[Illustration: FIG. 3.--_The Pyramids and Great Sphinx._--From a pen-and-ink sketch by HORACE VERNET.]
The first, or Great Pyramid, was the sepulchre of the Cheops of Herodotus, the Chembes, or Chemmis, of Diodorus, and the Suphis of Manetho and Eratosthenes. Its height was 480 feet 9 inches, and its base 764 feet square. In other words, it was higher than St. Paul's Cathedral, and built on an area the size of Lincoln's Inn Fields. It has been, however, much spoiled, and stripped of its exterior blocks for the building of Cairo. The original sepulchral chamber, called the Subterranean Apartment, 46 feet by 27 feet, and 11 feet 6 inches high, has been hewn in the solid rock, and was reached by the original passage of 320 feet long, which descended to it by an entrance at the foot of the pyramid. A second chamber, with a triangular roof, 17 feet by 18 feet 9 inches, and 20 feet 3 inches high, was entered by a passage rising to an inclination of 26° 18', terminating in a horizontal passage. It is called the Queen's Chamber, and occupies a position nearly in the centre of the pyramid. The monument--probably owing to the long life attained by the monarch--still progressing, a third chamber, called the King's, was finally constructed, by prolonging the ascending passage of the Queen's Chamber for 150 feet farther into the very centre of the pyramid, and, after a short horizontal passage, making a room 17 feet 1 inch by 34 feet 3 inches, and 19 feet 1 inch high. The changes which took place in this pyramid gave rise to various traditions, even in the days of Herodotus, Cheops being reported to lie buried in a chamber surrounded by the waters of the Nile. It took a long time for its construction--100,000 men being employed on it probably for above half a century, the duration of the reign of Cheops. The operations in this pyramid by General Vyse gave rise to the discovery of marks scrawled in red ochre in a kind of cursive hieroglyph, on the blocks brought from the quarries of Tourah. These contained the name and titles of Khufu (the hieroglyphic form of Cheops); numerals and directions for the position of materials, etc.
[Illustration: FIG. 4.--_Mummies of Cats and Dogs._--British Museum and Museum of the Louvre.]