Origin And Significance Of The Great Pyramid

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AmazonGlobal Ship Orders Internationally. Amazon Inspire Digital Educational Resources. Just over a century before this, the first ever pyramid, King Djoser's Step Pyramid, had been built, superseding the previous types of royal tomb. These early tombs were essentially made up of an underground burial complex in one location - with a large rectangular enclosure half a mile or so away, where ceremonies for the dead were carried out. Most of then had lain at Abydos, in the southern part of Egypt, but a few had been built at Saqqara, just south of modern Cairo.

It was at this northern site that Djoser built his Step Pyramid, which in many ways combined the old separate elements in one location - and placed a pyramid of stepped form, towering above them, to form a 'stairway to heaven'. Pyramids became straight-sided under Khufu's father, Seneferu, the new form apparently representing the rays of the sun.

Seneferu's accession marked the beginning of the golden age of the pyramids. The greatest builder of them all, he erected three examples, with bases ranging from to m to ft square. His multiple pyramids seem to have resulted both from a rapid evolution of religious concepts during his long reign, and a structural failure that led to the abandonment of the 'Bent' pyramid at Dahshur. The 'Red' pyramid, at the same site, became his eventual resting place.

However, for sheer unique mass, Khufu trumped them all with the Great Pyramid at Giza, m ft square and m ft high. The pyramid complex began on the edge of the desert, where the Valley Building - now lost under a Cairo suburb - formed a monumental portal. From here, the burial cortege, priests and visitors would pass through ceremonial halls onto a causeway that ascended the desert escarpment to the mortuary temple, built against the east face of the pyramid.

Here, behind a great colonnaded courtyard, lay the sanctuary in which offerings were made to the king's spirit. Either side of the mortuary temple lay a buried boat - perhaps a souvenir of a funeral flotilla, or put there to allow the king to voyage in the heavens - and to the south was a miniature pyramid.

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Such so-called subsidiary pyramids are of uncertain purpose: An offering place was one of the two immutable parts of an Egyptian tomb. The other was the burial place.

In the Great Pyramid - and in most other pyramids - this was reached from a narrow, low, opening in the north face. The interior of the Great Pyramid is complex, almost certainly resulting from a number of changes of plan. At first, the burial chamber was to be placed deep underground, with a descending passage and an initial room being carved out of the living rock. It seems, however, that it was decided that a stone sarcophagus - not previously used for kings - should be installed.

Such an item would not pass down the descending corridor, and since the pyramid had already risen some distance above its foundations, the only solution was to place a new burial chamber - uniquely - high up in the superstructure, where the sarcophagus could be installed before the chamber walls were built. The architects of later pyramids ensured that there was adequate access to underground chambers by using cut-and-cover techniques rather than tunnelling. Two successive intended burial chambers were constructed in the body of the pyramid, the final one lying at the end of an impressive corbel-roofed passage, which seems originally to have been intended simply as a storage-place for the plug-blocks of stone that were made to slide down to block access to the upper chambers after the burial.

Corbel-roofing, where each course of the wall blocks are set a little further in than the previous one, allowed passages to be rather wider than would have been felt to be safe with flat ceilings, and are a distinctive feature of the earliest pyramids and tombs of the Fourth Dynasty, to which Khufu belonged. The burial took place in that final burial chamber, nowadays dubbed the King's Chamber.

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An impressive piece of architecture, this granite room was surmounted by a series of 'relieving' chambers that were intended to reduce the weight of masonry pressing down on the ceiling of the burial chamber itself. At the west end of the chamber lay the sarcophagus, now lidless and mutilated. As for what else may have been in the chamber when Khufu was laid to rest, there will have been a canopic chest for his embalmed internal organs, together with furniture and similar items. Examples of such simple, but exquisite, gold-encased items were found in the nearby tomb of Khufu's mother in These also were found in the original high-level burial chamber, and seem to have been aimed at particular stars, implying a stellar aspect to the king's afterlife - although as we have seen he was later more closely associated with the sun.

Interestingly, the pyramid for Khufu's immediate successor, Djedefre, bore a name that described the king as a 'shining star'. The Great Pyramid was the hub of a huge complex of cemeteries intended for members of the royal court.

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To the east, three of the king's wives had their own small pyramids, with streets of mastaba - bench-shaped tombs - for his sons and daughters. West of Khufu's pyramid was an even larger cemetery for the great officials of state. All these tombs had been laid out to a single design, a unified architectural conception of the king surrounded by his court, in death as in life. It is a concept that has been without direct parallel before or since.