When people died, they were mummified — this process took a long time, but it prepared them for the afterlife. The Egyptians believed that there were many gods who oversaw different parts of life on earth and life after death.
It was important that someone was able to reach the afterlife and the god Osiris, so mummification was taken very seriously.
During the mummification process, the internal organs were put into containers called canopic jars. The pharaohs — the kings and queens of Egypt — were thought to be gods themselves.
Some were buried in elaborate tombs called pyramids, though some were buried in underground tombs in the Valley of the Kings. The pyramids at Giza are the biggest that we can see today , but we have found around 80 pyramids from Ancient Egypt.
Pyramids took a long time to build, so work would start on them while the pharaoh was still alive. The Egyptians used their knowledge of maths to build pyramids that were shaped well and positioned properly. Inside pyramids, there were different chambers that held things the king would need in the afterlife. We have learned about how mummies were made, and what Egyptians believed about the afterlife, thanks to discoveries by archaeologists. Pyramids started to be built.
The Great pyramid of Giza was built. The pyramids in Giza were built, as well as the sphinx. Mummies of pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings. Queen Hatshepsut ruled. King Tutankhamen ruled. King Rameses II ruled. Cleopatra VII ruled; she was the last pharaoh. The Rosetta stone was found.
Boost Your Child's Learning Today! Trial it for FREE today. Kings and queens in Egypt were called pharaohs. When pharaohs died, they would be buried in decorated tombs. These tombs would sometimes be inside a pyramid, which has four faces shaped like triangles. The largest pyramid in Egypt is the Great Pyramid of Giza , which today is It might have taken more than 20 years to build!
It was a tomb for King Khufu. Egyptians had copper tools such as chisels, drills, and saws that may have been used to cut the relatively soft stone. The hard granite, used for burial chamber walls and some of the exterior casing, would have posed a more difficult problem. Workmen may have used an abrasive powder, such as sand, with the drills and saws. Knowledge of astronomy was necessary to orient the pyramids to the cardinal points, and water-filled trenches probably were used to level the perimeter.
A tomb painting of a colossal statue being moved shows how huge stone blocks were moved on sledges over ground first made slippery by liquid. The blocks were then brought up ramps to their positions in the pyramid. Finally, the outer layer of casing stones was finished from the top down and the ramps dismantled as the work was completed.
Most of the stone for the Giza pyramids was quarried on the Giza plateau itself. Some of the limestone casing was brought from Tura, across the Nile, and a few of the rooms were cased with granite from Aswan. Marks of the quarry workers are found on several of the stone blocks giving names of the work gangs such as "craftman-gang". Part-time crews of laborers probably supplemented the year-round masons and other skilled workers. The Greek historian Heroditus reported in the fifth century BCE that his Egyptian guides told him , men were employed for three months a year for twenty years to build the Great Pyramid; modern estimates of the number of laborers tend to be much smaller.
Pyramid building was at its height from the Fourth through the Sixth Dynasties. Smaller pyramids continued to be built for more than one thousand years. Scores of them have been discovered, but the remains of others are probably still buried under the sand. Archaeological digs on the fascinating site have revealed a highly organized community, rich with resources, that must have been backed by strong central authority. It's likely that communities across Egypt contributed workers, as well as food and other essentials, for what became in some ways a national project to display the wealth and control of the ancient pharaohs.
Such revelations have led Zahi Hawass , secretary general of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, to note that in one sense it was the Pyramids that built Egypt—rather than the other way around.
If the Pyramids helped to build ancient Egypt, they also preserved it. Giza allows us to explore a long-vanished world. Tomb art includes depictions of ancient farmers working their fields and tending livestock, fishing and fowling, carpentry, costumes, religious rituals, and burial practices.
Inscriptions and texts also allow research into Egyptian grammar and language. To help make these precious resources accessible to all, Der Manuelian heads the Giza Archives Project, an enormous collection of Giza photographs, plans, drawings, manuscripts, object records, and expedition diaries that enables virtual visits to the plateau.
Older records preserve paintings or inscriptions that have since faded away, capture artifacts that have been lost or destroyed, and unlock tombs not accessible to the public. Armed with the output of the longest-running excavations ever at Giza, the Harvard-Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Expedition , Der Manuelian hopes to add international content and grow the archive into the world's central online repository for Giza-related material.
But he stresses that nothing could ever replicate, or replace, the experience of a personal visit to Giza. Tourism to the structures has declined rapidly since the advent of the Arab Spring in , when Egypt experienced a political upheaval that lasted years. The country has since been through several administration changes, and the instability means the future of tourism to the Pyramids is uncertain.
All rights reserved. Building Boom The ancient engineering feats at Giza were so impressive that even today scientists can't be sure how the pyramids were built.
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