There were three pyramids in Egypt more famous than the rest, one whereof was justly ranked among the seven wonders of the world; they stood not very far from the city of Memphis. I shall take notice here only of the largest of the three. This pyramid, like the rest, was built on a rock, having a square base, cut on the outside as so many steps, and decreasing gradually quite to the summit. It was built with stones of a prodigious size, the least of which were thirty feet, wrought with wonderful art, and covered with hieroglyphics. According to several ancient authors, each side was eight hundred feet broad, and as many high. The summit of the pyramid, which to those who viewed it from below seemed a point, was a fine platform, composed of ten or twelve massy stones, and each side of that platform sixteen or eighteen feet long. M. de Chazelles, of the Academy of Sciences, who went purposely to the spot in 1693, gives us the following dimensions: The side of the square base 110 fathoms; the fronts are equilateral triangles, and therefore the superficies of the base is 12100 square fathoms; the perpendicular height, 77-3/4 fathoms; the solid contents, 313590 cubical fathoms. A hundred thousand men were constantly employed about this work, and were relieved every three months by the same number. Ten complete years were spent in hewing out the stones, either in Arabia or Ethiopia, and in conveying them to Egypt; and twenty years more in building this immense edifice, the inside of which contained numberless rooms and apartments. There were expressed on the pyramid, in Egyptian characters, the sums it cost only for garlic, leeks, onions, and other vegetables of this description, for the workmen; and the whole amounted to sixteen hundred talents of silver,(273) that is, four millions five hundred thousand French livres; from whence it was easy to conjecture what a vast sum the whole expense must have amounted to.