Who Built The Great Pyramid Giza Essays - Giza Plateau,

Who Built the Great Pyramid Giza Who Built the Great Pyramid Giza It's the oldest and the only surviving of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is the Great Pyramid of Giza. It doesn't need any speculations in reference to the appearance, size, or shape. It is located in the city of Giza, a necropolis of ancient Memphis, and today it is part of Cairo, Egypt. The Great Pyramid of Giza is believed to have been built over a 20 year period. First, the site was prepared, then large blocks of stone were transported and placed. An outer casing was used to smooth the surface. This outer casing disappeared over the years. It is still not known how the blocks were placed, but there are many theories. One theory is that the construction of a straight or spiral ramp that was raised as construction proceeded. The ramp, coated with mud and water, eased the displacement of blocks. The blocks were pushed or pulled into place. Another theory says that blocks may have been placed using long levers with a short angled foot. All through history, the pyramids of Giza have motivated the human imagination. Pyramids were referred to as "The Granaries of Joseph" and "The Mountains of Pharaoh." Today, the Great Pyramid is enclosed, along with other pyramids and the Sphinx, in this region of the Giza Plateau. When the Great Pyramid was built it was 481 ft (145.75 m) high, over the years it has lost about 30 ft (10 m) off the top. It was the tallest structure on Earth for over 43 centuries, it was surpassed in the 19th Century A.D. It was covered with a casing of stones to smooth the surface. Some of the casing can still be seen near the top of Khefre's pyramid. The sloping angle of the sides is 54 degrees, 54 minutes, 0 seconds. Each side is carefully oriented with one of the cardinal points on the compass (N, E, S, W). The horizontal cross section is square at any level, each side is 751 ft (229 m) in length. The maximum error between side lengths is amazingly less than 0.1%. This structure consists of about 2 million blocks of stone, each one of the stones weighs more than two tons. It's been said that there are enough blocks in the three pyramids to build a 10 ft (3 m) high, 1 ft (0.3 m) thick wall around France. The area capped by the Great Pyramid could hold St. Peter's in Rome, the cathedrals of Florence, Milan, Westminster and St. Paul's in London combined. The entrance to the pyramid is on the north face. There are a lot of corridors, galleries, and escape shafts that either lead to the King's burial chamber, or were meant to serve other purposes. At the heart of the pyramid is where the King's chamber is located. Every single one of the interior stones fit so well, a card won't even fit between them. The sarcophagus is also oriented to the compass directions, and is only 1 cm smaller in dimensions than the chamber entrance. It may have been introduced as the structure progressed. There are new theories concerning the origin and purpose of the Pyramids of Giza. The many different theories have to do with astronomic observatories, places of cult worship, geometric structures constructed by a long gone civilization, and extraterrestrial related theories. There is little evidence that supports the extraterrestrial theories. According to most people the pyramids were built by great armies of slaves, by ancient pharaohs of Egypt to preserve their bodies. They were meant to be monuments to the pharaoh's greatness, filled with treasures for the afterlife. In order to construct such a massive structure, the pharaohs copied the Great Pyramid. The Great Pyramid doesn't contain a pharaohs body, treasure chamber, and no treasures itself. So who built this wonderful structure? The Great Pyramid is thirty times larger than the Empire State Building, the features are so large they can be seen from the moon. The base covers 13.6 acres, which is equal to seven midtown Manhattan city blocks. Each side of the pyramid is greater than five acres in area. A highway lane that is eight feet wide and four inches thick could be built from San Francisco to New York and put inside the Great Pyramid. Only a solid stone mountain could hold the Pyramid's massive weight, and there just happens to be a flat solid granite mountain just beneath the surface of the ground directly under the pyramid. The pyramid is located at the exact center of the Earth's land mass. That means