What do you think is the most interesting thing about the pyramids in Giza? Can you recommend other web sites?

Dr. dig responds:

To me the coolest fact about the pyramids at Giza is that there are enough blocks used in the Great Pyramid alone (roughly two million, three hundred thousand)to build a wall around the country of France! I wonder, if the facts from all three pyramids were lined up, could they go from one side of the Atlantic Ocean to the other?

Another interesting thing is that the Great Pyramid contained a life-size model of a ship that would have been used by the Pharaoh Khufu in his travels to the afterlife. The ship has been reconstructed and is now on exhibit in what is called The Boat Museum, in Cairo (Egypt).

A useful website for you to go to in order to get more information about the pyramids for your school project would be: www.tulane.edu/lester/text/Ancient.World/Egypt/Egypt11.html

I would like to know how the Egyptians built the pyramids.

Dr. dig responds:
It seems incredible to us today that the pyramids were built without bulldozers, cranes, trucks. But Pharaoh did not need modern machinery to build these huge structures. He used vast armies of workers to build them. His machine was the human machine, whose organized labor in such great numbers accomplished the construction of the pyramids. To me, the building of the pyramids is not nearly as remarkable as the feat of organization of so many hundreds of thousands of men! Pharaoh and his palace was the intellectual force behind their construction. Human beings have achieved amazing things - we have even gone to the moon! To me there is nothing "alien" about human ingenuity, when there is a certain goal to accomplish.

Slaves were not used to build the pyramids, but local farmers and people who were paid to do this heavy labor. It probably took thousands of men using many ropes, levers and logs on which the blocks were rolled up the ramps, in order to construct this enormous structure!

The ancient Egyptians were in fact excellent mathematicians and made very careful measurements and calculations before they set out building a pyramid. Pyramid construction followed very exact rules of proportion which were carefully calculated on sheets of papyrus before building actually began.

The basic unit of meansurement was the cubit, which was originally based on the length from the elbow to the tip of the thumb. This was equal to 20.62 in (52.4cms). The ancient Egyptians used measuring sticks that were marked in cubits, palms and digits. There were four digits in a palm, and seven palms in a cubit.

Egyptian stonecutters had precision perfect tools to ensure that the blocks of stone fit together perfectly and were smooth. They were really brilliant architects!

Much of the stone used to build the Great Pyramid was quarried nearby, so the workers didn't have to transport the stone very long distances. The core of the Egytpian pyramids at Giza was made from local limestone, a fairly soft rock. But the high quality limestone used for the outer casing came from Tura, across the Nile. Tura limestone gave the pyramids a shining appearance when they were newly built. Some internal chambers and passages were made of granite, a harder and heavier stone from Aswan, 500 miles upriver from Cairo. For info on ancient Egyptian stone quarries www.duke.edu/~jpw5/quarries/home.html

Although we know how the Egyptians planned their structures, we don't actually know how they set out to accomplish the construction of these immense buildings. No records survive to tell us how the pyramids were built. There are many theories about how the heavy blocks of stone were lifted into place. Theories about this vary, from the use of a long ramp stretching out into the desert, which was continually lengthened and heightened as the pyramid rose higher, to a ramp that rose as it wound around the pyramid face following each course upwards. It seems most likely that the stones, which were quarried at the site of the pyramid, were dragged up a ramp that grew as the pyramid rose. Once the capstone was in place, the ramp was dismantled.

Why did people build pyramids?

Dr. dig responds:
The pyramids were built as tombs to house the pharaoh's mummified body. The finest sculptors, masons, engineers, and countless workers spent years building the tomb. The laborers who dragged the stones were not slaves. They were farmers who believed that if they helped their king get to heaven, he would look after them in the next world.

A pyramid was a house for the pharaoh's body in the afterlife. Its enormous size and magnificence reflected the power and grandeur of the pharaoh in real life.

I'm going to speak about the "pyramids of Egypt" and I'll like if you can send me information and some maps of that place.

Dr. dig responds:
What a great subject to study! But there is so much information about the ancient pyramids of Egypt, that I cannot possibly tell you all I know about them here. Perhaps you can visit a library which will have many books on the subject. Click on the links located on the home page of dig's website and you can explore other internet sites that will lead you to the mysteries of ancient Egypt. Good luck on your exam!

ARCHAEOLOGY Magazine has a page of links about Egypt and the Near East. You should be able to find a lot information there. Archaeology's Egyptian Links

What is the average pyramid?

Dr. dig responds:

The earliest pyramids built by the Egyptian pharaohs were step pyramids. The familiar smooth pyramid was not developed until the reign of King Sneferu (2575-2551 B.C.) who built four of them.

Sneferu's son Khufu is the one who built the Great Pyramid at Giza, the biggest pyramid of them all.

After Khufu, King Kafra built a pyramid at Giza, smaller than Khufu's but larger than the third and smallest pyramid at Giza built by Menkaure around 2490 B.C. If I had to choose an average pyramid, I would choose Khafra's as my choice. It is not too big, not too small and it doesn't break any new ground as far as innovative pyramid goes.

How big could the Egyptian pyramids get? How many chambers were there usually in them? How many people do you think it took to build the pyramids?

Dr. dig responds:
There are many pyramids in Egypt, each of a different size. But you are probably thinking of the three great pyramids at a place called Giza, which is just outside the city of Cairo. The three pyramids belong to three different pharaohs: Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. There are two smaller pyramids beside the three Great Pyramids that belong to queens of Menkaure.

The largest pyramid is that of King Khufu. In photographs of the three pyramids at Giza, the Great Pyramid looks smaller, but this is an illusion because it wasa built on lower ground thant the other two.

For all its magnificence, we know very little about it. We can only guess, for instance, at how many thousands of people it took to build it. According to the ancient Greek historian, Herodotus, it took 20 years to build the pyramid itself.

Here are the vital statistics on the the Great Pyramis at Giza - the largest of all the pyramids built by the ancient Egyptians.

Original height: 481 feet (146.6meters)

Present height: 451 feet (137.5 meters)

Ground surface area: 13 acres, which, it has been calculated, could accommodate St. Peter's Church in rome, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's Cathedral in London, and the cathedrals of Milan and Florence.

Length of sides: basically 755 ft (230 m) with a variation between the longest and the shortest side of only 8 inches (20.3 cm)

It is known that there rises within the mass of the pyramid a huge natural rock of unknown dimensions.

Number of blocks used to build it: somewhere in the region of 2 million three hundred thousand separate blocks is the usual figure suggested, each averaging about two and a half tons in weight with a maximum of 15 tons.

There is no pyramid larger than the Great pyramid. If the ancient Egyptians wanted to build a larger pyramid they could have, but they didn't.

Further information on the Great Pyramid can be gathered from Peter Clayton's book, The Chronicle of the Pharaohs, Thames and Hudson, 1998.

Most pyramids had only one chamber, well hidden, in which the royal tomb was placed. Preceding the chamber may have been rooms where the priests left offerings of food or made prayers. From the burial chamber a passageway led to the outside of the pyramid to an entrance that would have been concealed to protect the tomb from robbers.

How long did it take to build a pyramid?

Dr. dig responds:
From start to finish, the building of an Egyptian pyramid could take many decades. Some pyramids took longer to build than others, and others took longer to plan and design than to construct. Generally, the pyramids of Egypt were built over a period of decades rather than centuries.

How much did a pyramid weigh?

Dr. dig responds:
Well no one has actually been able to weigh a pyramid, but just one of the blocks used to build the Great Pyramid at Giza could weigh anywhere between 2.5 tons and 15 tons. That's heavy!

Was there some form of lighting in place inside the pyramids?

Dr. dig responds:
Lighting within the pyramids was most likely provided by torches placed in sconces on the walls or carried in the form of handheld lamps that held oil and lit by lighting its wick. Of course, after the pharaoh or whoever was buried in the pyramids, no lighting was needed because no one was meant to enter the tomb afterwards.

Hand held lamps are commonly found in the ancient Mediterranean world. They were usually small ceramic items of the sort you may think of when you imagine Bible stories or stories from the Greco-Roman period. The evidence for the use of torches in tombs normally comes from the holes that held them which were gouged into the sidewalls at regular intervals along the passageways. The handles of the torches themselves were likely to have been made of hollowed out wooden cones stuffed with rags dipped in bitumen, which is a kind of natural tar. No doubt, more elaborate torches were made using handles that were decorated or sheathed in bronze or gold. A pure metal handle, of course, would be impractical because it would get to hot to hold.

What is the name of the pyramid with the capstone missing?

Dr. dig responds:
The pyramid that is missing its capstone is the Great Pyramid of Khufu located at Giza outside the modern city of Cairo.

How did the Egyptians know to build the three pyramids under the three stars of Orion's belt?

Dr. dig responds:
There are all sorts of theories that attempt to explain the mysteries of the pyramids of Egypt. Many of these try to explain the link between the pyramids and the stars. We know the ancient Egyptians worshipped the sun, and it is possible that some pyramids were associated with a cult of the stars. The Egyptians were great mathematicians and astronomers. Therefore, it is possible (but not proven) that the Great Pyramids may have been aligned with major stars like the North Star and Orion. If this was so, we do not know what meaning the alignment had for them.