Myths and facts about the Great Pyramid Bashny.Net

The Great Pyramid at Giza is located and is one of the ancient wonders. It is believed that it was built as the tomb of Khufu, known to the Greeks as Cheops. Pyramid wraps a lot of variety of myths and legends of the truth of which we try to understand



Great Pyramid is the largest pyramid in the world
Great Pyramid of Cholula (Mexico), though lower than the great pyramid of Cheops, but it is much larger in terms of volume - 4.45mln.kub.m. against 2.58mln. cbm



Great Pyramid of Cholula

Pyramid perfectly oriented to the cardinal
The error of the orientation of the pyramid to the cardinal was measured in the 19th century and is 5 arc-minutes and 30 seconds. This is a high precision, but it is not ideal.

It built of carefully fitted stone blocks in the junction between which it is impossible to insert a knife blade
At the junction of the external and internal facing of the pyramid it is really impossible to insert a knife blade. But this applies only to the lining itself is a pyramid built of very roughly hewn blocks of various sizes.



Blocks of the pyramid of Khufu. Pay attention to the different size and fairly rough treatment surfaces

Sami blocks that built the pyramid, cut in the quarry and brought over many hundreds of kilometers from the pyramids
The pyramid is built from a relatively soft limestone from quarries in the vicinity of the pyramids. More hard limestone cladding of external faces of the pyramid were taken from the other bank of the Nile from quarries upstream at a distance of 13-17 km.



Lower-preserved part of the external cladding of the Great Pyramid of Khufu.
Right - granite cladding of the inner chamber (chambers of the King).

But the granite that was used for the floors and facing one of the chambers of the pyramid (the chamber of the King), was carried down the Nile from Aswan to Giza at a distance of over 700 km. But this is only a few hundredths of a percent of the total blocks pyramid.

The technology of construction of the pyramid so perfect that neither before nor after anything similar or comparable in ease of construction in ancient Egypt was not built
The technology of construction of the pyramid is perfect, but only for the time. The pyramids were built before and after the Great Pyramid, and similar-size, though smaller. Stone building technology has continued to evolve and after the era of the pyramids. If you open the Guinness Book of Records under monumental structures, it will not find information about the pyramid of Cheops.



The largest monolithic obelisk in the world. Granite. The weight of 1168 tons, 42 meters long. Unfinished.

But there are three other achievements of ancient Egypt unsurpassed to this day - the largest obelisk from a single monolithic stone weighing 455 tons and a height of 36 meters (Stone Needle height of 12 floors), the biggest unfinished obelisk of cast stone (left in the quarry) - height 42 m, weight 1168 tons, and finally, the highest load-bearing pillars in the history of mankind - columns of the Temple of Amun at Karnak 21 meters.



Giant columns of Karnak temple

Only in the late 19th century, mankind has been able to build a structure above the pyramid - the Eiffel Tower in Paris
Already in the late 13th century and early 14th century in the medieval spiers of Gothic cathedrals rose above the pyramid of Cheops. Meanwhile, construction of the Gothic cathedral with engineering and architectural point of view it is much more difficult to order the construction of the pyramids.

In the pyramid there is no label at all, let alone labels indicating that it belongs to Cheops
There are several dozen inscriptions and technical notes found Weise and Perring in 1837 in the 4 upper discharge chamber of the Cheops pyramid in previously inaccessible locations. Inscriptions are made on the basis of the red ocher paint, and contain numerous references to the name of the Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops) in cartouches.



The inscription with the name of Khufu in the cartouche. Tag builders on one of the blocks.
Please note that the sign goes into the joint, that is made prior to installing the unit in place.

It is foolish to think that such a great work could do for the sake of one person even if the king
The grandiose funerary complex of the first emperor Qin Shi Huang unified China (3rd century BC) in labor costs to build a lot more than the whole complex of Khufu, including except for the Great Pyramid of upper and lower temples, ceremonial roads and other buildings.



Terracotta Army of Emperor Qin Shi Huang burial

At the same time the famous terracotta army - over 8000 carefully made and painted statues (increasing from 170 cm to 2 meters) soldiers, officers, generals, musicians, officials, each with an individual person and to the weapons and tools, chariots, statues of horses with silver and gold trim harness, is out of the funeral complex Shi Huang.



Reconstruction of the funeral complex Shi Huang

Center funeral complex truncated pyramid whose base is also much larger pyramid of Cheops. The wall surrounding the complex, longer than 6 km. On the construction were employed according to Chinese annals to 700 thousand. Man. Poor Cheops on this scale could not even dream of.

Pyramid could build only unknown advanced civilization, not the slaves of ancient Egypt
Pyramid of Cheops built not Atlanta, not aliens, and, of course, is not exactly slaves. Construction of working artisans and peasants of ancient Egypt, the pharaoh subjects. Today we know the history of the construction of the pyramids - from brick mastabas to the first stone step pyramid, and from them to the true pyramids.

Each step of this evolution, the growth of the size of the pyramids construction technology known archaeologists and historians of ancient Egypt. Great Pyramid did not appear out of nowhere.



Breaking piramiada Sneferu. More ancient pyramid of Khufu pyramid than, comparable to its size.
Save it a lot better. It preserved even most of the cladding.

However, Khufu was not the builder of the great pyramid. His father Sneferu built the three pyramids - at Meidum, unique the broken pyramid and the famous pink. Each successive one was larger than the previous, the last two have comparable in size to the Great Pyramid and better preserved it. The total amount of these pyramids greatly exceeds the volume of the Great Pyramid.



Figurines made of ivory. Meet - Khufu (Cheops) in person.
Other images of the pharaoh did not survive.

Looking at the Great Pyramid today, we realize that this is not so much a monument to the ambitions of the pharaoh, his concern for their eternal life after death, and a grand monument to human ingenuity and courage of the architect, created by the labor of thousands of anonymous builders four thousand and a half years ago, when far mammoths still roamed the north, and in Europe people were still living in the Stone Age.



By the way ...

Two German students from the University of Dresden were almost obsessed with the idea that science purposely ignores the fact that the age of the Pyramids much more officially recognized.

Officially, it is believed that the Great Pyramid was not built over 4,500 years ago, but there are many theories on which it is much older and has built its now vanished civilization or aliens.



To prove the truth of this theory, the students arrived in Egypt, got inside the pyramid of Cheops, and committed an act of vandalism, scraped the wall materials for the sample on the site of an ancient pattern. Their initiative is, of course, did not go unnoticed by the Egyptian authorities, who have two young researchers in the "black list».

Students, meanwhile, went to Germany, and there studied a sample of the pyramid. According to the young people with the sample confirmed the theory that the pyramid was not built 4500 years ago, and not less than 20 thousand years ago, and the Pharaoh Cheops just doing its restoration at a later time.



All their findings in the scientific world, of course, have been rejected because of the "examination by amateurs, not archaeologists." And Minister of Antiquities of Egypt said that Egypt's ancient heritage suffered significant damage. The German embassy in Cairo was forced to issue a statement that the German students had nothing to do with the German Archaeological Institute, so their actions are sharply criticized and come under the description of vandalism.

Soon Minister Mohammad Ibrahim filed a lawsuit against the students in the general prosecutor's office, putting forward the charges of smuggling of cultural property, violation of international law and UNESCO conventions, with regards to archeology. And if at least one of the students see vandals at any airport in Egypt, immediately arrested.