The Great Pyramid is an enigma - its origins unknown. Herodotus said that it would have taken 30 years and 100,000 slaves to have built it. Another theory is that it was built by peasants who were unable to work the land while the Nile flooded between July and November. They may have been paid with food for their labor. The flooded waters would have also aided in the moving of the casing stones. These stones were brought from Aswan and Tura and the water would have brought the stones right to the pyramid. This pyramid is thought to have been built between 2589 - 2566 BC - the Fourth Dynasty by the Pharaoh Khufu.
Not much is known about Cheops (Khufu). The tomb had been robbed long before archeologists came upon it. Any information about him was taken with the objects inside the tomb. He is thought to have been the ruler of a highly structured society and he must have been very wealthy. He was buried alone in this massive tomb. His wives may have been buried nearby in smaller mastabas.
It would have taken over 2,300,000 blocks of stone with an average weight of 2.5 tons each. The total weight would have been 6,000,000 tons and a height of 482 feet (140m). It is the largest and the oldest of the Pyramids of Giza. It supposedly took 100,000 people working over a twenty year period to construct. Though orginally thought to be a tomb - no sarcophagi have ever been found - nor an inscriptions other than those added in recent centuries - not by the pyramid builders.
For centuries the Great Pyramid was completely sealed - its secrets to be revealed when the time was right. In the beginning of the 17th century an intrepid explorer entered the pyramid to measure its passages and chambers.
John Greaves, a 36-year-old English mathematician and astronomer, had come to Egypt hoping to find in the Great Pyramid a datum that might help to establish the dimensions of the planet. The preceding century had spawned the great voyages of discovery, but no one yet knew the precise circumference of the Earth.
According to Galileo - then under house arrest for suggesting that the Earth revolved around the sun instead of vice-versa - a unit of measure could be found in the Great Pyramid accurately derived by ancient astronomers and geodesers from the actual circumference of the planet.
Unfortunately, Greaves ' measurement of the base of the Pyramid, covered as it was by all that debris, failed to give him an accurate figure.
For lack of this measure, Sir Isaac Newton could not propound his general theory of gravitation - that all bodies in the universe attract each other in proportion to the product of their mass and inversely as the square of their distance apart.
He had to wait until 1671 when a Frenchman, Jean Picard, successfully triangulated one degree of latitude across the French countryside from Dunkirk to Malvoisine.
With this great geodetic enterprise the Pyramid's Earth-commensurate values were forgotten. Its secrets remained as enigmatic as those of its neighbor, the Sphinx, which by this time was almost obliterated by an accumulation of wind-blown sand from the Libyan desert.
Only when young General Napoleon Bonaparte, bent on his conquest of Egypt, arrived at the Pyramid in 1798 with a following of so-called French "savants" was the geodetic quest resumed.
Edme-Francois Jomard, one of the younger French savants, climbed up and down the rubble around the Pyramid to obtain a measure for one side of the base of 230.9 meters or 757 English feet. He then climbed to the top to obtain an apothem height of 184.722 meters.
The apothem is the line from the peak from which a running drop of water will first reach the base. Jomard remembered that both Strabo and Diodorus Siculus, the Greek first-century BC historian, had both reported that the apothegm of the Pyramid measured precisely one stadium of 600 Greek feet--the same stadium from which our modern stadium is derived--and, more importantly, that this measure was accurately related to the size of the Earth.
From further perusal of the classics, Jomard knew that a stadium of 600 feet was considered 1/600 of a geographical degree. Calculating the geographical degree at the mean latitude of Egypt as 110,827.66 meters, Jomard divided this by 600 to obtain 184.712 meters, again accurate to within 10 centimeters of his value for the Pyramid's apothegm. Could the builders of the Pyramid, Jomard wondered, have been able to work out their basic units of measure, stadium, cubit, and foot from the size of the Earth, and built this knowledge into the Pyramid?
Jomard's senior colleagues, classically indoctrinated, could not stomach the idea that their cherished Greeks might not be the founders of geometry. Re-measuring up and down the rubble they obtained a base two meters longer.
Enough to squelch young Jomard. His quest was dropped. Soured academicians mocked the theory that the ancient Egyptians could have had knowledge of geometry, geodesy and astronomy sufficient to validate Jomard's theories.
Zecharia Sitchin, in his book The Wars of Gods and Men, offers this new perspective on the role the pyramids filled back in ancient history.
"The Sumerians called the Giza Pyramids E.KUR, meaning 'House which is like a Mountain'. They depicted the Ekur on clay tablets by a square-based pyramid with wings, sometimes with a spherical glowing apex, sometimes even accompanied by a lion-shaped statue - clay tablets that go back to approximately 3500BC (proving that the pyramids date to pre-historical times).
"Sumerian and Egyptian mythology both feature wars between the gods in what seems to be a kind of battle between two families of gods for supremacy and control over the ancient lands. Egyptian myth speak of how Seth defeated Osiris and dismembered his body, spreading the body parts throughout the world - only to be beaten by Horus, the son of Osiris. Sumerian mythology resembles the Egyptian mythology. Anu was the father of Enlil and Enki.
"According to the ancient stories, Enki was the first of Anu's sons to arrive on Earth from their home planet. He created mankind, gave mankind the gift of civilization, and finally the ability to procreate. Enlil (meaning "He of the Command"), who was chief administrator of all Earthly political, economic and mining activities, was deeply annoyed by this. He didn't want the LU.LU (mankind) to procreate by his own and lose control over the situation. So he ripped mankind of its immortality (this perhaps is the source of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, and how Satan gave knowledge to mankind).
"This brings us to how the Giza Pyramids were brought forth and how the war between the two clans, the Enki-ites and Enlil-ites, ended in the dismantlement of the Pyramid's armaments.
"The Ekur was currently owned by the Enkiites. Enki was the leader of the Enkiites occupying the Ekur. Nergal, one of his sons, had reinforced the Ekur's "defences" by activating the Radiating Stones. The ancient clay tablets is partially damaged.
"At the final, crucial stage of what was called 'The Pyramid War', the Ekur was sieged by the Enlilites, lead by Ninurta, a son of Enlil. He cut off water and food supplies to the stronghold, and Enki finally gave up his weapons and got out of the pyramid with his band. The Enkiites lost the war and escaped, dishonored, to the Sinai.
"The triumphant Enlilites, lead by Ninurta, entered the Ekur and for the first time discovered its interior. It appears that, according with ancient myths, the interior of the pyramid was loaded with military equipment and the mysterious "Radiating Stones", who accomplished different functions. Ninurta scanned through the array of stones and "determined their destinies"... would each stone be either destroyed or kept for himself."
The tablets say that the stones were positioned in the 54 slots on the Grand Gallery's both walls. One stone was embedded in the granite box in the King's Chamber. Ninurta was especially agitated when he ordered the Queen's Chamber 'Shem stone' to be annihilated. Apparently, this stone (situated exactly at the center of the pyramid) was the "heart" of the pyramid and pulsated red light. The Sham-Stone gave the power needed to attack enemy deities when they were flying their ships.
The encasing marble which covered the outside of the pyramid has eroded or been removed over time. With this casing off, the pyramid lost 33 feet (11m) of all of its dimensions. The top platform is 10m square. The base of the pyramid is 754 feet and covers 13 acres. The original entrance to the pyramid was about 15m higher than the entrance that is used today. Apparently Al Mamum, who opened up the new passage, could not find the original opening. The new passageway leads straight across and joins in with the original passage, the descending passage. The descending passage led only to a subterranean chamber. This descending passage that leads down is set at a 26 degree angle that descends down 345 feet (105m) into the earth under the pyramid. The passageway is only 3'6" (1.1m) wide and 3'11" (1.2m) high. The chamber is closed to the public. The chamber itself is room that measures about 46' x 27'1" x 11'6" (14 x 8.3 x 3.5m). There is a passage that leads 100 feet horizontally to the western side. The purpose of the pit is uncertain. It is possible that it could have been the burial chamber, but after a change of plan, it was abandoned.
The descending passage beyond where the new entrance meets it, is closed off by a steel door. The ascending passage rises at the same angle as the descending, 26 degrees. The ascending passage leads up into the pyramid. The ascending passage is the same dimensions as the descending, 3'6" (1.1m) wide and 3'11" (1.2m) high. It can be quite a difficult trek for some people. The passage leads on for 129 feet (39m).
At the point where the ascending passage levels off, you can go two different ways. If you continue on horizontally, this passageway leads into the Queen's Chamber. The Queen's Chamber was never used. The floor in this room was never polished, it's still rough. Egyptologists believe that the chamber was brought to this point and then the builders changed their minds and moved to the King's Chamber. The possible explanation for the abandonment is that the sarcophagus built for Cheops was much too large for the narrow passageways that had already been built. There are ventilating shafts that are another mystery. These shafts are sealed at the extremities on both shafts. The shafts must have been made as the pyramid went up, since the builders most likely would not have continued to make the shafts after the decision to abandon the chamber. It is also thought that these are not actually ventilation shafts, but more of a religious significance. This could be related to the Ancient Egyptian's beliefs that the stars are inhabited by gods and souls of the dead.
The second, and more spectacular, way at the leveling off point of the ascending passage, is to continue upwards to the Grand Gallery. The gallery is 157 feet (48m) long and 28 feet (8.5m) high and is at the same 26 degree angle as the passages. The roof of the gallery is corbelled. It is said that not a piece of paper or a needle can be inserted between the stones making up the roof. The gallery is only 62 inches (1.6m) wide at the bottom and is only 41 inches (1m) wide at the top of the incline.
The Grand Gallery leads into the King's Chamber. The walls of the chamber are made of pink Aswan granite. Inside this chamber is the very large sarcophagus made of Aswan red granite, with no lid. The sarcophagus must have been placed inside the chamber as the pyramid was being built. It is much too large to have been moved in afterwards, as was the usual custom of that time. The King's Chamber is 34'4" x 17'2" x 19'1" high (5.2m x 10.8m x 5.8m high). This chamber also has the possible ventilation shafts as the Queen's Chamber. They are at the same angle as the shafts in the Queen's Chamber. The thought about the religious significance applies to these shafts as well. The main feature of the sky at night, was the Milky Way. The stars were thought to have been the Nile in the sky. The southern shaft from the King's Chamber points directly to where Orion's Belt would have been in the ancient sky. The southern shaft of the Queen's Chamber points to Syrius. The northern shaft of the King's Chamber points to the circumpolar stars. These stars never disappear in the sky. It is thought that these shafts were to help the spirit of the dead pharaoh find the important stars.
Above this chamber is a series of five relieving chambers which are essential to support the weight of the stones above and to distribute the weight away from the burial chamber. The top chamber has a pointed roof made of limestone blocks. This is the most important of the relieving chambers. In these chambers, are found the only inscriptions in the whole pyramid.
Around the Pyramid
As you come out of the pyramid you can see the remains of the original enclosure wall which is on the north and east side. It lies about 10m from the base of the pyramid. Little remains of Cheops' Mortuary Temple. What is left is basalt paving and lies near the east side of the wall. You may also see occasional traces of the causeway that led from the valley temple in the village, Nazlat al-Samman, at the foot of the plateau. This causeway collapsed during the last 150 years. Three small pyramids stand to the east of Cheops' pyramid. These are thought to have been for his sister, Merites, who was also his wife, and possibly two other queens.
To the west of the great pyramid is the Royal Cemetery. It contains 15 mastabas which have just recently been opened to the public after having been closed for over 100 years. Discovered at this site was the mummy of a 4,600 year old female. She had a completely unique plaster encasement that has never been seen or found anywhere else.
At the base of the south face of the Great Pyramid, sits the Boat Pits and Museum. The five boat pits were discovered in 1982. One boat is located at the site and can be seen at the museum. The boat, which is encased in the stones, has no nails. It was held together with ropes and pegs, but not nails, and is amazingly intact. The purpose of these boats may have been intended for travel to the after-life or to accompany the Sun-God on his journey.
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