The figures in both of these bassi-relievi are seated cross-legged; plumes depend from a cap of the one, and from an odd head-dress of the other; and the left hand of the figure in the second drawing rests upon an ornament or symbol. In the figure of the first drawing the right hand is placed on the thigh; the left holds a sort of crooked dagger, and a curious bandage, not unlike a pair of spectacles, is over the eyes. Four symbols cover the rest of the square—a rabbit, a figure precisely like the letter J, another like the letter V, on its side, and an oval in which there is a cross. These relievos, as I before observed, run round the whole of the remaining frieze, while the cornice above it is sculptured with the tasteful ovals represented in the drawing of the northwestern angle.
I could not find any remains of color on the sculpture, which is generally between three and four inches deep. I have represented the outlines of the stones of which the edifice is composed in the design of the north-western angle. They are laid upon each other without cement, and kept in place by their weight alone; and as the sculpture of a figure is seen to run frequently over several of them, there can be no doubt that the bassi-relievi were cut after the pyramid had been erected.
Some idea may be formed of the immense labor with which this building was constructed, from measurements I made of several of the masses of porphyry that compose it. The whole building occupies a space of three thousand seven hundred and twelve square feet—the middle stone in the first story at the north end, is seven feet eleven inches long, and two feet nine inches broad; the stone at the northeast corner on the second story, represented in the plate as bearing the figure of a rabbit, is five feet two inches long, and two feet six inches broad; and the stone at
