but at the fame time of public utility. P Pliny gives us, in few words, a juft idea of thefe pyramids, when he calls them a foolish and useless oftentation of the wealth of the Egyptian kings; Regum pecunia otiofa ab ftulta oftentatio. And adds, that by a juft punishment their memory is buried in oblivion; the hiftorians not agreeing among themselves about the names of those who first raifed thofe vain monuments. Inter eos non conflant a quibus factæ fint, juftiffimo cafu obliteratis tanta vanitatis auctoribus. In a word, according to the judicious remark of Diodorus, the industry of the architects of thofe pyramids is no less valuable and praife-worthy, than the defign of the Egyptian kings contemptible and ridiculous. But what we fhould moft admire in these ancient monuments is, the true and standing evidence they give of the skill of the Egyptians in aftronomy; that is, in a science which feems incapable of being brought to perfection, but by a long feries of years, and a great number of obfervations. M. de Chazelles, when he measured the great pyramid in queftion, found that the four fides of it were turned exactly to the four quarters of the world; and confequently fhowed the true meridian of that place. Now, as fo exact a situation was in all probability purposely pitched upon by those who piled up this huge mafs of ftones, above three thoufand years ago; it follows, that during fo long a space of time, there has been no alteration in the heavens in that refpect, or (which amounts to the fame thing) in the poles of the earth or the meridians. This is M. de Fontenelle's remark in his eulogium of M. de Chazelles. P Lib. xxxvi. cap. 12. SECT. 'W SECT. III. The Labyrinth. HAT has been faid concerning the judgment we ought to form of the pyramids, may also be applied to the labyrinth which Herodotus, who faw it, affures us was ftill more furprising than the pyramids. It was built at the moft fouthern part of the lake of Maris, whereof mention will be made prefently, near the town of Crocodiles, the fame with Arfinoe. It was not fo much one single palace, as a magnificent pile compofed of twelve palaces, regularly difpofed, which had a communication with each other. Fifteen hundred rooms, interspersed with terraffes, were ranged round twelve halls, and difcovered no outlet to fuch as went to fee them. There were the like number of buildings under ground. Thefe fubterraneous structures were defigned for the burying-place of the kings, and (who can fpeak this without confufion and without deploring the blindness of man!) for keeping the facred crocodiles, which a nation, fo wife in other refpects, worshipped as gods. În order to vifit the rooms and halls of the labyrinth, it was neceffary, as the reader will naturally fuppofe, for people to take the fame precaution as Ariadne made Thefeus ufe, when he was obliged to go and fight the Minotaur in the labyrinth of Crete. Virgil describes it in this manner: And as the Cretan labyrinth of old, With wand'ring ways, and many a winding fold, In a round error, which deny'd recefs:" * Ut quondam Creta fertur labyrinthus in alta • Parietibus textum cæcis iter ancipitemque Mille viis habuiffe dolum, qua figna fequendi Falleret indeprenfus & irremeabilis error. 9 • Hic labor, ille domus et inextricabilis error. Dadalus ipfe dolos tecli ambigefque refolvit, Caca regens filo veftigia. TH SECT. IV. The Lake of Maris. HE nobleft and most wonderful of all the ftructures or works of the kings of Egypt, was the lake of Meris: accordingly, Herodotus confiders it as vaftly fuperior to the pyramids and labyrinth. As Egypt was more or lefs fruitful in proportion to the inundations of the Nile; and as in thefe floods, the too general flow or ebb of the waters were equally fatal to the lands; king Maris, to prevent these two inconveniencies, and correct, as far as lay in his power, the irregularities of the Nile, thought proper to call art to the affiftance of nature; and fo caufed the lake to be dug, which afterward went by his name. This * lake was about three thoufand fix hundred ftadia, that is, about one hundred and eighty French leagues, and three hundred feet deep. Two pyramids, on each of which food a coloffal ftatue, feated on a throne, raised their heads to the height of three hundred feet, in the midft of the lake, whilst their foundations took up the fame fpace under the water; a proof that they were erected before the cavity was filled, and a demonftration that a lake of fuch vaft extent was the work of man's hands, in one prince's reign. This is what feveral hiftorians have related concerning the lake Maris, on the teftimony of the inhabitants of the country. And the bishop of Meaux, in his discourse on Universal Hiftory, relates the whole as fact. With regard to myfelf, I will confefs, that I : Virg l. vi. ver, 27, &c.. Herod. 1. ii. c. 140. Strab. 1. xvii. p. 787. Diod. 1. i. p. 47. Plin. l. v. c. 9. Pomp. Mela. 1. i. › * Vide Herod. and Diod. Pliny agrees almoft with them. 15 5 do |