After all, however, the master-thief did not succeed Rhampsinitos on the throne. After passing the western entrance of the temple of Ptah, Herodotos arrived again at the northern side, from which he had started, and, as he was not allowed to enter the sanctuary, there was nothing further for him to see. His next visit, accordingly, was to the pyramids of Gizeh, and the pyramidal builders—Kheops, Khephren, and Mykerinos of the fourth dynasty—are made to follow Ramses III. of the twentieth, who lived more than two thousand years after them. It does not say much for the judgment of our classical scholars that before the decipherment of the hieroglyphs they should have preferred the chronology of Herodotos to that of Manetho. Herodotos, like a true sight-seer, found nothing in Memphis to interest him except the temple. About the city itself he has nothing to say, not even about the stuccoed city-wall which gave to it its name of “the White Wall.” Portions of this wall are still standing at the northern end of the mounds which cover the site of Memphis. Like all the other city-walls of ancient Egypt, it is built of sun-dried bricks, bound together with the stems of palm-trees, and was once of great thickness. At the southern end of the mounds are the remains of the kilns in which the potters of the Roman and Byzantine age baked their vases of blue porcelain. Some of their failures still lie on the surface of the ground. Herodotos went to the pyramids of Gizeh by water, across the lake on the western side of the city, which he states had been made by Menes, and then along a canal. At Gizeh his love of the marvellous was fully satisfied. He inspected the pyramids and the causeway along which the stones had been brought from the quarries of Turah for building them, and listened reverentially to all the stories which his guides told him about them and their builders. The measurements he gives were in most cases probably made by himself. But in saying that there were hieroglyphic inscriptions “in the pyramid” he has made a mistake. There were no inscriptions either in it or outside it, unless it were a few hieratic records left by visitors on the lower casing-stones of the monument. At the same time it is certain that Herodotos saw the hieroglyphs, and that his guide pretended to translate them, since they contained, according to him, an account of the quantity of radishes, onions, and leeks eaten by the workmen when building the great pyramid, as well as the amount of money which it cost. But the vegetables represented Egyptian characters—the radish, for instance, being probably _rod_, “fruit” or “seed,” and the mention of them is a proof that it really was a hieroglyphic text which the dragoman proposed to interpret. It is even possible that the guide knew the hieroglyphic symbols for the numerals; if so, it would explain his finding in them the number of talents spent by Kheops upon his sepulchre, and it would also