Data Bases • Custom Term Papers • Free Term Papers • Free Research Papers • Free Essays • Free Book Reports • Plagiarism? Links • Top 100 Term Paper Sites • Top 25 Essay Sites • Top 50 Essay Sites • Search 97,000 Papers @ DirectEssays.com • Search 101,000 Papers @ ExampleEssays.com • Search 90,000 Papers @ MegaEssays.com Free Essays • Term Paper Sites • Chuck III's Free Essays • Free College Essays • TermPaperSites.com • My Term Papers • Get Free Essays • Essay World • Planet Papers	Search Lots of Essays Back to Subjects - Geography Great Pyramids Great Pyramids The Great Pyramid is the most substantial ancient structure in the world, and the most mysterious. According to prevailing archaeological theory the three pyramids of Giza were. built for three kings of the fourth dynasty. The Great Pyramids were attributed to Khufu, is the largest. The pyramid attributed to Khafra, is the second largest, and that of Menkaura, is the smallest of the three. The Great Pyramid was originally 481 feet, five inches tall and measured 755 feet along its sides. Covering an area of 13 acres, it is large enough to contain the European cathedrals of Florence, Milan, St. Peters, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's. Constructed from approximately 2.5 million limestone blocks that weighed an average of 2.6 tons each, its total mass is more than 6.3 million tons. The Great Pyramid was originally encased in highly polished, smooth white limestone and capped. Covering an area of 22 acres the white limestone casing was removed by an Arab sultan in 1356 in order to build fortresses in Cairo. According to its knowledge the Great Pyramid is mostly solid mass, its only known interior spaces is the original entrance, the Ascending passage, the Grand Gallery, a mysterious grotto, an equally mysterious subterranean chamber, and the two main chambers. These two chambers, called the King's Chamber and the Queen's Chamber, have unfortunately retained the misleading names given to them by early Arab visitors to the pyramid. It is an Arab custom to bury men in tombs with a flat roof and women in rooms with a gabled roof. The King's Chamber is 10.46 meters by 5.23 meters. It is built of enormous blocks of solid red granite that were transported by a still-unknown means from the quarries of Aswan. Within the chamber, sits a large, lidless coffer of dark black granite estimated to weigh more than three tons. When Arab Abdullah Al Mamoun finally forced his entry into the chamber in 820, the first entry since the chamber was sealed, he found the coffer empty. Egyptologists assume that this was the final resting place of Khufu, but this evidence does not suggests that a corpse had ever been in this coffer or chamber. No clues have been found in the chamber or anywhere else in the pyramid that indicates that Khufu was ever buried there. The passageway leading from the Grand Gallery to the main chamber is too narrow to have any movement of the coffer. They suggest that it must have been placed in the chamber as the pyramid was being built. The Giza pyramids were built for the fourth Dynasty kings as funerary structures. It is a archaeological fact that none of the kings put their names on the pyramids that they supposedly built. Yet in the fifth Dynasty and onward the other pyramids that have been built have hundreds of names of who built them. The attribution to Khufu of the Great Pyramid is been founded upon three very circumstantial pieces of "evidence":1. The legends told to and reported by Herodotus who visited in 443 BC.2. The inscriptions cite Khufu as the reigning pharaoh.3. In the pyramid itself, they have found a slight resemblance to a hieroglyphic symbol for the name of Khufu. Pharaoh Khufu himself left no indication whatsoever that he built the Great Pyramid. He did, however, claim to have done repair work on the structure. On the recorded testimonies, Khufu tells of discoveries made while clearing away the sands from the pyramid, of his dedication of the monument to Isis, and of his building of the three small pyramids for himself, his wife, and his daughters next to the Great Pyramid. Regarding the chalk marks found within the pyramid, most hieroglyph experts now believe these to be forgeries left by their "discoverer" Richard Howard-Vyse, rather than being quarry inscriptions left by the original builders. Howard-Vyse was under pressure to equal the discoveries of his rival, the Italian explorer Caviglia, who had found inscriptions in some of the tombs around the Great Pyramid. Researchers now suspect that Howard-Vyse wanted to outdo his rival and gain new support by forging inscriptions inside the Great Pyramid. The Great Pyramid is constructed with 2,300,000 limestone and granite blocks. Weighing between 2.5 and 50 tons each, these stone blocks had to be mined from the earth. But this is a problem. In Cairo, in the museum one can see examples of simple copper and bronze saws, which Egyptologists claim are like those used in the cutting and shaping of pyramid blocks On the scale of mineral hardness, copper and bronze have a hardness of 3.5 to 4, while limestone has a hardness of 4 to 5 and granite of 5 to 6. The known tools would only barely cut through limestone and would be useless with granite. The best steels today have a hardness of only 5.5 and thus are inefficient for cutting granite. Some years ago, one of the fathers of Egyptology said that the pyramid blocks had been cut with long saw blades. But this presents problems also. The cutting of millions of blocks would require millions of diamonds and corundum, which would wear out and would have to be replaced. It was also suggested that the limestone blocks were cut with citric acid or vinegar, but they leave the surfaces pitted and rough, and these agents are completely useless for the cutting of granite. The truth is, we have no idea how the blocks were actually mined. The unsolved problem of how the 2,300,000 blocks were taken to the building site of the pyramid is even another mystery. Still further evidence that the dynastic Egyptians did not construct the Great Pyramid may be found in sediments surrounding the base of the monument. Silt sediments that are fourteen feet around the base of the pyramid contain seashells and fossils that have been radiocarbon-dated to be twelve thousand years old. These sediments could have been deposited in such great quantities only by major sea flooding. This evidence alone suggests that the three main Giza pyramids are at least twelve thousand years old. In support of this ancient flood that is recorded in The Bible. Also, when the Great Pyramid was first opened, salt an inch thick was found inside. Chemical analysis has shown that some of the salt has a mineral content that is the same as the salt we find in the sea. Here are some purposes or multiple purposes of the Great Pyramid. Here are a few facts: 1. The sides of the pyramid are lined up exactly with the cardinal points of a compass. The correctness of the positions are amazing, but it has a common difference of only about three minutes.2. The Great Pyramid functions as a sundial. Its shadows the north, and it reflects sunlight to the south, it marks the annual dates of both the solstices and the equinoxe periods.3. The basic dimensions of the Great Pyramid fit with the measurements from the earth's size and shape. The pyramid is a scale model of the hemisphere. The latitude and longitude lines that intersect at the Great Pyramid crosses more of the earth's land than any other lines, that is why they have said that the Great Pyramid is located at the center of the earth. 4. The base of the Great Pyramid is level. No corner of its base is more than one-half inch higher or lower than the others. Since the pyramids base covers more than thirteen acres.5. Measurements throughout the pyramid show that the builders knew of the point of pi.6. Measurements show that the builders knew the accurate shape and size of the earth and had charted such complex events like that of the equinoxes and the lunar standstill dates.7. Vessels leading upward from the two main chambers, were thought to be air shafts for air, it has been discovered to have other purpose. Scientists have asked many questions about the ancient builders of the pyramids, and how they planned so much mathematical, geographic, and astronomical information into these structures. And also what is the purpose of the Great Pyramid? While no convincing answer can now be given to the question, two interesting topics suggest a path for further questions and research. The first is the legends that the Great Pyramid was used as some sort of sacred commencement place. According to one legend, students who had to go through long years of preparation, meditation and metaphysical instruction they were placed in the granite coffer of the main chamber and left alone throughout an entire night. Napolean himself spent a night alone in the chamber. Emerging very pale, he did not speak, but only said that they would never believe him if he told them. A second matter that came from the scientists studying the Great Pyramid concerns the explaination of energetic anomalies that have been noticed in the main chamber. In 1920s, a man named Antoine Bovis made a discovery that even with the heat and high humidity in the main chamber, dead bodies of animals that had been left in the chamber had not decayed but were dehydrated. He thought that there might be a relationship between these phenomenon and the position of the pyramid, He constructed a model of the pyramid, it was in the same direction as the Great Pyramid, and placed he placed a body of a dead cat at the level of the main chamber. The result was the same. In 1960 researchers from Czechoslovakia and the U.S. conducted studies of the geometry of the pyramid, but had the same results. They also found out that the pyramid also kept foods from spoiling, and quickly healed animal wounds. Although there is much research that still remains to be done in these areas, it may one day indicate that the Great Pyramid is a monumental device for gathering and focusing of mysterious energy fields for the spirituality of human beings. We really do not know exactly how the pyramid was used, But the Great Pyramid of the Giza still is a great transformational power place. Bibliography: Bibloagraphy 1. http://www.europa.com/edge/pyramid.html 2. http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/pyramids.html 3. Millard, Anne. Pyramids. New York. Kingfisher. Pg.26,27,59 Word Count: 1681
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