ABSTRACT
Herodotus says that the plateau upon which Cheap's pyramid stands (fig. vii.) is "about one hundred (Greek) feet high," 104 English feet, and if the calculations of Wilkinson and Lane are correct, and the Nile valley in this portion of it rises at the rate of about 4 to 5 inches per 100 years, then at the time of Cheops, the plateau must have been about 120 feet high. If now we make a scale-drawing (fig. ix.) of the pyramid, the plateau and the Herodotus incline, we find that the height of the latter, 8 orgyce, or 48 feet, is less than half what it ought to be. As Herodotus saw this incline and must have measured it himself, as he says he measured the pyramids, and moreover as it must have been in his day the public high road, it is reasonable to suppose that 18 orgyce are meant instead of 8 orgyce: this would give a height of 108 feet, which is reasonably near the height of 104 feet
which he gives for the plateau. If the plateau had been cut through at the height of 8 orgyre, and the incline continued to the pyramid site 1,000 feet distant, such a cutting would have remained to this day, but there is none there. M. AmcHineau says that the remains of an inclined plane leading to the second pyramid still existed at the end of the eighteenth century, and the ruins of the one leading to the third pyramid are stilI visible (fig. vi.). It illustrates the prodigality of human labour in that day to think that all three pyramids must have been built within 100 years, and that each had its own inclined causeway for transporting the material. With an inclined plane 3,000 feet long, and 120 feet high, the incline would only have been 1 foot in 25, a very easy grade indeed on a greased stone causeway, and the next point is to show how much human power was necessary to haul stones over it.
