The Pyramids And The Sphinx

The pyramids are what most people connect with the Egypt of the Pharaohs. It was the burial place of many dynasties of pharaohs - 98 pyramids have been found, of which the first two were failed attempts.

All good times are three, and the third one was actually used for burial by the pharaoh who also built the two failed attempts - Zoser. The Zoser pyramid is a six-stepped pyramid, 62.5 meters (205 feet) high, with a base of 125 meters (410 feet) by 109 meters (357 feet). Zoser did not follow later practices and be the only one buried in his pyramid, he had his family buried there with him in separate galleries.

The ones we are particularly familiar with, are the Pyramids of Giza. Giza is a plateau overlooking what today is Cairo. These ones are the pyramids of Cheops, Chefren and Menkaure - Menkaure's is the smallest one of the three. He was a pharaoh who honored not only himself: There are three much smaller pyramids next to his, and the smoothest one of them is believed to be that of his wife, Queen Khamerernebty II.

The pyramids were originally not as we know them today - they were covered by a facing, like marble or pink granite. Just South of Cheops' Pyramid a "solar boat" was found buried. Today it's on display inside that building on the right of Cheops Pyramid that looks like a space station. The boat is perhaps the specific bark that carried Cheops to his final resting place. But - a boat on a rock plateau?

Look at the setting of the Sphinx with Chefrens (left) and Cheops pyramids in the background. See the bunch of people up front? Imagine the sand below them disappearing, so that the ground is really a bit below the level of the Sphinx. That is in fact where the Nile used to run past when the pyramids were built. The many thousand years since all the sand has accumulated here, and the Nile now runs further to the East.

Let's turn to the Sphinx. What is this? A human face 5 meters (16 feet) high, put on the body of a lion. This is very peculiar - the Gods that were worshipped then all had the body of a human and the head of an animal. The face is believed to be that of the Pharaoh Chefren, who also built one of the two major pyramids on the Giza plateau. The minor pyramid may be minor, because of the burial customs of the pharaohs - when they died, the workers had exactly 70 days to finish their work, then the pharaoh was buried. Regardless whether the burial site, in this case his pyramid, was completed. Menkaure appears to have died suddenly.

But back to the Sphinx. It is 73.5 meters (241 feet) long and 21 meters (69 feet) high. It used to have a beard, like that you see on every figure of a pharaoh. It wasn't originally there, but was added by Thutmosis IV. Today it's found in the Cairo Museum.

But what happened to its nose? When the Marmelukes occupied Egypt, only the head of the Sphinx stuck up out of the sand. The Marmelukes though that it was a great target for cannon practice, and they shot the nose off of the Sphinx.