The History of Antiquity (Vol. 1-6). Duncker Max

three months, and the 360,000 of Diodorus—a number formed from the days in the old Egyptian year—have arisen out of the free invention of later times, although the building must certainly have occupied more than a decade of years. Inscriptions are not found now on the external side of the pyramid. If such were in existence at the time of Herodotus, they certainly contained other things than those which the interpreter pretended to read there. The interpreters who served as guides to the travellers of that day in Egypt, as the dragoman does now, could hardly have read the hieroglyphics; they contented themselves with narrating the traditions and stories popularly connected with the great monuments of past time, not without certain exaggerations and additions.[141]

But the names of the builders of the three largest pyramids, which these interpreters mentioned to the Greeks, are confirmed by the monuments. In the deep chamber of the largest pyramid there is no sarcophagus; in the upper of the two chambers which lie in the axis of the pyramid there has been found, it is true, a simple sarcophagus of red granite, but it bears no inscription. Above these chambers, however, there are certain small spaces left open, with a view no doubt of diminishing the pressure of the stone-work upon them, and on the walls of these spaces is written the name, Chufu, Chnemu Chufu, in hieratic characters.[142] The same name frequently recurs in the tombs surrounding this pyramid, in which, according to the inscriptions, the wives, sons, officers, and priests of Chufu were buried; and among them the scribe of the buildings of the kings and the priest of Apis, who was at the same time keeper of the gates and of the palace. In this inscription the pyramid of Chufu is called "Chut." On a monumental stone found in the Apis tombs—now in Cairo—we read, "The living Horus, the King of Egypt, Chufu, has built a temple to Isis near the temple of the Sphinx, north of the temple of Osiris, and has erected his pyramid beside the temple of Isis."[143] Chufu himself is not found in Egypt, but in the peninsula of Sinai he is pictured in relief on the rocks in the Wadi Maghara. He is represented as lifting his war-club against an enemy whom he has forced upon his knee and seized by the head-dress with the left hand.[144] In an inscription in the same valley, the oldest which we possess, his predecessor Snefru claims to have subjugated these regions.

In the second pyramid, in the chamber under the surface, a sarcophagus of granite has been discovered on the floor without any inscription. But in the inscriptions on the graves, especially on the grave of the architect of King Chafra, his pyramid is mentioned as "the great pyramid." Between the paws of the Sphinx which stands to the north of the second pyramid, hewn out of the living rock, is a monumental stone, on which is read the name Chafra,[145] and in the ruins of a temple lying near the Sphinx—the same without doubt which is mentioned in the stone at Cairo—seven statues have been exhumed, the inscriptions on which prove that they represent "the Master and Gold Horus, Chafra, the good god, the lord of the crown," i.e., King Chafra himself.[146] And lastly, the inscriptions on the tomb of a woman whose name is read as Mertitef, prove that she was the chief favourite of Snefru and of Chufu, and had been united to Chafra.[147] Hence Chafra must have succeeded Chufu, and the "great" pyramid built by him can hardly have been any other than that which now holds the second place.

In the sepulchral chamber of the third pyramid, it is known in the inscriptions as "Har," i.e., "the supreme," the sarcophagus of King Menkera with his mummy has been discovered. It is made of blue basalt, and bears the following inscription:—"O Osiris, King Menkera, ever living one; begotten of the sky, carried in the bosom of Nut, scion of Seb (p. 55). Thy mother Nut is outstretched over thee, in her name of the mystery of the sky may she deify thee and destroy thy enemies, King Menkera, ever living one."[148]

It is therefore an ascertained fact that Chufu, Chafra, and Menkera were the builders of the three great pyramids. In the mouth of the Greeks the name Chufu passed into Cheops, and by a farther change into Suphis. The name Chemmis in Diodorus has arisen out of the name Chnemu in the form Chnemu Chufu; from Chafra naturally arose Chephren, Kephren, and Chabryes. In the list of kings in Eratosthenes, the fourteenth successor of Menes is Saophis; Eratosthenes allows him a reign of twenty-nine years. His successor, who has a reign of twenty-seven years, bears the same name. The second Saophis is followed by Moscheres with a reign of thirty-one years. Manetho's list gives the name Suphis to the twenty-seventh king after Menes, and he is said to have reigned sixty-three years. Then follows a second Suphis, with a reign of sixty-six years, and this king is succeeded by Menchres, who reigned sixty-three years. On the first Suphis in Manetho's list the excerpt of Africanus remarks: "This king built the largest pyramid, which Herodotus assigns to the time of Cheops;" in the excerpt of Eusebius, both in the Greek text and the Armenian translation, this remark is made on the second Suphis. Hence we can have no hesitation in identifying the Cheops and Chephren of Herodotus, the Chemmis and Kephren of Diodorus, with the first and second Saophis and Sufis of the lists, the Chufu and Chafra of the inscriptions; and the Mycerinus of Herodotus and Diodorus is beyond doubt the same as the Moscheres of Eratosthenes, the Mencheres of Manetho, and the Menkera of the sarcophagus in the third pyramid. In the national tradition of the Egyptians, as received by the Greeks, Cheops and Chephren were called brothers, and this is no doubt mainly due to the fact that the monuments of these two kings surpassed all the other pyramids, and were of nearly the same height and size. It is impossible that Cheops should have reigned fifty years, and his brother Chephren who succeeded him, fifty-six years, as Herodotus and Diodorus tell us—the inscription quoted above makes the same woman the favourite of the predecessor of Chufu, of Chufu, and Chafra also; even more impossible is it that the first Suphis should have reigned sixty-three years, and the second sixty-six, as given in the list of Manetho, if they were brothers; or that Mycerinus, whom Herodotus as well as Diodorus calls the son of Cheops, should have succeeded Chephren with a reign of sixty-three years, as Manetho tells us. Like their brotherhood, the wickedness of Cheops and Chephren is due to the popular legends of later times. The sight of the enormous structures forced on later generations the reflection what labour, what stupendous efforts must have been necessary for their erection. This reflection united with certain dim memories, and gathered round the rule of the strangers, the shepherd-tribes, which for a long time afflicted Egypt, as is clear enough from a trait in the narrative of Herodotus. He assures us that the Egyptians could scarcely be induced to mention the names of the kings who built the great pyramids: they spoke of them as the works of the shepherd Philitis.[149] In the eyes of the Egyptians of the olden time, tombs would never have appeared to be works of impiety and wickedness, realising as they did in such an extraordinary degree the object most eagerly desired, a secure and indestructible resting-place for the dead: with them they would rather pass as works of singular piety. Without doubt it is the older tradition, that of the priests, which meets us in the observation appended in the list of Manetho and the excerpt of Africanus to the first Suphis, and in the excerpt of Eusebius, both in the Greek text and Armenian translation, to the second Suphis, in which we are told that this king had composed a sacred book, and the Egyptians regarded it as a very great treasure.

According to the inscription, Chufu had erected a temple to Isis by the side of the temple of the Sphinx, and therefore the latter temple must have been already in existence. And as a fact the ruins still found beside the great Sphinx give evidence of very ancient workmanship. There was a court, the ante-court of the temple, which surrounded a portico supported on twelve square pillars; next came a hall supported on monoliths, the temple itself, and finally the Holy of Holies, surrounded by small chambers. The material used in building was limestone and granite. The symbolic form of the deity, to whom the temple belonged, was the enormous Sphinx, 190 feet in length, hewn out of the rock, with the body of a lion and the head of a man. From the memorial stone before it we learn that it symbolized