The Egyptian Pyramids: Hous of Eternity
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To many people throughout the world, some of the most remarkable and puzzling monuments of ancient times are the pyramids of ancient Egypt. You know, almost nothing at all remains of the great cities of the kings of Egypt, the pharaohs. Time and weather have been really hard on ancient Egypt's cities and towns, but veral of the temples, statues, and, most important of all, the pyramids have survived. Even though many of the pyramids are in ruins, they still give us some idea of the magnificence of ancient Egypt's civilization-a civilization that, after all, lasted for more than 3,000 years. Remember, when we're talking about ancient Egypt, we're talking about at least thirty concutive dynasties. A dynasty is a ries of kings or queens of the same royal family--something like the Romanovs of Europe, the Ming dynasty of China, or the Al-Sauds of Saudi Arabia.
As many of you probably already know, the pyramids were constructed as tombs or burial places for the Egyptian kings and their family members. You e, the ancient Egyptians passionately believed in life after death. In fact, their entire culture revolved around that beli
ef. The kings, queens, and state officials often spent an entire lifetime preparing for their life after death. They did this by collecting posssions or "grave goods" by building tombs, and so forth. The Egyptians believed that they could be assured of an afterlife only if their bodies could be prerved from decay or destruction. So when a person died, and especially when a pharaoh died, in order to ensure his eternal life, he had his body embalmed or mummified. In other words, he had his corp dried out and wrapped in linen to prerve it from decay. Then he had his mummy hidden. This whole idea may em quite strange today, but the ancient Egyptians really believed that if one's mummy was destroyed, then his or her soul would be destroyed, and if, on the other hand, the mummy-the dead body-was prerved, the soul would be immortal. Let me repeat that. If one's mummy was prerved, the soul would go on living.
For another thing, the ancient Egyptians believed that the dead person could take his or her earthly posssions along to the next world--this is just the opposite of the Western idea that "you can't take it with you when you go." Anyway, the dead person was provided with food, clothing, furniture, weapons, and even rvants. It was not at all unusual for th英雄人物作文
e pharaoh's slaves to be put to death so that they could rve him in his afterlife.
7日清肠瘦身法>黄瓜炒什么So you can e why the pharaohs wanted to have their bodies and their posssions hidden to protect them from grave robbers. Before they died, they had special tombs built for this purpo-to hide their bodies and their treasures. In the early years of ancient Egypt, the tombs were the pyramids-the vast burial chambers that were built to fool the grave robbers. Unfortunately, the grave robbers almost always outsmarted even the most powerful and the most careful of pharaohs. They broke into most of the pyramids or tombs and stole the food and other treasures they found. They even decrated and destroyed the mummies of the dead. Needless to say, they would not bother a poor person's grave. The grave robbers even banded together into organizations or brotherhoods. Just imagine, a grave robbers' union!
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Now, as for the actual construction of the mighty pyramids, it was during the First and Second Dynasties that the kings and nobles of Egypt began to construct the type of tomb called the "mastaba". The First and Second Dynasties lasted from about 3100 until 2665
B.C.E. Mastaba, by the way, comes from an Arabic word meaning "bench" or"long at." A mastaba looked like a low, flat-topped rectangle--something like a low bench or a shoebox. Esntially, the pointed pyramid was no more than an extension upward of the flat-topped mastaba.
党章学习The first "typical" pyramid, or, at least what most people generally think a pyramid looks like, was built during the Third Dynasty, which lasted roughly from about 2664 until 2615 B.C.E. This pyramid was for King Zor (that's spelled Z-o-s-e-r) in about 2650 B.C.E. It was built by an architect named Imhotep [I-m-h-o-t-e-p]. This pyramid was constructed as a ries of giant steps or stairs. It, along with others of its type, is called the Step Pyramid. It was really simply a pile of mastabas, each step smaller and higher than the one before. The Step Pyramid of King Zor was different from the later pyramids becau it was never covered with stone to give it a smooth surface.
Actually, it was not until the Fourth Dynasty that the most famous pyramids were built. The three great pyramids of Giza belong to the Fourth Dynasty pyramids. The Fourth Dyn
asty covered the period from 2614 to 2502 B.C.E. They are located near the town of Giza, on the west bank of the Nile River, just outside the capital city of Egypt--Cairo. The Great Pyramids are really the very best prerved of all the Egyptian pyramids . The largest of the pyramids is known as the Great Pyramid. And great it is! It was built for King Khufu ( that's K-h-u-f-u), Khufu was called Cheops [C-h-e-o-p-s] by the Greeks, and so the pyramid is sometimes called the pyramid of Cheops. It has been estimated that 2.3 million blocks of limestone were ud to build the Great Pyramid. The blocks averaged 2,500 kilograms each. The largest stone block weighs about 15,000 kilos. The ba of the pyramid covers 5.3 hectares--an area large enough to hold ten football fields. There's a story that the conqueror Napoleon once sat in the shadow of the Great Pyramid and calculated that the mass of stone in the pyramid could be ud to build a wall three meters high by 0.3 meters thick around the entire country of France. In terms of height, the pyramid was originally 147 meters high, but today the top 10 meters are missing, and the entire outer limestone covering has been stripped away. It ems that local builders and conquerors found it convenient to strip off the limestone from the pyramids and u it to build with.
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