e ground to the first stage of the
steps, and when the stone got up to this it was placed upon another
machine standing on the first stage, and so from this it was drawn to
the second upon another machine; for as many as were the courses of the
steps, so many machines there were also, or perhaps they transferred
one and the same machine, made so as easily to be carried, to each stage
successively, in order that they might take up the stones; for let it be
told in both ways, according as it is reported. However that may be, the
highest parts of it were finished first, and afterwards they proceeded
to finish that which came next to them, and lastly they finished the
parts of it near the ground and the lowest ranges. On the pyramid it is
declared in Egyptian writing how much was spent on radishes and onions
and leeks for the workmen, and if I rightly remember that which the
interpreter said in reading to me this inscription, a sum of one
thousand six hundred talents of silver was spent; and if this is so, how
much besides is likely to have been expended upon the iron with which
they worked, and upon bread and clothing for the workmen, seeing that
they were building the works for the time which has been mentioned and
were occupied for no small time besides, as I suppose, in the cutting
and bringing of the stones and in working at the excavation under the
ground?

126. Cheops moreover came, they said, to such a pitch of wickedness,
that being in want of money he caused his own daughter to sit in the
stews, and ordered her to obtain from those who came a certain amount of
money (how much it was they did not tell me); but she not only obtained
the sum appointed by her father, but also she formed a design for
herself privately to leave behind her a memorial, and she requested each
man who came in to her to give her one stone upon her building: and of
these stones, they told me, the pyramid was built which stands in front
of the great pyramid in the middle of the three, 108 each side being one
hundred and fifty feet in length.

127. This Cheops, the Egyptians said, reigned fifty years; and after
he was dead his brother Chephren succeeded to the kingdom. This king
followed the same manner as the other, both in all the rest and also in
that he made a pyramid, not indeed attaining to the measurements of that
which was built by the former (this I know, having myself also measured
it), and moreover 109 there are no underground chamb