The Egyptians of the Theban period were compelled to form their opinions of the Pharaohs of the Memphite dynasties in the same way as we do, less by the positive evidence of their acts than by the size and number of their monuments: they measured the magnificence of Kheops by the dimensions of his pyramid, and all nations having followed this example, Kheops has continued to be one of the three or four names of former times which sound familiar to our ears. The hills of Gîzeh in his time terminated in a bare wind-swept table-land. A few solitary mastabas were scattered here and there on its surface, similar to those whose ruins still crown the hill of Dahshur.* The Sphinx, buried even in ancient times to its shoulders, raised its head half-way down the eastern slope, at its southern angle;** beside him*** the temple of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, was fast disappearing under the sand; and still further back old abandoned tombs honey-combed the rock.**** * No one has noticed, I believe, that several of the mastabas constructed under Kheops, around the pyramid, contain in the masonry fragments of stone belonging to some more ancient structures. Those which I saw bore carvings of the same style as those on the beautiful mastabas of Dahshur. ** The stele of the Sphinx bears, on line 13, the cartouche of Khephren in the middle of a blank. We have here, I believe, an indication of the clearing of the Sphinx effected under this prince, consequently an almost certain proof that the Sphinx was already buried in sand in the time of Kheops and his predecessors. *** Mariette identifies the temple which he discovered to the south of the Sphinx with that of Osiris, lord of the Necropolis, which is mentioned in the inscription of the daughter of Kheops. This temple is so placed that it must have been sanded up at the same time as the Sphinx; I believe, therefore, that the restoration effected by Kheops, according to the inscription, was merely a clearing away of the sand from the Sphinx analogous to that accomplished by Khephren. **** These sepulchral chambers are not decorated in the majority of instances. The careful scrutiny to which I subjected them in 1885-86 causes me to believe that many of them must be almost contemporaneous with the Sphinx; that is to say, that they had been hollowed out and occupied a considerable time before the period of the IVth dynasty. Kheops chose a site for his Pyramid on the northern edge of the plateau, whence a view of the city of the White Wall, and at the same time of the holy city of Heliopolis, could be obtained. [Illustration: 179.jpg KHÛÎT, THE GREAT PYRAMID OF GÎZEH, THE SPHINX, AND THE TEMPLE OF THE SPHINX]