But the most stupendous and appalling memento of their dominion and science was the three great pyramids of Geeza, the erection of which, Herodotus assures us (bk. ii. sec. 128), though the _priests_ would attribute to Cheops, Cephrenes, and Mycerinus, three Egyptian kings, “yet the _people_ ascribed them to a _shepherd_ named Philitis, _who at that time fed his cattle_ in those places”; so consonant with the _invasion_ above authenticated. This is additionally confirmed by the Sanscrit records already referred to, informing us of _three mountains_, Rucm-adri, “the Mount of Gold,” Rajat-adri, “the Mount of Silver,” and Retu-adri, “the Mount of Gems”; having been raised by that Indian colony who had conquered Egypt; which is only a figurative denotation of those _factitious heights_, those astounding monuments of religion and ostentation, which were originally cased with _yellow_, _white_, and _spotted marbles_, brought from the quarries of Arabia, until stripped by the rapacity of succeeding colonies. Belzoni’s testimony is decisive on this point, as his drawing of the second pyramid represents the upper part of its casing remaining still entire, about a third of the distance from the summit to the base downwards. We meet with other pyramids, it is true, chiefly dispersed about the Libyan deserts, but they are much inferior to the fore-mentioned three, except one near the mummies, whose dimensions and structure are very nearly the same with the largest Gezite one. This latter, according to Greaves, is 693 feet square at the base; its perpendicular height 499 feet; that is, 62 feet higher than St. Peter’s at Rome, and 155 feet higher than St. Paul’s in London; while the inclining height is 693 feet, exactly equal to the breadth of the base; so that the angles and base make an equilateral triangle.[176] Belzoni measures them all differently, and gives to the second even greater dimensions than are _usually_ assigned to the first or largest, viz. base, 684; perpendicular height, 456; central line down front, from apex to base, 568; coating, from top to where it ends, 140. The variation arises from the circumstance of the latter gentleman’s measurement having been taken after the base had been cleared away of all sand and rubbish; while those of his predecessors applied only as taken from the level of the surrounding heap. The small ones above noticed are some quadrilateral, _some round, terminating like a sugar-loaf_, some rising with a greater and some with a lesser inclination. All commence immediately south of Cairo, but on the opposite side of the Nile, and extend, in an uninterrupted range, for many miles in a southerly direction, parallel with the banks of the river.