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The Chephrên pyramid is a little larger than H. says. It is hard to believe that a king who reigned fifty years could be succeeded by a brother who reigned fifty-six years. The monuments give the name of Tetfrâ between, who seems to have been quite unimportant. Maspero (p. 76) suggests that Chephrên was his brother, and so really the son of Cheops. Manetho (F. H. G. ii. 548) gives Souphis (= Cheops) sixty-three years, Souphis (= Chephrên) sixty-six years, Mencheres sixty-three; these figures are absurd; Meyer (i. 234) gives Cheops twenty-three years, on the authority of the Turin and other papyri.

The words ταῦτα γὰρ ... Χέοπα (end of 2) seem to be a later addition: they interrupt the antithesis ἐς μὲν τὰ ... ὑποδείμας δέ. The words ταῦτα ... ἐμετρησάμην are parodied by Aristophanes (Av. 1130). Diodorus (i. 64) tells us there was an ἀνάβασις up one side of this pyramid.


οἰκήματα. H. does not mean there were no ‘chambers’ at all in this pyramid, but that there were none like those surrounded with water, which he was told (wrongly) were under the pyramid of Cheops (c. 124). As a matter of fact there were two chambers under that of Chephrên.


λίθου Αἰθιοπικοῦ: the red granite of Syene; H. is right, for ‘the first layer’ (δόμον) of stones was faced with this material, as was also the second.

τῆς ἑτέρης: genitive after the idea of comparison in ὑποβάς; τὠυτὸ μέγαθος, ‘to attain the same size,’ is added to explain ὑποβάς. ἐχομένην is local here.

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    • Aristophanes, Birds, 1130
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