VIEWED MERELY AS objects, the Pyramids lack the aesthetic appeal of such other wonders of the world as the Colosseum, the Tower of Pisa or the Hagia Sophia. They are more akin to Stonehenge and the Great Wall of China in that they provoke awe not so much by any intrinsic beauty as by their size and the extraordinary effort and ingenuity that went into their construction.

Both of these books vividly convey these two attributes. Christine El Mahdy's concentrates on the Great Pyramid of Khufu (or Cheops, to give him the Greek nomenclature that he prefers). Joyce Tyldesley's deals with the whole range of Pyramids: from the first (the Step Pyramid, created for King Zoser in