Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Émil Brugsch-Bey. The temple of the Sphinx is in the foreground, covered with sand up to the top of the walls. The second of the little pyramids below the large one is that whose construction is attributed to Honîtsonû, the daughter of Kheops, and with regard to which the dragomans of the Saite period told such strange stories to Herodotus. A small mound which commanded this prospect was roughly squared, and incorporated into the masonry; the rest of the site was levelled to receive the first course of stones. The pyramid when completed had a height of 476 feet on a base 764 feet square; but the decaying influence of time has reduced these dimensions to 450 and 730 feet respectively. It possessed, up to the Arab conquest, its polished facing, coloured by age, and so subtily jointed that one would have said that it was a single slab from top to bottom.* The work of facing the pyramid began at the top; that of the point was first placed in position, then the courses were successively covered until the bottom was reached.** * The blocks which still exist are of white limestone. Letronne, after having asserted in his youth (Recherches sur Dicuil, p. 107), on the authority of a fragment attributed to Philo of Byzantium, that the facing was formed of polychromatic zones of granite, of green breccia and other different kinds of stone, renounced this view owing to the evidence of Vyse. Perrot and Chipiez have revived it, with some hesitation. ** Herodotus, ii. 125, the word “point” should not be taken literally. The Great Pyramid terminated, like its neighbour, in a platform, of which each side measured nine English feet (six cubits, according to Diodorus Siculus, i. 63), and which has become larger in the process of time, especially since the destruction of the facing. The summit viewed from below must have appeared as a sharp point. “Having regard to the size of the monument, a platform of three metres square would have been a more pointed extremity than that which terminates the obelisks” (Letronne). In the interior every device had been employed to conceal the exact position of the sarcophagus, and to discourage the excavators whom chance or persistent search might have put upon the right track. Their first difficulty would be to discover the entrance under the limestone casing. It lay hidden almost in the middle of the northern face, on the level of the eighteenth course, at about forty-five feet above the ground. A movable flagstone, working on a stone pivot, disguised it so effectively that no one except the priests and custodians could have distinguished this stone from its neighbours. When it was tilted up, a yawning passage was revealed,* three and a half feet in height, with a breadth of four feet.