Thursday 9 April 2009

Pyramids

Andie said...
PART 3
Because the pyramids of the Old Kingdom near Cairo are so famous it sometimes seems as though they appeared out of nowhere, but this is far from the truth.Before the pyramid there was a type of tomb called a "mastaba" which was used by the earliest kings. These were vast mud brick structures with storage rooms which sat over undgerground burial chambers.

Mastaba tombs were often decorated, sometimes with decoration in paint and gold, and hundreds of artefacts were buried so that the dead person could take his property into the afterlife. The first pyramid, which is called the Step Pyramid of the pharaoh Djoser, started off as a mastaba but its design was changed many times and it grew into the first stone pyramid. A man called Imhotep is thought to be the architect and he became a god himself in ancient Egypt thanks to his invention. Even after the invention of the pyramids the mastaba tombs continued to be built for important people attached to the royal court, and these still surround the pyramids.

Mastaba tombs were no longer built after the end of the Old Kingdom but pyramids were still built, although they were never as magnificent as the Great Pyramid. The favoured form of royal tomb after the Old Kingdom was the rock cut tomb, like those in the Valley of the Kings where Tutankhamun was buried in the New Kingdom.

PART 4
Not all pyramids were as big as the famous ones on the outskirts of Cairo, but it is true that several were huge. There are lots of theories about why they were so enormous. One idea is that they pharaohs thought that when they died they joined the other gods in the sky as stars and that the pyramids were so high that they could reach the stars. Another view is economic and suggests that when the Nile flooded and the land could not be worked so all the men were employed to build pyramids, which was a good way of making sure that everyone was usefully employed all year round.

It is also possible that these pyramids were so big because the Pharaoh wanted to leave a monument for all time to show how important he was.The truth is that no-one knows why they are so big, but they are a wonderful testiment to ancient engineering.

Thursday, 09 April, 2009

Why do you think that the pyramids were built?

4 comments:

  1. Brennen , thank you for getting back to the class, I was just wondering if today, people still tried to steal things from the pyramids. Or are they tightly sucured .

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  2. Thanks so much! I find it wonderful to hear about the theories about the sizes of the pyramids and how other people saw it.

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  3. Where are other pyramids located other than outside of Cairo?

    -Catherine

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  4. that is pretty facinating it happened by acident but what about those artifacts made you want to go back to university? It must have been really interesting to give up the career you picked before.

    ~Marsha

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