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"...Herodotus is my
name, I am from Halikarnassos and am now telling
the world about the research I did to keep the
memory of the past alive and to immortalize
the great, impressive works of the Greeks and
other people."
"...As a token of their unanimity they
decided to leave a memorial and that led to
the building of the labyrinth, which is situated
not far from the southern bank of the Moiris
lake, in the neighborhood of a place called
Crocodilopolis. I have been there and it is
beyond all description. If you would make a
survey of all city walls and public buildings
in Greece, you will see that all together they
did not ask so much effort nor money as this
labyrinth. And the temples in Efesse and Samos
aren't exactly nothing either! It is true, the
pyramids make you speechless and each and everyone
of them equals many of our Greek buildings,
but they cannot stand comparison with the labyrinth."
"...To start, it has
a dozen indoor gardens of which six on a row
at the northern side and six at the southern
side. They are built in such a manner that their
portals are face to face. An exterior wall without
openings surrounds the entire complex. The building
itself is a two-storied one and has three-thousand
chambers of which half of these are underground
and the other fifteen-hundred are on the ground
floor."
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I had to stop reading. Three-thousand rooms with
indoor gardens and one single ring wall encircling
the building. More gigantic than this is not possible!
Half of the rooms are above and the other half
under ground. Imagine rooms with a length of only
two meters, then the total length would be three
kilometers! That gave me dizzy-spells. This had
to be the largest building ever! No doubt about
it. Why wasn't it known better? Could it be vanished
from the earth? It was still there in 448 BC.
Has it been taken apart since then and used for
other buildings?
"... I visited and looked
at the fifteen-hundred ground-floor chambers
myself, so I speak from personal experience,
but for the underground chambers I have to rely
on the authority of others, because the Egyptians
refused to let me in. There, the tombs can be
found of the kings that originally built the
labyrinth, and of the holy crocodiles. So I
have not been there and everything I know about
it, I know from hearsay.
The rooms on top of them have indeed been shown
to me. You would not believe they were built
by human hands. The passages interconnecting
the chambers and the winding paths from court
to court were breathtaking in their colorful
variety, as I walked in full admiration from
the courtyard to the chambers, from the chambers
to the colonnades, from the colonnades to again
other chambers and from there into still more
courtyards. The ceiling of all these places
where made of stone, just as the walls which
are covered with relief-figures. Each courtyard
is surrounded with a row of white marble, seamless
columns."
Good God, I groaned. What luxury! And nowhere
is mentioned that it had been plundered or demolished!
But then where was this monumental labyrinth,
with the tombs of the twelve kings? Undoubtedly,
there must be the biggest treasures ever to be
found in Egypt! Tutankhamen's treasury is nothing
compared to this.
With burning head, I read on:
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"...Right by the corner
where the labyrinth stops, stands a pyramid
of at least seventy-five meters high and decorated
with a relief of large animal figures.
It can be reached through an underground passage.
But, however spectacular this labyrinth is,
the lake Moiris, right next to it, makes one
really gasp.
Its perimeter is 3600 stadiums or sixty schoinoi
- 666 kilometers - as long as the entire Egyptian
coastline. This long-drawn-out lake has a north-south
orientation and its depth is more than ninety
meters at its deepest. It is probably man-made
because in the middle are two pyramids, each
reaching ninety meters above the water, while
their base is equally far under water.
The lake is not getting water from natural sources,
that would be impossible because the surrounding
country is bone-dry; no, a canal is its connection
to the Nile. Through the canal the water flows
into the lake during half a year and the other
six months it flows back into the river again.
The profit for the royal treasury during this
period is at least one silver talent per day
because of the fish that are caught there."
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