Yet though the Pyramids may fairly claim to be the most famous and the best-known buildings in the world, the ignorance in the average mind with regard to them and the purpose for which they were reared is still just about as general and widespread as the fame of them; and the purpose of this chapter is, first, to tell what, and how many, and of what kind they are; next, what was the end for which they were reared in the beginning of history; and lastly, to recount something of the efforts which have taught us what is really known about them. To most people the Pyramids mean solely the great group at Gizeh; but though these are by far the greatest and the most famous, they are by no means the only pyramids, nor are they even the oldest. The chief field, known as the Great Pyramid Field, begins almost opposite Cairo, on the western side of the Nile, at Abu Roash, where is the pyramid of Dadefra (Razedef) of the IVth Dynasty, and extends south along the bank of the Nile for a distance of about sixty miles to the Fayum, where lie the pyramids of the great XIIth Dynasty Pharaohs, the last of the regular kings of Egypt to build pyramids for themselves. Far to the south again in the country which we know as the Soudan, there lie two other pyramid fields, the one at Gebel Barkal or Napata, near to the Fourth Cataract, the other at Begarawiyah, the ancient Meroë, between the Fifth and Sixth Cataracts, and a little more than a hundred miles north of Khartoum. These two fields have neither the greatness of scale nor the historic importance and interest of the Great Pyramid Field, for they belong to the Ethiopian kings, some of whom, for a time, reigned over Egypt in the days of its decline. The Napata group belongs to the earlier Ethiopian monarchs, who founded the XXVth Egyptian Dynasty, which was finally driven out of Egypt by the Assyrians in the reign of Tanutamen, and to their successors, who after the disasters of 661 B.C. maintained the old Ethiopian sovereignty in the south; the Meroë group belongs to the later Ethiopian kings who reigned after 300 B.C. As things go in Egypt, therefore, these southern pyramids are quite modern, nor do they belong to the most interesting period of Egyptian history, and though they have been long known, they are only now in process of being investigated by the Harvard-Boston Expedition under G. A. Reisner, whose work at Begarawiyah is still unfinished. Our attention, therefore, may be given solely to the Great Pyramid Field.