The magnificent prospect from the top of this pyramid has been described by the French traveller, Savary, who visited Egypt in 1770, in glowing terms. After occupying seven hours in ascending to its summit, "the morning light," says he, "discovered to us every moment new beauties: the tops of gilded minarets, and of date-tree and citron groves, planted round the villages and hills; anon the herds left the hamlets; the boats spread their light sails, and our eyes followed them along the vast windings of the Nile. On the north appeared sterile hills and barren sands; on the south, the river and waving fields, vast as the ocean; to the west, the plain of Fayum, famous for its roses: to the east, the picturesque town of Gizeh, and the towers of Fostat, the minarets of Cairo, and the castle of Saladin, terminated the prospect. Seated on the most wonderful of the works of man, as upon a throne, our eyes beheld by turns a dreadful desert; rich plains in which the Elysian fields had been imagined; villages; a majestic river; and edifices which seemed the work of giants. The universe contains no landscape more variegated, more magnificent, or more awful." The ancients knew little of the interior structure of these giant piles.[364] Herodotus, who lived 445 years before Christ, merely speaks of an entrance leading to the interior, by hearsay from the priests, who informed him that there were secret vaults beneath, hewn out of the natural rock. Strabo, who lived after the Christian era, only describes a single slanting passage which led to a chamber in which was a stone tomb. Diodorus Siculus, who lived forty-four years before Christ, agrees with this; and Pliny, who lived A.D. 66, adds, that there was a well in the Great Pyramid, eighty cubits deep. This is all the ancients have said about the interior. "The Egyptian priests, indeed, assured Aristides, a Greek traveller about two centuries before Christ, that 'the excavations beneath were as great as the height above.' And Ebn Abd Alkokim, an Arabic writer of the ninth century, says, that the builders 'constructed numerous excavated chambers, with gates to them, forty cubits under ground.' Other Arabian writers say, that these chambers contain chests of black stone, in which were deposited the sacred archives of king Saurid, who built the pyramid. Many discoveries (perhaps a burial-place under ground) obviously remain to be made.