1. Pyramid Builders
In Egypt there were about 80 or so pyramids built about 4500 years ago and they are the oldest
human-made buildings in the world. There are some very famous pyramids at Giza, near Cairo are
the most delicate and detailed human-made structures. But no one knows exactly how they were
built.
From about 2500BC important people such as pharaohs were entombed in pyramids, but they only
did it for about 500 years. Robbers were a massive concern with almost every tomb in the valley of
the kings invaded but just one was not the pharaoh Tutankhamen. The great pyramid of Giza was
built around 2550 BC and was the tomb of the pharaoh Khufu. The other two were for his son Khafre
and grandson Menkure. The great pyramid is the biggest of the three and it’s almost 150 metres tall
with 2 300 000 granite blocks, each of them weighing about 2.5 tonnes.
The robbers missed a great big 43 metre long boat that was belived to carry Khufu to the afterlife.
The boat wasn’t found until 1954 it was broken into 1224 before being put into a cavity at the base
of the pyramid. It was tightly sealed that when archaeologists got in they could still smell cedar oil in
the wood even though it was 4500 years ago it was sealed!
People now days belive that everyday Egyptians dragged the blocks over sand on top of wooden
sleds. On harder surfaces, the blocks may have been transported on top of rolling logs.
Some of the blocks were thought to have been cut from some rock faces in Aswan. And then
transported to the site via the Nile river. Massive ramps helped to move the block up to higher
places. 100 000 men not slaves were belived to have worked full time for 20 years to make the Great
pyramid.