They passed through the galleries, surveyed the vaults of
marble, and examined the chest in which the body of the founder
is supposed to have been reposited.They then sat down in one of
the most spacious chambers to rest a while before they attempted
to return.
“We have now,” said Imlac, “gratified our minds with an exact
view of the greatest work of man, except the wall of China.
“Of the wall it is very easy to assign the motives. It secured a
wealthy and timorous nation from the incursions of Barbarians,
whose unskillfulness in arts made it easier for them to supply
their wants by rapine than by industry, and who from time to
time poured in upon the habitations of peaceful commerce, as
vultures descend upon domestick fowl.Their celerity1 and fierceness
made the wall necessary, and their ignorance made it efficacious.
“But for the pyramids no reason has ever been given adequate
to the cost and labour of the work. The narrowness of the chambers
proves that it could afford no retreat from enemies, and
treasures might have been reposited at far less expence with equal
security. It seems to have been erected only in compliance with
that hunger of imagination which preys incessantly upon life, and
must be always appeased by some employment. Those who have
already all that they can enjoy, must enlarge their desires. He that
has built for use, till use is supplied, must begin to build for
vanity, and extend his plan to the utmost power of human performance,
that he may not be soon reduced to form another
wish.
“I consider this mighty structure as a monument of the insufficiency
of human enjoyments. A king, whose power is unlimited,
and whose treasures surmount all real and imaginary wants, is
compelled to solace, by the erection of a pyramid, the satiety of
dominion and tastelesness of pleasures, and to amuse the
tediousness of declining life, by seeing thousands labouring
without end, and one stone, for no purpose, laid upon another.

From 'Rasselas' by Samuel Johnson