The great pyramids of Egypt

Group members:

Shoaib Ahmed

Umar Farooq Khan

Muhammad Dawood Suleman

Nadir Abrar

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Acknowledgment

We would like to thanks and express our deepest appreciation to all

those who helped and provided us the possibility to complete this

report.

First of all the internet remained the constant source of knowledge

many websites, articles, and Wikipedia helped a lot in motivating and

inspiring throughout the research on topic,

Enlightening the books like “The great pyramid” by john romer,

“Secrets of the great pyramid” by Peter Tompkins and “The Giza

Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt” book by Christopher

Dunn, these books include the Recounts the fascinating discoveries

made by explorers, adventurers, and scientists about the Great

Pyramid of Cheops, including the stunning recent assertions that the

ancient structure was used as a geometric tool to measure the outside

world.

Finally the video documentary of BBC and National Geographic

channel on great pyramids of Egypt was the ultimate source of

interesting facts and history knowledge

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Executive summery

This report is prepared to show the historical importance and

abundant knowledge about world’s ancient site the great pyramids of

Egypt their construction and purpose they served.

It is an archaeological site on the Giza Plateau, on the outskirts

of Cairo, Egypt. This complex of ancient monuments includes the

three pyramid complexes known as the Great Pyramids, the

massive sculpture known as the Great Sphinx, several cemeteries, a

workers' village and an industrial complex. It is located approximately

9 km west into the Libyan Desert from the Nile river at the old town

of Giza.

The three primary pyramids on the Giza plateau were built over the

span of three generations by the rulers Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure

and these three pyramids are known with these rulers’ names. Each

pyramid was part of a royal mortuary complex that also included a

temple at its base and a long stone causeway

The purpose of pyramids of Giza and others are thought to have been

constructed to house the remains of deceased Pharaohs who ruled

over Ancient Egypt, It's theorized the pyramid not only served as a

tomb for the Pharaoh, but also as storage for the various items he

would need in the afterlife. "The people of Ancient Egypt believed that

death on Earth was the start of a journey to the next world. The

embalmed body of the King was entombed underneath or within the

pyramid to protect it and allow his transformation and ascension to

the afterlife.

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Index

1.0 Introduction

2.0 Findings

3.0 The great pyramids of Egypt

3.1 pyramid of Khufu

3.2 pyramid of Khafre

3.3 pyramid of Menkaure

4.0 The Sphinx

5.0 Workers’ village

6.0 Construction theories of pyramids

6.1 Purpose of construction

7.0 Bibliography

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1.0 Introduction

The purpose of this report is to provide abundant awareness and

historical background of worlds’ ancient site “great pyramids of Egypt”,

history about their construction, purpose and who built them and when

these massive monuments were constructed.

The Egyptian pyramids are ancient pyramid-shaped masonry structures located in Egypt were constructed during 2500 BC, As of November 2008, there are sources citing both 118 and 138 as the number of identified Egyptian pyramids. Most were built as tombs for the country's pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom periods

The last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world, the great

pyramids of Giza are perhaps the most famous and discussed structures

in history. These massive monuments were unsurpassed in height for

thousands of years after their construction and continue to amaze and

enthrall us with their overwhelming mass and seemingly impossible

perfection. However, these represent an apogee in the development of

the royal mortuary complex; these massive monuments are of much

importance to Egypt’s history and culture, if we analyze and think deeply

from the heights of these pyramids, forty centuries look down on us.

This report basically is the profound of the subtopics of “great pyramids

of Egypt” like pyramid of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, The Sphinx and

workers’ village, their historical background some facts and construction

process is compiled in a systemic manner.

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2.0 Findings

From the starting of the explorations on these pyramids many

scientists and history researchers defines the main facts and reasons

behind their pyramid structure and whole construction phase, their

shape is thought to represent the primordial mound from which the

Egyptians believed the earth was created, The shape is thought to be

representative of the descending rays of the sun and most pyramids

were faced with polished and highly reflective white limestone, in

order to give them a brilliant appearance when viewed from a distance

and are created in such a way that In spite of the enormous heat

outside, the temperature inside the pyramids actually stays relatively

constant, around 20 Celsius (60 F).

It’s a historical fact that until the Lincoln Cathedral was built in

England in 1311, the Great Pyramid of Giza held the title for the

world´s tallest man-made structure. It held the record for an

incredible and unparalleled 3871 years.

There was an attempt to destroy the Giza pyramids in the 12th century. Al-Aziz, a Kurdish ruler and the second Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt, tried to demolish them but had to give up because the task was too big. However, he did succeed in damaging Menkaure's Pyramid where he left a large vertical gash in its north face.

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3.0 The great pyramids of Egypt

3.1 Pyramid of Khufu

3.1.0 History and description

It is known as The Great Pyramid of Giza or Pyramid of Cheops it is

the oldest and largest of the three pyramids in the Giza pyramid

complex. It is the oldest of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,

and the only one to remain largely intact.

It was constructed during the rule of Khufu pharaoh in 2560 BC and

was completed over time period of 20 years, its height is 146.5 meters

(481 ft.), each base side is 440 cubits, 230.4 meters (755.9 ft.) long. The

mass of the pyramid is estimated at 5.9 million tones. The volume,

including an internal hillock, is roughly 2,500,000 cubic meters

(88,000,000 cu ft.).

Based on above estimates, building the pyramid in 20 years would

involve installing approximately 800 tons of stone every day.

Additionally, since it consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks,

completing the building in 20 years would involve moving an average

of more than 12 of the blocks into place each hour, day and night.

The pyramid remained the tallest man-made structure in the world for

over 3,800 years, unsurpassed until the 160-metre-tall (520 ft.) spire

of Lincoln Cathedral was completed in 1300. The accuracy of the

pyramid's workmanship is such that the four sides of the base have an

average error of only 58 millimeters in length. The base is horizontal

and flat to within ±15 mm (0.6 inch).

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3.1.1 Material and construction

The Pyramid consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks. The

largest granite stones in the pyramid, found in the "King's" chamber,

weigh 25 to 80 tones; mostly stones were carried by boat either up or

down the Nile River to the pyramid, It is estimated that 5.5 million

tons of limestone, 8,000 tons of granite and 500,000 tons of mortar

were used in the construction of pyramid, at completion the Pyramid

was surfaced by white "casing stones" blocks of highly polished

white limestone.

The Greeks believed that in construction slave labor was used, but

modern discoveries suggest that it was built instead by tens of

thousands of skilled workers, consisting of two gangs of 100,000 men,

divided into five clans of 20,000 men each, which may have been

further divided according to the skills of the workers.

3.1.2 Interior of pyramid

The original entrance to the Great Pyramid is 17 meters vertically

above ground level and 7.29 meters east of the center line of the

pyramid, the whole interior of pyramid is consisted of two

chambers namely King’s chamber and Queen’s chamber and a

grand gallery.

The King’s chamber is 10.47 meters long and 5.234 meters wide It

has a flat roof 5.82 meters above the floor. The King's Chamber is

entirely faced with granite. The Queen's Chamber is exactly half-

way between the north and south faces of the pyramid and

measures 5.75 meters long, 5.23 meters wide , and has a pointed

roof with an apex 6.23 meters above the floor. The Grand Gallery

continues the slope of the Ascending Passage, but is 8.6 meters

high and 46.68 meters long. At the base it is 2.06 meters wide.

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3.2 Pyramid of Khafre

3.2.0 History and description

The Pyramid of Khafre or of Chephren is the second-tallest and

second-largest of the Ancient Egyptian Pyramids of Giza and the tomb

of the Fourth-Dynasty pharaoh Khafre (Chefren), who ruled from

 2558 to 2532 BC, Khafre was the son of Khufu.

The pyramid has a base length of 215.5 m and rises up to a height of

136.4 meters the pyramid is made of limestone blocks weighing more

than 2 tons each. The slope of the pyramid rises at a 53° 10' angle.

Like the Great Pyramid, Khafre’s pyramid is built on an outcrop of rock into which the subterranean chambers are cut. The bottom course of the cladding was pink granite, but the higher sections are clad in Tura limestone, some of which is still in place. It was first explored in modern times by Giovanni Belzoni on March 2, 1818, when the original entrance was found on the north side of the pyramid and the burial chamber was visited. Belzoni had hopes of finding an intact burial. However, the chamber was empty except for an open sarcophagus and its broken lid on the floor.

The first complete exploration was conducted by John Perring in 1837. In 1853, Auguste Mariette partially excavated Khafre's valley temple, and, in 1858, while completing its clearance, he managed to discover a diorite statue

3.2.1 Material and construction

In the construction the rock outcropping was used in the core. Due to

the slope of the plateau, the northwest corner was cut 10 mtr out of the

rock subsoil and the southeast corner is built up.

The pyramid is built of horizontal courses. The stones used at the bottom are very large, but as the pyramid rises, the stones become

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smaller, becoming only 50 cm thick at the apex. The courses are rough and irregular for the first half of its height but a narrow band of regular masonry is clear in the midsection of the pyramid. At the northwest corner of the pyramid, the bedrock was fashioned into steps. Casing stones cover the top third of the pyramid, but the pyramidion and part of the apex are missing.

The bottom course of casing stones was made out of pink granite but the remainder of the pyramid was cased in Tura Limestone.

3.2.2 Interior of pyramid

Two entrances lead to the burial chamber, one that opens 11.54 m up

the face of the pyramid and one that opens at the base of the pyramid.

These passageways do not align with the centerline of the pyramid, but

are offset to the east by 12 m. The lower descending passageway is

carved completely out of the bedrock, descending, running horizontal,

then ascending to join the horizontal passage leading to the burial

chamber.

There is a subsidiary chamber, equal in length to the long King's Chamber of Khufu pyramid that opens to the west of the lower passage, the purpose of which is uncertain. It may be used to store offerings or to store burial equipment; the upper descending passage is clad in granite and descends to join with the horizontal passage to the burial chamber, the burial chamber was carved out of a pit in the bedrock. The roof is constructed of gabled limestone beams. The chamber is rectangular 14.15 m by 5 m and is oriented east-west.

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3.3 Pyramid of Menkaure

3.3.0 History and description

The Pyramid of Menkaure, located on the Giza Plateau in the

southwestern outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, is the smallest of the three

main Pyramids of Giza. It is thought to have been built to serve as the

tomb of the fourth dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Menkaure the son of

Khafre pharaoh, constructed in 2510 BC. Its height is 65 meters; its

base is 102.2 by 104.6 meters and has a volume of 235,183 cubic meters

with the slope angle 51°20'25.

The pyramid's date of construction is unknown, because Menkaure's

reign has not been accurately defined, but it was probably completed

in the 26th century BC. It lies a few hundred meters southwest of its

larger neighbors, the Pyramid of Khafre and the Great

Pyramid of Khufu in the Giza.

3.3.1Material and construction

It was constructed of limestone and granite. The first sixteen courses

of the exterior were made of red granite. The upper portion was cased

in the normal manner with Tura limestone. Part of the granite was left

in the rough. Incomplete projects such as this pyramid

help archaeologists understand the methods used to build pyramids

and temples. South of the pyramid of Menkaure are three satellite

pyramids that are each accompanied with a temple and have a

substructure. The southernmost is the largest and a true pyramid. Its

casing is partly of granite, like the main pyramid, and is believed to

have been completed due to the limestone pyramidion found close by.

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3.3.2 Temple complex

In the mortuary temple the foundations and the inner core were made

of limestone. The floors were begun with granite and granite facings

were added to some of the walls. The foundations of the valley temple

were made of stone. George andrew Reisner an American archeologist

estimated that some of the blocks of local stone in the walls of the

mortuary temple weighed as much as 220 tons, while the heaviest

granite ashlars imported from Aswan weighed more than 30 tons

During excavations of the temples Reisner found a large number of

statues mostly of Menkaure alone and as a member of a group. These

were all carved in the naturalistic style of the old kingdom with a high

degree of detail evident

3.3.3 Attempted demolition

At the end of the twelfth century al-Malek al-Aziz Othman ben

Yusuf, Saladin's son and heir, attempted to demolish the pyramids,

starting with Menkaure's. The workmen whom Al-Aziz had recruited

to demolish the pyramid found it almost as expensive to destroy as to

build. They stayed at their job for eight months. They were not able to

remove more than one or two stones each day at a cost of tiring

themselves out utterly. Some used wedges and levers to move the

stones, while others used ropes to pull them down. When a stone fell,

it would bury itself in the sand, requiring extraordinary efforts to free

it. Wedges were used to split the stones into several pieces, and a cart

was used to carry it to the foot of the escarpment, where it was left.

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4.0 The Sphinx

The Great Sphinx of Giza or just Sphinx, is a limestone statue of a

reclining or couchant sphinx (a mythical creature with a lion's body

and a human head) that stands on the Giza Plateau on the west bank

of the Nile in Giza, Egypt. The face of the Sphinx is generally believed

to represent the face of the Pharaoh Khafra.

It is the largest monolith statue in the world, standing 73.5 meters (241 ft.) long, 19.3 meters (63 ft.) wide, and 20.22 m (66.34 ft.) high. It is the oldest known monumental sculpture, and is commonly believed to have been built by ancient Egyptians of the Old Kingdom during the reign of the Pharaoh Khafra (c. 2558–2532 BC).

4.0.1 Construction

The Sphinx is a monolith carved down into the bedrock of the plateau

which also served as the quarry for the pyramids and other

monuments in the area. Because of its geological history,

the nummulitic limestone of the area consists of layers of widely

differing quality offering unequal resistance to erosion, mostly due to

wind and windblown sand, which explains the uneven degradation of

the body of the Sphinx. The floor of the Sphinx depression and lowest

part of the body including the legs is solid, hard rock. Above this, the

body of the lion up to its neck is a heterogeneous zone with friable

layers that have suffered considerable disintegration.

Basic facts about it are still subject to debate, such as when it was

built, by whom, and for what purpose. These questions have resulted

in the popular idea of the “Riddle of the Sphinx”alluding to the

original Greek legend of the Riddle of the Sphinx.

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5.0 Workers’ village

The work of quarrying, moving, setting, and sculpting the huge amount of stone used to build the pyramids might have been accomplished by several thousand skilled workers, unskilled laborers and supporting workers. Bakers, carpenters, water carriers, and others were also needed for the project.

Along with the methods utilized to construct the pyramids, there is also wide speculation regarding the exact number of workers needed for a building project of this magnitude. When Greek historian Herodotus visited Giza in 450 BC, he was told by Egyptian priests that "the Great Pyramid had taken 400,000 men 20 years to build, working in three-month shifts 100,000 men at a time." Evidence from the tombs indicates that a workforce of 10,000 laborers working in three-month shifts took around 30 years to build a pyramid.

The Giza pyramid complex is surrounded by a large stone wall, outside which Mark Lehner and his team have discovered a town where the workers on the pyramids were housed. This town is located to the southeast of the Khafre and Menkaure complexes. Among the discoveries at the workers' village are communal sleeping quarters, bakeries, breweries and kitchens (with evidence showing that bread, beef and fish were staples of the diet), a hospital and a cemetery (where some of the skeletons were found with signs of trauma associated with accidents on a building site).

The workers' town discovered appears to date to the middle 4th dynasty (2520–2472 BC), after the accepted time of Khufu and completion of the Great Pyramid. According to Lehner and the AERA team;

"The development of this urban complex must have been quite rapid. All of the construction probably happened in the 35 to 50 years that spanned the reigns of Khafre and Menkaure, builders of the Second and Third Giza Pyramids".

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6.0 Construction theories of pyramids

Most construction theories are based on the idea that the pyramids were built by moving huge stones from a quarry and dragging and lifting them into place. The disagreements center on the method by which the stones were conveyed and placed and how possible the method was.

In building the pyramids, the architects might have developed their techniques over time. They would select a site on a relatively flat area of bedrock—not sand—which provided a stable foundation. After carefully surveying the site and laying down the first level of stones, they constructed the pyramids in horizontal levels, one on top of the other.

For the Great Pyramid of Giza, most of the stone for the interior seems to have been quarried immediately to the south of the construction site. The smooth exterior of the pyramid was made of a fine grade of white limestone that was quarried across the Nile. These exterior blocks had to be carefully cut, transported by river barge to Giza, and dragged up ramps to the construction site. Only a few exterior blocks remain in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid. During the Middle Ages (5th century to 15th century), people may have taken the rest away for building projects in the city of Cairo.

To ensure that the pyramid remained symmetrical, the exterior casing stones all had to be equal in height and width. Workers might have marked all the blocks to indicate the angle of the pyramid wall and trimmed the surfaces carefully so that the blocks fit together. During construction, the outer surface of the stone was smooth limestone; excess stone has eroded as time has passed.

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6.1 Purpose of construction

The pyramids of Giza and others are thought to have been constructed

to house the remains of the deceased Pharaohs who ruled over Ancient

Egypt. A portion of the Pharaoh's spirit called his ka was believed to

remain with his corpse. Proper care of the remains was necessary in

order for the "former Pharaoh to perform his new duties as king of the

dead." It's theorized the pyramid not only served as a tomb for the

Pharaoh, but also as storage for the various items he would need in the

afterlife. "The people of Ancient Egypt believed that death on Earth

was the start of a journey to the next world. The embalmed body of the

King was entombed underneath or within the pyramid to protect it

and allow his transformation and ascension to the afterlife.

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7.0 Bibliography

1. “The great pyramid” book by john romer,

2. “The Giza Power Plant: Technologies of Ancient Egypt” book by

Christopher Dunn,

3. National Geographic channel; (i) Documentary on great pyramids of

Egypt. (ii) Inside of the great pyramid of Giza.

4. The History channel; (i) Egypt; beyond the pyramids.

(ii) Engineering of ancient Egypt-How pyramids are built.

5. BBC channel, Building the great pyramid.

6. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex

7. http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/Ghizawhy.htm

8. http://www.crystalinks.com/greatpyramid.html

9. http://discoveringegypt.com/pyramids-temples-of- egypt/pyramids-

of-giza/

10. http://www.unmuseum.org/kpyramid.htm

11. http://www.history.com/topics/ancient-history/the-egyptian-

pyramids