1 Such is this labyrinth; and still more marvellous is lake Moeris, on which it stands. This lake has a circumference of four hundred and fifty miles, or sixty schoeni: as much as the whole seaboard of Egypt. Its length is from north to south; the deepest part has a depth of fifty fathoms.
2 That it has been dug out and made by men's hands the lake shows for itself; for almost in the middle of it stand two pyramids, so built that fifty fathoms of each are below and fifty above the water; atop each is a colossal stone figure seated on a throne.
3 Thus these pyramids are a hundred fathoms high; and a hundred fathoms equal a furlong of six hundred feet, the fathom measuring six feet or four cubits, the foot four spans and the cubit six spans.
4 The water of the lake is not natural (for the country here is exceedingly arid) but brought by a channel from the Nile; six months it flows into the lake, and six back into the river.
5 For the six months that it flows out of the lake, the daily take of fish brings a silver talent into the royal treasury, and twenty minae for each day of the flow into the lake.