its,
or twenty-five fathoms high, and eight cubits, or two fathoms, in
diameter. Caius Caesar had it brought from Egypt in a ship of so odd a
form, that, according to Pliny, the like had never been seen.(270)

Every part of Egypt abounded with this kind of obelisks; they were for the
most part cut in the quarries of Upper Egypt, where some are now to be
seen half finished. But the most wonderful circumstance is, that the
ancient Egyptians should have had the art and contrivance to dig even in
the very quarry a canal, through which the water of the Nile ran in the
time of its inundation; from whence they afterwards raised up the columns,
obelisks, and statues on rafts,(271) proportioned to their weight, in
order to convey them into Lower Egypt. And as the country was intersected
every where with canals, there were few places to which those huge bodies
might not be carried with ease; although their weight would have broken
every other kind of engine.

SECT. II. THE PYRAMIDS.--A PYRAMID is a solid or hollow body, having a
large, and generally a square base, and terminating in a point.(272)

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 hewin