A collection of curious travels & voyages in two tomes ... / by John Ray ...

Of the rest of the Pyramids in the Lybian Desart.

I Have done with these three Pyramids, each of them being very remarkable, and the two first reckoned amongst the Miracles of the World. The rest in the Lybian Desart lying scattered here and there, are (excepting one of them) but lesser Copies, and as it were Models of these: And therefore I shall neither much trouble my self nor the Reader with the descri∣ption of them. Though to speak the truth, did not the three first, standing so near together, ob∣scure the lustre of the rest, which lye far scatte∣red,

some of them were very considerable. And therefore I cannot but tax the omission of the Ancients, and the inadvertency of all modern Writers and Travellers, who with too much supineness have neglected the description of one of them; which in my Judgment is as worthy of memory, and as near a Miracle as any of those three which I have mentioned. And this stands from these South and by West, at twenty miles distance, more within the Sandy Desart, upon a rocky level like these, and not far from the Village whence we enter the Mummies. This as the Venetian Doctor assured me, and as I could judge by conjecture at a distance, hath the same dimensions that the first and fairest of these hath, Graduations or Assents without, and of the same colour like that, (but more decayed, especially at the top) and an entrance into it on the North side, which is barred up within; and therefore whatsoever is spoken of the first, in respect of the exteriour figure, is applicable to this. Bellonius exceeds in his computation of the number of them, who thus writes: Above an hundred others are seen dispersed up and down in that Plain. I could not discover 20. And long since Ion Almatoug in his Book of the Miracles of Aegypt, reckons them to be but 18: There are in the West side no more famous buildings than the Pyramids, the number of them is 18; of these there are three in that part which is opposite to Fostat (or Cairo.)