Description
In ancient Egypt a dead king went from a hole in the sand to the Great Pyramid of Giza, Khufu's tomb of an estimated 2.3 million stone blocks. This is how you get from one to the other, one problem at a time. The first problem: jackals dug the body up.
A mud-brick bench over the grave is the mastaba. Djoser's step pyramid at Saqqara rose as six stone steps, each smaller than the last. Fill in the steps and face them with polished white Tura limestone and you have the casing. Sneferu's Bent Pyramid at Dahshur started at about 54 degrees and changed to about 43 halfway up, and you can still see the bend; his Red Pyramid rose at the gentler slope from the start. The blocks of the Great Pyramid average about 2.5 tonnes. A tomb painting shows a man pouring water in front of a sledge, and a 2014 study in Amsterdam found that the right amount of water in the sand halves the pull. Five relieving chambers sit over the King's Chamber to take the weight, and three granite plugs slid down from the Grand Gallery to seal the passage after the funeral.
It did not work. Robbers cut a tunnel around the plugs, and the king has never been found.
#Shorts #AncientEgypt #History