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Great Pyramid of Giza

The Great Pyramid was the tallest structure in the World - about 480 feet (146 meters) - until 1885, when the Washington Monument was built. The pyramid consists of some 2,500,000 blocks with an average weight of 2.5 tons. If the construction team worked 16 hours per day, seven days a week for 20 years, they would have to place one block every 2.8 minutes. That includes quarrying, cutting, moving and placing the blocks. On the details of construction in the great pyramid it may be stated that the accuracy of work is such that the four sides of the base have only a mean error of six-tenths of an inch in length and 12 seconds in angle from a perfect square.

Constructed around 2606-2573 BC [or 2579-2566 BC], placed on the Giza plateau, is arguably the most studied structure in the history of humannty. According to Herodotus the Great Pyramid was built by Cheops. It took 100,000 men working for ten years to make a causeway 3000 feet long, to facilitate the transportation of the stone from the Turah quarries; and the same number of men for twenty years more to complete the pyramid itself. Herodotus further describes the method of building by steps, and raising the stones from layer to layer by machines, and finally of facing the external portion from the top down. Diodorus calls the builder of this pyramid Chembes or Chabryes, and by Manetho and Eratosthenes he is called Suphis. The latter name corresponds to Shufu, deciphered from the hieroglyphics upon some stones discovered by Colonel Vyse in his important investigations of this pyramid in 1835.

The pyramid at present covers an area of more than 12 acres; according to Colonel Vyse its height was 450 feet 9 inches, the base is 746 feet square, and the angle at which the sides slope is 51° 50'. Wilkinson gives the present height as 460 feet, its height when entire 480 feet 9 inches.

It is of stone, — granite, marble, and limestone. The granite and marble are for the lining of passages and chambers. The main structure is of nummulitic limestone. The mortar, or cement, varies according to the work. Where used for passages or casing, it was of pure lime. But Perring, to whom we are so indebted for his work in 1837, found the ordinary mortar to be an odd mixture of pounded bricks, gravel, crushed granite chippings, and Nile mud. Sometimes it proved nothing but a simple grout, or liquid mortar, of sand and gravel only.

The outer casing of small stones has been removed, and the appearance the sides now present is that of a series of ascending steps. By these steps, which number 203, the ascent is made comparatively easy, though the lower ones are 4 feet 10 inches high. The content of solid masonry has been estimated at 82,111,000 cubic feet.

The great pyramid of Gizeh (Khufu's) is very different in its internal arrangements from any other known. The greater number of passages and chambers, the high finish of parts of the work, and the accuracy of construction all distinguish it. The chamber which is most normal in its situation is the subterranean chamber; but this is quite unfinished, hardly moro than begun. The upper chambers, called the "king's" and "queen's," vere completely hidden, the ascending passage to them having been closed by plugging blocks, which concealed the point where it branched upwards out of the roof of the long descending passage. Another passage, which in its turn branches from the ascending passage to the queen's chamber, was also completely blocked up. The object of having two highly-finished chambers in the mass may have been to receive the king and his co-regent (of whom there is some historical evidence), and there is very credible testimony to a sarcophagus having existed in the queen's chamber, as well as in the king's chamber.

The only entrance is on the north face, 49 feet above the base, though the masonry about it has been so much broken away that the debris reaches nearly up to it. A passage 3 feet 11 inches high and 3 feet 5J inches wide conducts from the entrance down a slope at an angle of 26" 41', a distance of 320 feet 10 inches, to the original sepulchral chamber, commonly known as the subterraneous apartment; it is carried, reduced in dimensions, beyond this a distance of 52 feet 9 inches into the rock, though for what purpose remains a matter of conjecture. The sepulchral chamber is 46 feet long by 27 feet wide.

From the entrance passage another branches off and leads to several other passages and chambers. One of the latter, known as the queen's chamber, is situated about the centre of the pyramid, 67 feet above the base; it has a groined roof, and measures 17 feet broad by 18 feet 9 inches long, and 20 feet 3 inches high. The other, called the king's chamber, is reached by an offshoot from the queen's passage, 150 feet long. Its dimensions are 34 feet 3 inches long by 17 feet 1 inch wide, and 19 feet 1 inch high. The chamber is lined with red granite highly polished, single stones reaching from the floor to the ceiling, and the ceiling itself is formed of nine large slabs of polished granite extending from wall to wall. The only contents of the apartment is a sarcophagus of red granite, which, judging by its dimensions, must have been introduced when the building was proceeding. It is supposed to have contained a wooden coffin with the mummy of the king, and that these long since disappeared when the pyramids were first opened and plundered.

Whether absolutely cased or not, the pyramid was practically shut up, according to popular account, until about the year 830, when the Caliph Mamoun found an opening. One of the well-known versions is about Al-Mamoun, Caliph of Babylon, gaining access to the interior. When he got to the king's chamber, we are informed that he saw there a hollow stone (the Sarcophagus), in which lay the statue of a man. But the statue inclosed a body, whose breastplate of gold was brilliantly set with jewels. A sword of inestimable value lay upon the corpse. At the head shone, with the light of day, a carbuncle as large as an egg.

Although the entrance was supposed to have been made by a Mahometan Caliph, this singular passage occurs in Strabo: "On high, as it were, in the midst between the sides, there is a stone which may be removed, which being taken out there is a shelving entrance leading to the tomb." He is careful in another place to add, "This entrance was kept secret."

The "pyramidologist" Piazzi Smyth, a gifted mathematician andAstronomer Royal of Scotland, made detailed measurements at the pyramid in 1865. He was led to the conclusion that the Egyptians employed a cubit of 25 “pyramid inches” a thousanth longer than the standard British inch. Since the British unit of measurement is so close to the supposed “pyramid inch,” the theory was easily developed to suggest that the British people representGod’s chosen race, the descendants of the lost tribes of Israel. In the wake of the French Revolution and the “godless” metric system of measurement, the seeds of this theory found fertile ground in a nervous England. The idea that the pyramid contains a chronological “prophecy in stone” is still perpetuated, primarily by groups who claim that English-speaking people are the remnants of the “Lost Tribes of Israel” and, therefore, God’s true chosen people.