Drawn by Boudier, from a photograph by Haussoullier.
The excursions made by the Greek traveller in the environs of Memphis were very similar to those taken by modern visitors to Cairo: on the opposite bank of the Nile there was Heliopolis with its temple of Râ, then there were the quarries of Turah, which had been worked from time immemorial, yet never exhausted, and from which the monuments he had been admiring, and the very Pyramids themselves had been taken stone by stone.*
* These are “the quarries in the Arabian Mountain,”
mentioned by Herodotus without indication of the local name.
The Sphinx probably lay hidden beneath the sand, and the nearest Pyramids, those at Saqqarah, were held in small esteem by visitors;* they were told as they passed by that the step Pyramid was the most ancient of all, having been erected by Uenephes, one of the kings of the first dynasty, and they asked no further questions.
* Herodotus does not mention it, nor does any other writer
of the Greek period.
Drawn by Boudier,
from a photograph
by Gautier.