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Π̔οδώπιος. H. shows his usual sense in rejecting this preposterous attribution, which is made by Diodorus (i. 64, as an alternative) and by Strabo (808); he shows it is contrary both to probability and to chronology. Two explanations are given of the origin of the story:

(1) It has been held that additions were made to the pyramid by a later queen (the Nitocris of Manetho, cf. 100 nn.), and that the Greek fiction as to Rhodopis was a version of the story of her work.

But ‘the Manethonian story of Nitocris and the pyramid is an impossibility’ (Hall, J. H. S. xxiv. 208).

(2) It is more probable that we have here an adapted popular story. The modern Arab tale that the third pyramid was haunted by a beautiful naked woman, who drove men mad, may easily be very old; perhaps it is connected with the ‘red painted’ face of the Sphinx and its inscrutable smile. This may be the explanation of the Greek fiction which we have here, and, in a modified form, of Manetho's version (cf. 100 nn.).

Rhodopis was a real person; her name seems to have been Doricha (though Athenaeus, 596, denies this). Greek fancy played about her, as it did later about Phryne and Thais, e. g. Strabo (u. s.) attributes the ‘shoe’ part in the Cinderella story to her.

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