The story of The Pyramid s
The Development Of The Royal Tomb In Ancient Egypt: The most famous tourist attraction in our world nowadays is the Giza pyramids in Egypt and the great pyramid of king Cheops…and here I would like to answer so many questions usually asked by the visitors of Egypt and those who are interested in knowing about the pyramids and the ancient monuments if not asked by everybody in the world when they think about the pyramids. What is the pyramid? How was the great pyramid built at the time there was no machines to help?
How many people worked for the construction of the great pyramid?
The pyramids were built by slaves, true or not?
How the process of cutting the stone was done?
These questions are just some of many questions might come up to your mind when you just see the great pyramid of Giza, even when you see just a picture of it.
Pyramids Introduction:
The pyramid in ancient Egypt was the tomb of the king, and the pyramid shape was first built by chance when the architect of one king’s tomb insisted on changing the appearance of his king’s tomb when he had the chance to do so…
The very first pyramid is the step Mastaba at Sakkara of king Djoser the founder of the 3rd dynasty. This pyramid used to be a normal Mastaba which is the primary shape of a royal tomb before developing it into a pyramid (the so called Mastaba is a huge rectangle building consists of one story, the interior is divided into many chambers for storing the funeral objects of the king/the deceased surrounding the burial chamber which mostly located in the middle, and it was built out of mud breaks) ...
When King Djoser ascended the throne, his architect Imhotep started working on the royal tombs of his king. He made two tombs for king Djoser, a Mastaba of mud breaks at Biet Khalaf south of Egypt next to Abydos which was believed to be the eternal house for the soul, while Sakkara was chosen by Imhotep to be the house of the northern royal tomb which was designed and built as another Mastaba, but this time Imhotep used the limestone instead of mud breaks, and that was the real beginning of the pyramid idea.
Imhotep was a genius man; he held so many titles by the king who considered him the second man. He was the overseer of the royal palace, the physician, the poet, the high priest, the vizier, the royal scribe, and the architect.
It might seem I am writing too much about Imhotep forgetting the main topic, but the truth is that when we speak about the pyramids, then Imhotep is the main topic as he is the reason why we have pyramids in Egypt. He decided to use the limestone instead of mud breaks for two main reasons, first to make his king’s tomb look better and shiner, second to make it more durable and stronger to last for a long period of time for the afterlife.
And using the limestone encouraged him to make a higher tomb, higher than any other tomb on the planet (2650 B.C) as before the limestone when the used material was mud breaks, they did not have the chance to add layers above layers as it is not strong enough to stand it.
So the tomb was built as a Mastaba of limestone, and then he started testing the stone by adding more and more layers making it higher and higher, but again it was the first time in the history of mankind the stone is used, so he was so cautious using the layers and making it higher, for this reason because he was not 100 percent sure of the result, he made the upper parts smaller than the lower part, and he used the same technique all the way up until he finished the tomb.
He did not mean it, he did not intend to make a pyramid for his king, he just wanted to make a nice looking tomb for the king, and it was a step pyramid at the end.
The higher he went, the smaller the mastaba was, a pyramid of 6 mastabas above each other, each of them is 10 meters in height.
The priests said that the king is stepping all the way to heaven as they saw the steps of the tomb. This was the reason why some kings after that made their tomb in the shape of steps like the pyramid of Maidoum 40 K.m south of Cairo.
That was the real beginning of the pyramids, as from that time on all the kings wanted to make their tombs in the shape of a pyramid to guarantee eternity.
The Secret of Building the Pyramids
The great pyramid was 146 meters high, and the most important question is how the ancient Egyptians were able to lift the stones up to that height.
An unfinished pyramid was found in Egypt with the remains of a cause way of mud breaks and stone, this cause way was around the pyramid in a spiral way to enable to raise the huge blocks of limestone up. It was said that the cause way was built around the great pyramid in 10 years, while the pyramid itself took 23 years to be finished.
With the help of two hundred men and six strong cattle, one piece of stone was pulled and pushed to position it in its place. Huge wooden cylinders were placed under the stone, and lots of water was poured to easily move the stone.
Three million pieces of local limestone were used for this pyramid, the blocks are he that each pieces weights around 30 tones, but the higher you go the smaller the stones are, the smallest piece of stone weights around 2 tones.
The entire pyramid is limestone except for the burial chamber of the king which was built entirely out of gray granite.
The pyramid was built on a space of 12 acres, each side of the base is 230 m in length, and the angel of slope is 52.51 orientations.
It has lost some of its height due to weather circumstances and time effect.
The pyramid used to be smooth and flat, but not anymore as he outer layer of tones fell down.
The workmen’s of The Pyramids
The Greek historian Herodotus said that a hundred thousand men shared the construction work of the great pyramid. Their village was found in the desert to the western side of the pyramid itself.
The pyramids were built by slaves, true or not?
There are so much wrong information given in some history books about this saying that slaves built the pyramids in Egypt, but this is not true, and the one should define the term “slave” before answering this question, a slave is a human owned by another human and it is like a product that the owner can sell or buy…
The builders of the pyramids were what we can call the slaves of god and the slaves of Egypt, as the Egyptian king was a god, and one of his titles was "the son of Ra" the son of the sun god which leads to the idea of being a god…the law at the time of the pyramids prevented people from making statues for themselves as all the stones were for the pyramid, so people had to make reserve heads for them instead!!
The Process of Cutting the Stones used at The Pyramids project
As we have Mention before , the first human cut the stones for a tomb was Imhotep, the builder of Saqqara step pyramid, and the process required such genius man to be done, as for it, you think about time, and power to use to achieve the work. Imhotep had the idea of making wholes in the bed rock of the lime stone hills at Saqqara, and then fill these wholes with wooden pieces until they are completely full, and then pour water to make the wood expands to crack the stone.