The Great Cheops’s Pyramid in Giza plateau is the oldest Pyramid in this cemetery and the biggest one in Egypt. Also, it is one of the seven ancient wonders, the oldest one of them and the only one that remains largely intact.
Most archaeologists and Egyptologists conclude that this Pyramid is the tomb form for the fourth dynasty kings, built in the 26cenutry b.c, and estimate that this Pyramid was constructed in 27 years.
For more than 3800 years, Giza’s great Pyramid stood the tallest manufactured structure in the whole world, standing at 146 meters in height.
The Pyramid’s height was lowered to the current 138,5 meters, removing most of the smooth white limestone casing through history. The base was about 230 meters square, giving a volume of roughly 2,5 million cubic meters, including an internal hillock.
The Pyramid was built by around 2.3 million limestone blocks, weighing around 6 million tonnes in total. Most stones are not in the same size or shape and are just roughly dressed.
The outer layers were bound together by mortar. The inner part of the Pyramid was from local limestone in the Giza plateau. In contrast, the outer part of the pyramids were blocks imported by boat down the Nile from Tura casing and the granite from Aswan, weighing up to 80 tonnes for the king’s burial chamber.
Inside the great pyramids of Cheops, there are three known chambers:
- The lowest one cut into the bedrock, upon which the Pyramid was constructed.
- Queen’s chamber and king’s chamber, which contain a granite sarcophagus, are higher up within the pyramid structure.The Pyramid is believed to have been constructed by kings vizier hemiunu. Many varying scientific and alternative theories attempt to explain the exact technique of the construction.
Attribution to Khufu
Based on words of ancient classical voyagers like Herodotus and Diodorus Siculus, historically, the Great Pyramid had been attributed to Khufu. However, many other people were credited with constructing the Pyramid during the middle ages, such as Josef, Nimrod, or king Saurid.
The Great Pyramid of Cheops in Giza plateau is the oldest Pyramid in this cemetery and the biggest one in Egypt. It is one of the seven ancient wonders, the oldest one, and the only one that remains largely intact.
Most archaeologists and Egyptologists conclude that this Pyramid is the tomb form for the kings of the fourth dynasty, built in the 26cenutry b.c, and estimate that this Pyramid was constructed in 27 years.
For more than 3700 years, the Great Pyramid in Giza stood as the tallest manufactured- structure in the whole world, standing at 146-meter height.
The Pyramid is believed to have been built by kings vizier hemiunu. Many varying scientific and alternative theories attempt to explain the exact technique of the construction.
It is not only a pyramid, but a pyramid complex consists of two temples aligned by two causeways, one close to the Pyramid and the other to the side of the Nile. in addition to royal tombs for the king’s family consist of 3 small pyramids in addition to satellite pyramid and five buried solar barks.
By 1837 four relieving chambers were discovered above the king’s chamber after tunneling to them.
The chambers, previously unreached, were covered in hieroglyph signs of red paint. The workers who were constructing the Pyramid had marked blocks with the names of their groups, which included the king’s name. The names of cheopse were spelled out on the walls over lots of eras. Another of these graffiti was discovered by archaeologist goyon on an exterior block of the 4th layer of the Pyramid. The inscriptions are comparable to those discovered at other sites of Khufu, for example, the alabaster quarry at Hatnub or the wadi al jarf harbor. They are present in the pyramids of other kings indeed.
Throughout the last century, the cemeteries close to the Pyramid were excavated. Royal and nobles of Khufu were buried in the east field south of the causeway and the west field. dedicated for the wives, children, and grandchildren of Khufu, heminu,ankhhaf, and (the funerary cache of) hetepheres, mother of Khufu.” Since the early dynastic times, it was always the tradition for relatives, friends, and employees to be buried in the neighborhood of the king they had served during the era.
The cemeteries were expanded until the 6th dynasty and used less frequently afterward. The earliest ancient Egyptian name of seal impressions is that of Khufu, the last of Pepi II. Worker graffiti was engraved on some of the tomb’s stones; for instance, “Mddw” “Horus name of Khufu” on Chufunacht’ mastaba, most probably a grandson of Khufu.
Some inscriptions of mastabas’ chapels (like the Pyramid, their burial chambers were usually bare of inscriptions) mention Khufu or his Pyramid. For instance, an inscription of Meresankh III states that “Her mother [is the] daughter of the King of lower and upper Egypt Khufu.” These references are often aspects of a title, such as Snow-ka, “lord of the Settlement and supervisor of the Pyramid City of Akhet-Khufu,” or Merib, “Priest of Khufu.” Many tomb owners have a king’s name as part of their name (e.g., Chuffed Def, Chufuseneb, Merichufu). The earliest king alluded to in that manner at Giza is Snefru (Khufu’s father).
In 1936, a stela of Amenhotep was uncovered the second close to Sphinx of Giza, which implies the two more giant pyramids were still related to Khufu and Khafre in the New Kingdom era. It reads: “He yoked the horses in Memphis, when he was young, and stopped at the Sanctuary of Hor-em-akhet (the Sphinx). He spent a time there going round it, looking at the beauty of the Sanctuary of Khufu and Khafra the revered.”
In 1954 two boat holes containing the Khufu ship were discovered buried at the south of the Pyramid. The name of djedefre was found on many of the blocks of stones that covered the boat pits. As the successor and eldest son, he would perhaps be responsible for Khufu’s burial.
The second boat hole t was examined in 1987; excavation work started in 2010. Graffiti on the stones included four instances of the name “Khufu,” 11 instances of “Djedefre,” a year ” in reign, season, month, and day,” measurements of the stone, various signs, marks, and a reference line used in building.
During excavations in 2013, the diary of merere was discovered at Wadi al-jarf. It documented the transportation of white limestone blocks from Tura to Giza, which its original name Akhet Khufu “horizon of Khufu” (with a pyramid determinative ) many times.
It describes the stones that were accepted at She Akhet-Khufu (“the pool of the pyramid Horizon of king Khufu”) and Ro-She Khufu (“the entrance to the pool of Khufu”), which were under the supervision and responsibility of ankhhaf , brother-in-law, and vizier of Khufu, as well as the owner of the largest mastaba at Giza East Field.
The age of the pyramids
The most hypothetical age of the pyramids is 4600 years, and two approaches determine it.
First historical
In the past, it was well-known that this Pyramid is attributed to king cheopse since his name was carved inside the Pyramid, so dating the Pyramid depended on dating king Cheops and the 4th dynasty. the central point of this process is the relative sequence and synchronicity of events
Most of the recent chronological estimates date of Khufu’s reign and his Pyramid is between 2700 b.c to 2500 b.c.
Radiocarbon
Mortar was used several times in the Great Pyramid. In the mixing process, ashes from fires were added to the mortar, organic material that could be taken away and radiocarbon dated. A total of 46 samples were taken in 1984 and 1995, making sure they were deep-rooted to the original structure and could not have been united later. The results were calibrated to 2871–2604 BC. The old wood problem is thought to be mainly responsible for the 100–300 year offset since the age of the organic material was determined, not when it was last used. Based on the younger samples, a reanalysis of the data gave a completion date for the Pyramid between 2620 and 2484 BC.
Construction of the Pyramid
One of the most critical reasons for constructing this Pyramid in this location, which was chosen on the west bank of the Nile: according to ancient Egyptian cult where the daily sunset symbol of death, in addition to the perfect location of the Giza plateau, a hillock of stone higher than the Nile valley giving perfect dry place to bury the king’s mummy.
The Pyramid consists of approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone. During the Pyramid’s construction, around 5.5 million tonnes of limestone,8000 tonnes of granite, and half a million tonnes of mortar.
Most stone blocks were quarried from an area not far away from the Pyramid called southern field.
White limestone which covered the Pyramid was quarried from tura, which lay around 10 km to the south of Giza and was transported to Giza plateau down the Nile.
Granite stone was transported from Aswan, which lies approximately 900 kilometers to the south of Giza, and it was transported by boats down river Nile.
According to Pyramid’s workers, the ancient Greeks and tourists nowadays believed that this Pyramid was built by slave labor; however, there is no evidence approve their belief even on the other side there a lot of documents and shreds of evidence approve the false of this belief.
Modern discoveries made at work’s comps connected with construction suggest that it was built by thousands of workers.
Also, workers graffiti which was found recently near the Pyramid, assume that workers were working in groups, each consisting of 40 workers, and each group had their overseer.
Professor Mark Lehner conducted a management study about the Pyramid in 1999. He estimated that the workforce in this Pyramid was 13200, and the peak workforce was roughly 40.000.
Several archeologists and scientists have proposed many alternatives and contradictory theories regarding the Pyramid’s construction techniques.
The British Egyptologist and archaeologist John Romer suggest using the same technique they used for earlier and later constructions, laying out parts of the project on the ground at a 1-to-1 scale. He writes that “such a working diagram would also serve to generate the architecture of the pyramid with accuracy unmatched by any other means.”
Clear evidence in the Pyramid’s temple in basalt blocks shows that the blocks have been by a kind of saw cutting blade of 4.6meter length.
Also, he suggested that this saw had teeth from copper weight around 140 kilograms.
He believes that such a saw could have been attached to a wooden trestle and probably used in coupling with vegetable oil, cutting sand, emery, or pounded quartz to cut the blocks, which would have required the labor of at least a dozen men to operate it.
As mentioned above, the Great Pyramid of Cheops consisted of two parts, inner and outer. By completing the Pyramid and building the inner part, the ancient Egyptians cased the Pyramid with white Tura limestone, which does not exist nowadays.
The workers in ancient Egypt placed horizontal blocks of white limestone filled with mortar.
On the Pyramid’s top, there was a known capstone called the pyramidion; speculations were that the material of this pyramidion limestone, granite, and basalt are proposed. During popular belief, it was from gold!.
In antiquity, the Great Pyramid’s pyramidion was lost; nowadays, the Pyramid is 8 meters shorter than before when it was intact.
Inside the Pyramid
The internal construction consists of three main chambers.
On the northern side of the Pyramid, there are two entrances:
The original, which led to the forced passage, met at a junction. From there: one passage descends into the underground chambers.
The other ascends to the Grand Gallery, which has three paths.
- a vertical shaft that leads down, past a grotto, to meet the descending passage,
- a horizontal corridor leading to the Queen’s Chamber,
- and the path up the Gallery itself to the King’s Chamber that contains the sarcophagus.
The entrance
The original entrance of the pyramids is located 7.9 meters high on the northern side of the Pyramid.
The Pyramid was entered through a hole approximately 17 meters above the pyramid level before removing casing in the middle ages.
Robber's tunnel
Today tourists enter the Pyramid via the Robbers’ Tunnel, which was long ago cut straight through the Pyramid building. The entrance was forced into the 6th and 7th layers of the casing, about 7 meters above the base. After running more-or-less straight and horizontal for 27 meters, it turns left to encounter the blocking stones in the Ascending Passage. It is possible to enter the Descending Passage from this point, but access is usually prohibited.
The origin of this Robbers’ Tunnel is the subject of much scholarly discussion. According to tradition, the chasm was made around 820 AD by Caliph al-Ma’mun workmen with a crush ram. The digging dislodged the stone in the ceiling of the Descending Passage, which hid the gateway to the Ascending Passage, and the noise of that stone falling then sliding down the Descending Passage alerted them to the need to turn left. Unable to remove these stones. However, the workmen tunneled up beside them through the softer limestone of the Pyramid until they reached the Ascending Passage.
However, archaeologists assume that the entrance was made after building the Pyramid, during the reign of Ramesses by the era of the new kingdom, and the Pyramid hole already existed even before caliph el maanon. He just enlarged it.
Descending passage
From the original entrance could reach this descending passage, directly leading to the underground chamber.
It has an inclined height of around 1.20 meters and 1-meter width.
After 28 meters, the bring down Ascending Passage’s end is reached; a square hole in the ceiling, blocked by granite stones, might have been initially hidden. A short tunnel was excavated that meets the end of the Robbers’ Tunnel. It was expanded over time and fitted with stairs.
The passage continues to descend for another 72 meters, now through bedrock instead of the pyramid superstructure. Lazy guides used to block off this part with rubble to avoid leading people down and back up the long shaft until around 1902 when Covington installed a padlocked iron grill door to stop this practice. Near this section’s end, on the west wall, is the connection to the vertical shaft that leads up to the Grand Gallery.
A horizontal shaft connects the end of the Descending Passage to the Subterranean Chamber. It has a length of 8.84 m, a width of 85 cm, and a height of 91–95 cm. A cavity is located towards the end of the western wall, slightly larger than the tunnel, the ceiling of which is irregular and undressed.
Hidden chamber
It was rediscovered in 1817 by Giovanni Belzoni after he cleared the rubble blocking the descending passage. Opposite the entrance, there is a corridor which has greek or roman.
Ascending portion
Through its connection with descending passage leads to the Grand Gallery. It is around 39 meters long.
The lower end of the shaft is blocked by three granite stones, which slid down from the Grand Gallery to seal the tunnel. The uppermost is heavily damaged; hence it is shorter. The end of the Robbers’ Tunnel concludes little below the stones, so a short tunnel was dug around them to access the Descending Passage since the surrounding limestone is significantly softer and easier to work.
Most of the joints between the blocks of the walls run vertical to the floor, with two exceptions. Firstly, those in the lower third of the corridor are vertical. Secondly, the three belt stones are inserted near the middle, presumably to stabilize the tunnel.
Queen's chamber
The passage links the Grand Gallery to the queen’s chamber. Five pairs of holes at the start suggest the tunnel was once concealed with slabs that flush the gallery floor.
The “Queen’s Chamber” is exactly halfway between the north and south faces of the Pyramid.
The actual depth of the niche was two cubits (1.0 m; 3.4 ft), but treasure hunters have since deepened it.
Shafts were discovered in the north and south walls of the Queen’s Chamber in 1872 by British engineer Waynman Dixon, who believed shafts similar to those in the King’s Chamber must also exist. The shafts were not connected to the outer faces of the Pyramid or the Queen’s Chamber; their purpose is unknown. In one shaft, Dixon discovered a ball of diorite, a bronze hook of unknown purpose, and a piece of cedarwood. The first two objects are currently in the British Museum. The latter was lost until recently when it was found at the University of Aberdeen. It has since been radiocarbon dated to 3341–3094 BC. The northern shaft’s angle of ascent fluctuates and at one point turns 45 degrees to avoid the Great Gallery. The southern shaft is perpendicular to the Pyramid’s slope.
The shafts in the Queen’s Chamber were explored in 1993 by the German engineer Rudolf Gantenbrink using a crawler robot he designed, Upuaut 2. After a climb of 65 m, he discovered that one of the shafts was blocked by a limestone “door” with two eroded copper “handles.” The National Geographic Society created a similar robot which, in September 2002, drilled a small hole in the southern door only to find another stone slab behind it. A slab also blocked the northern passage, which was challenging to navigate because of its twists and turns.
Research continued in 2011 with the Djedi Project, which used a fiber-optic “micro snake camera” that could see around corners. With this, they were able to penetrate the first door of the southern shaft through the hole drilled in 2002 and view all the sides of the small chamber behind it. They discovered hieroglyphics written in red paint. Egyptian mathematics researcher Luca Miatello stated that the markings read “121” – the length of the shaft in cubits. The Djedi team was also able to scrutinize the inside of the two copper “handles” embedded in the door, which they now believe to be for decorative purposes. They also found the reverse side of the “door” to be finished and polished, suggesting that it was not put there just to block the shaft from debris but rather for a more specific reason.
Grand gallery
The Grand Gallery continues the slope of the Ascending Passage towards the King’s Chamber, extending from the 23rd to the 48th course, a rise of 21 meters. It has been praised as a “truly spectacular example of stonemasonry.” It is 8.6 meters high and 46.68 meters long. The base is four cubits wide, but after two courses – at the height of 2.29 meters – the stone blocks in the walls are corbelled inwards by 6–10 centimeters on each side. There are seven of these steps, so, at the top, the Grand Gallery is only (1.0 m) wide. It is roofed by stone slabs laid at a slightly steeper angle than the floor so that each stone fits into a slot cut intoGallery’s top, like the teeth of a ratchet. The purpose was to have each block supported by the galley’s wall rather than on the block beneath it. To decrease accumulative pressure,
At the Gallery’s upper end, on the eastern wall, a hole near the roof opens into a short tunnel through which access can be gained to the lowest of the Relieving Chambers.
The floor of the Grand Gallery has a shelf or step on either side, one cubit wide, leaving a lower ramp two cubits wide between them. There are 56 slots on the shelves, with 28 on each side. On each wall, 25 niches have been cut above the slots. The purpose of these slots is not known. Still, the central gutter in the floor of the Gallery, which is the same width as the Ascending Passage, has led to speculation that the blocking stones were stored in the Grand Gallery, and the slots held wooden beams to restrain them from sliding down the passage. Jean-Pierre Houdin theorized that they held a timber frame combined with a trolley to pull the heavy granite blocks up the Pyramid.
At the Gallery’s top, there is a step onto a small horizontal platform where a tunnel leads through the Antechamber, once blocked by portcullis stones, into the King’s Chamber.
Antechamber
The last line of defense against intrusion was a small chamber specially designed to house portcullis blocking stones, called the Antechamber. It is cased almost entirely in granite and is situated between the upper end of the Grand Gallery and the King’s Chamber. Three slots for portcullis stones line the east and west wall of the chamber. Each of them is topped with a semi-circular groove for a log, around which ropes could be spanned.
The granite portcullis stones were approximately one cubit (52.4 cm; 20.6 in) thick and were lowered into position by the ropes mentioned above, tied through four holes at the top of the blocks. A corresponding set of four vertical grooves is on the chamber’s south wall, recesses that make space for the ropes.
The Antechamber has a design flaw: the space above them can be accessed; thus, all but the last block can be circumvented. That was exploited by looters who punched a hole through the ceiling of the tunnel behind, gaining access to King’s Chamber. Later on, all three portcullis stones were broken and removed. Fragments of these blocks can be found in various locations in the Pyramid (the Pit Shaft, the Original Entrance, the Grotto, and the recess before the Subterranean Chamber).
King's Chamber
The King’s Chamber is the utmost of the three main chambers of the Pyramid. It is faced entirely with granite and measures 20 cubits east-west by ten cubit north-south. Its flat ceiling is about 11 cubits and five digits above the floor, formed by nine slabs of stone weighing about 400 tons. All the roof beams show cracks due to the chamber having settled 2.5–5 cm.
The walls consist of five courses of uninscribed blocks, as was the norm for burial chambers of the 4th dynasty. The stones are precisely fitted together. The facing surfaces are dressed to varying degrees, with some displaying remains of bosses not entirely cut away. The backsides of the blocks were only roughly hewn to shape, as was usual with Egyptian hard-stone facade blocks, presumably to save work.
Sarcophagus
The only object in the King’s Chamber is a sarcophagus made out of a single, hollowed-out granite block. When it was rediscovered in the early middle ages, it was found broken open, and any contents had already been removed. It is typical for early Egyptian sarcophagi; rectangular with grooves to slide the now missing lid into place with three small holes for pegs to fixate it. The coffer was not perfectly smoothed, displaying various tool marks matching copper saws and tubular hand-drills.
The internal dimensions are roughly 198 cm by 68 cm, the external 228 cm by 98 cm, with a height of 105 cm. The walls have a thickness of about 15 cm. sarcophagus is large to fit around the corner between the Ascending and Descending Passages, which indicates that it must have been placed in the chamber before the roof was put in place.
Air shafts
In the north and south walls of the King’s Chamber are two narrow shafts, commonly known as “air shafts.” Both start horizontally for the length of the granite blocks before changing to an upwards direction. The southern shaft ascends at an angle of 45° with a slight curve westwards. One ceiling stone was found to be distinctly unfinished, which Gantenbrink called a “Monday morning block.” The northern shaft changes angle several times, shifting the path to the west, perhaps to avoid the Big Void. The builders had trouble calculating the right angles, resulting in parts of the shaft being narrower. Nowadays, they both commute to the exterior. If they initially penetrated the outer casing is unknown.
The purpose of these shafts is not clear: They were long believed by Egyptologists to be shafts for ventilation, but this idea has now been widely abandoned in favor of the shafts serving a ritualistic purpose associated with the ascension of the king’s spirit to the heavens. Ironically, both shafts were fitted with ventilators in 1992 to reduce the humidity in the Pyramid.
The idea that the point of the shaft towards stars or areas of the northern and southern skies has mainly been dismissed as the northern shaft follows a dog-leg course through the masonry, and the southern shaft has a bend of approximately 20 centimeters, indicating no intention to have them point to any celestial objects.
Pyramid complex
The ancient Egyptians didn’t build pyramids alone, it was complex Pyramid, and the Pyramid was one element in the complex in addition to :
Pyramid temples
One temple stand on the east side of the Pyramid with measurement 52*40 has almost entirely been destroyed and disappeared.
Only some black basalt paving has remained. The other temple is buried under the village of nazlet el seman. The basalt pavement and limestone walls are found but not excavated.
East cemetery
Around 110 meters lies the tomb of queen hetepheres, the wife of king snafu and mother of king cheopse. It was discovered intact but with an empty sarcophagus.
Subsidiary pyramids
There are four pyramids on the southern end of the eastern side, called subsidiary pyramids, also known as the queen’s pyramids. The fourth one is a smaller satellite pyramid discovered in 1991.
boats
By 1954 there was a significant announcement in Egypt about discovering the solar boats of king Cheops, the announcement was by kamal el mallakh, and it is not proved if it was his discovery.
It was 1224 pieces of wood. The most extended piece was 23 meters, the shortest was 10 meters. It was rebuilt by archeologists and displayed as a boat museum. It is now displayed in the new museum, which lies close to the pyramid complex of Cheops.
Looting
The looting of this Pyramid, most hypothetically, started during the reign of the new kingdom, while kings in thebes built their tombs in the valley of the kings. At the same time, other archeologists assume that the looting of the Pyramid started with caliph al ma’mun approximately 819a.d.
However, other scholars and archaeologists like Petrie and gaston Maspero assume that this Pyramid was looted by the end of the old kingdom.
Conclusion
All that is mentioned above is not the truth. It is just a dissertation and hard work. It has lasted lots of years in different ages, and till now, the Pyramid of Cheops is still a great puzzle for the whole of humanity, and secrets of this Pyramid through this prolonged history increase not decrease.
But by the end of this article still some notes about this Pyramid.
- The magic of this Pyramid is that it is not only the eldest of one of ancient seven wonders, but it is the only wonder of those seven which exist till now prestigiously.
- The duration of building this Pyramid is very mysterious. If we divided the number of pyramid blocks by the time of building, the result would be that the ancient Egyptians built 347 stones daily without considering weekends and national free days yearly.
- Using the stones of the Pyramid could be built a surrounding wall around France with 1,5 height.
