later, as if
it were of their own invention, and of these men I know the names but I
abstain from recording them.

Down to the time when Rhampsinitos was king, they told me there was in
Egypt nothing but orderly rule, and Egypt prospered greatly; but after
him Cheops became king over them and brought them to every kind of
evil: for he shut up all the temples, and having first kept them from
sacrifices there, he then bade all the Egyptians work for him. So some
were appointed to draw stones from the stone-quarries in the Arabian
mountains to the Nile, and others he ordered to receive the stones after
they had been carried over the river in boats, and to draw them to those
which are called the Libyan mountains; and they worked by a hundred
thousand men at a time, for each three months continually. Of this
oppression there passed ten years while the causeway was made by which
they drew the stones, which causeway they built, and it is a work not
much less, as it appears to me, than the pyramid; for the length of it
is five furlongs and the breadth ten fathoms and the height, where it
is highest, eight fathoms, and it is made of stone smoothed and with
figures carved upon it. For this they said, the ten years were spent,
and for the underground he caused to be made as sepulchral chambers for
himself in an island, having conducted thither a channel from the Nile.
For the making of the pyramid itself there passed a period of twenty
years; and the pyramid is square, each side measuring eight hundred
feet, and the height of it is the same. It is built of stone smoothed
and fitted together in the most perfect manner, not one of the stones
being less than thirty feet in length. This pyramid was made after the
manner of steps which some called "rows" and others "bases": and when
they had first made it thus, they raised the remaining stones with
machines made of short pieces of timber, raising them first from the
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