“Chemmis [Khufu or Cheops], the Eighth King from Remphis, was of Memphis, and reign’d Fifty Years. He built the greatest of the Three Pyramids, which were accounted amongst the Seven Wonders of the World. They stand towards Lybia a Hundred and Twenty Furlongs from Memphis, and Five and Forty from Nile. The Greatness of these Works, and the excessive Labour of the Workmen seen in them, do even strike the Beholders with Admiration and Astonishment. The greatest being Four-square, took up on every Square Seven Hundred Foot of Ground in the Basis, and above Six Hundred Foot in height, spiring up narrower by little and little, till it come up to the Point, the Top of which was Six Cubits Square. It’s built of solid Marble throughout, of rough Work, but of perpetual Duration: For though it be now a Thousand Years since it was built (some say above Three Thousand and Four Hundred) yet the Stones are as firmly joynted, and the whole Building as intire and without the least decay, as they were at the first laying and Erection. The Stone, they say, was brought a long way off, out of Arabia, and that the Work was rais’d by making Mounts of Earth; Cranes and other Engines being not known at that time. And that which is most to be admir’d at, is to see such a Foundation so imprudently laid, as it seems to be, in a Sandy Place, where there’s not the least Sign of any Earth cast up, nor Marks where any Stone was cut and polish’d; so that the whole Pile seems to be rear’d all at once, and fixt in the midst of Heaps of Sand by some God, and not built by degrees by the Hands of Men. Some of the Egyptians tell wonderful things, and invent strange Fables concerning these Works, affirming that the Mounts were made of Salt and Salt-Peter, and that they were melted by the Inundation of the River, and being so dissolv’d, everything was washt away but the Building itself. But this is not the Truth of the thing; but the great Multitude of Hands that rais’d the Mounts, the same carry’d back the Earth to the Place whence they dug it, for they say there were Three Hundred and Sixty Thousand Men imploy’d in this Work, and the Whole was scarce compleated in Twenty Years time. “When this King was dead, his Brother Cephres [Khaf-Ra] succeeded him, and reign’d Six and Fifty Years: Some say it was not his Brother, but his Son Chabryis that came to the Crown: But all agree in this, that the Successor, in imitation of his Predecessor, erected another Pyramid like to the former, both in Structure and Artificial Workmanship, but not near so large, every square of the Basis being only a Furlong in Breadth. “Upon the greater Pyramid was inscrib’d the value of the Herbs and Onions that were spent upon the Labourers during the Works, which amounted to above Sixteen Hundred Talents.