Geography

​There is also a temple of Sarapis in a very sandy place, so that heaps of sand are piled up by the winds, under which the sphinxes were seen by us, some buried even up to their heads and others half-visible; from which one could estimate the danger if a storm should fall upon a person walking toward the temple. The city is large and populous, second only to Alexandria, consisting of a mixed population, just like those who settled there. In front of the city and the palaces lie lakes, though the palaces are now destroyed and deserted; they are situated on an eminence extending down to the lower part of the city, and a grove and a lake are adjacent to them.

​To one who has gone forward forty stades from the city, there is a certain mountainous ridge on which are many pyramids, the tombs of the kings, but three are worthy of note; and two of these are even numbered among the seven wonders of the world; for they are a stade in height, quadrangular in shape, and have a height slightly greater than each of their sides; and one is slightly larger than the other. At a moderate height on one of the sides, it has a stone that can be taken out, and when this is lifted, there is a winding passage leading to the tomb. Now these stand near one another on the same level; but further off, on a higher part of the ridge, is the third, which is much smaller than the other two, but constructed at a much greater expense. For from its foundations almost up to the middle, it is made of black stone, from which they also make mortars, bringing it from afar, namely, from the mountains of Ethiopia; and because of its being hard and difficult to work, it rendered the execution very costly. It is said to be the tomb of a courtesan, built by her lovers, whom Sappho, the lyric poetess, calls Doricha, who was the mistress of her brother Charaxus, who was engaged in transporting Lesbian wine to Naucratis for trade; but others call her Rhodopis. They tell the myth that, while she was bathing, an eagle snatched one of her sandals from her maid and carried it to Memphis; and while the king was administering justice in the open air, the eagle, coming over his head, let the sandal fall into his lap. The king, stirred both by the shape of the sandal and the strangeness of the occurrence, sent messengers throughout the country in search of the woman who wore it; and when she was found in the city of the Naucratites, she was brought up and became the wife of the king, and upon her death obtained the tomb just mentioned.

​One of the extraordinary things seen by us at the pyramids is not worthy to be passed over. For some heaps of stone-chips lie in front of the pyramids; and among these are found fragments which in both shape and size are like lentils; and in some there is even a mixture like half-peeled grain. They say that these are the petrified remains of the food of the workers; and this is not improbable. For indeed in my own home country there is a long hill in a plain, which is full of lentil-like pebbles of porous stone; and sea and river pebbles present almost the same question. But while the latter find some explanation in their motion caused by the current, in the former case the investigation is more difficult. It has also been mentioned by others that near the quarry of the stones from which the pyramids were made, which is in sight of the pyramids on the opposite side in Arabia, there is a very rocky mountain called Troicon, and caves under it, and near them and the river a village called Troy, an ancient settlement of the captive Trojans who accompanied Menelaus and remained there.