<HTML>Mike:
So where does it say anything about the pyramids being the kings tomb?
De Selincourt is a gross mistranslation of the original Greek.Consider the second last sentence in his translation: "The cutting of the canal, as I have already said, makes the site of the pyramids of Cheops into an island, and there his body is supposed to be."
Nowhere does the original Greek of Herodotus state that the site of Cheops' pyramid was turned into an island, or that the pyramids were the tombs of the kings who built them. De Selincourt only implies it. But Herodotus, not at all.
Cheops' coffin (thekhas) was turned into an island with a cut from the Nile. That's what the text says in Greek.
This leaves you with the problem of water level. If Cheops tomb was turned into an island with a cut from the Nile, it would have to be slightly below Nile level, which in, say, 2400 B.C., would have been at least 15' lower than what it is today, considering the established rates of alluvial deposits in that area.
Add this to the elevation of the Giza plateau (about 125') and Cheops' tomb would have to be at least 140' below the base of the GP. Keep in mind that Herodotus DOES NOT say that Cheops' tomb was below the pyramid. He only said it was underground. (hypo gen).
Now that I have a scanner I can send you a copy of the Greek and Enlish text and show you exactly where the words are and in what relation they stand to the translation.
The really curious thing about all this is that the Sphinx fits Herodotus description of Cheops coffin to a T. It is, after all, an island. The only trouble with that is the water level. Too high in any age for the Nile to reach. Although the ground water is nipping at the Sphinx' toes today.
Thanks for the reply
BentMikey Brass wrote:
>
> Aubrey de Selincourt's translation, revised by AR Burn
> (Penguin):
>
> (p. 178-9)
> "Up to the time of Rhampsinitus, Egypt was excellently
> governed and very prosperous; but his successor Cheops (to
> continue the account which the priests gave me) brought the
> country into all sorts of misery. He closed all the temples,
> then, not content with excluding his subjects from the
> practice of their religion, compelled them without exception
> to labour as slaves for his own advantage. Some were forced
> to drag blocks of stone from the quarries in the Arabian
> Hills to the Nile, where they were ferried across and taken
> over by others, who hauled them to the Libyan hills. The work
> went on in three monthly shifts, a hundred thousand men in a
> shift. It took ten years of this oppressive slave-labour to
> build the track along which the blocks were hauled - a work,
> in my opinion, of hardly less magnitude than the pyramid
> itself, for it is five furlongs in length, sixty feet wide,
> forty-eight feet high at its highest point, and constructed
> of polished stone blocks decorated with carvings of animals.
> To build it took, as I said, ten years - including the
> undeground sepulchral chambers on the hill where the pyramids
> stand; a cut was made from the Nile, so that the water from
> it turned the site of these into an island. to build the
> pyramid itself took twenty years."
>
> Herodotus then goes on to describe how he thought the pyramid
> was constructed.
>
> (p. 179-180)
> "Cheops reigned for fifty years, according to the Egyptian
> account, and was succeeded after his death by his brother
> Chephren. Chephren was no better than his predecessor; his
> rule was equally oppressive, and, like Cheops, he built a
> pyramid, but of smaller size (I measured both of them
> myself). It has no underground chambers and no channel was
> dug, as in the case of Cheops' pyramid, to bring to it water
> from the Nile. The cutting of the canal, as I have already
> said, makes the site of the pyramid of Cheops into an island,
> and there his body is supposed to be. The pyramid of Chephren
> lies close to the great pyramid of Cheops..."</HTML>
