Friday, September 12, 2008

Pyramids














Some Awesome Ideas About the Pyramids
1. The Great Pyramid is a stone computer – if you take the lengths of the sides, and their heights and angles, you can calculate many different things. The pyramid will tell you how to work out the distance round the outside of a circle if you know the distance across it.
2. The Egyptians could use the Great Pyramid to work out the distance the Earth travels round the sun, and the speed of light.
3. The pyramid is a mathematical horoscope – you can calculate the future from it. The Institute of Pyramidology in London says the pyramid has already predicted the Crucifixion of Jesus and the First World War. It has also predicted that the world will end in the year 2979 A.D.
4. The Great Pyramid is a sign to the world how much knowledge the Egyptian priests had – and how much power. They persuaded Cheops to have it built and made him pay all the bills. Then when he died they didn't want his body inside their wonderful creation.
5. The Great Pyramid is an observatory for watching and recording the movement of the stars.


6. The Great Pyramid is a giant calendar. The Egyptians could use it to measure the length of a year to three decimal places.
7. The Great Pyramid is a sundial. The shadow fell on pavements and the pavements were marked with the day of the year and the hour of the day.
8. The Great Pyramid is a landmark. All ancient maps could use it as the starting point for drawing and measuring their charts – rather like the Greenwich Meridian is today.
9. The Great Pyramid is a perfect store for the weights and measures of the ancient world. The government needed a master set of weights to check if traders were giving proper value when they sold goods. But weights like the deben were made of copper and lost weight after a few years' wear and tear – sometimes they were even "fixed" by crooked shopkeepers.
10. The center of the pyramid is the center of tremendous forces of nature. Strange and wonderful things can happen there . . . many tourists have gone into shock or fainted when they reached the center.
Awesome Things You Ought to Know About Pyramids
A pyramid was built as the huge stone tomb of a Pharaoh.
The burial chamber in the center was filled with awesome riches for the Pharaoh to take on into the afterlife.
The riches were a temptation to robbers. The pyramid builders tried to fool the thieves by making false doors, staircases and corridors.
The base of the Great Pyramid of Cheops is equal to the area of seven or eight soccer fields (754 X 754 feet).
The burial chamber inside the Great Pyramid is as large as a small modern house.
The pyramids are close to the Nile because some of the huge stones had to be carried from the quarries by boat.
The pyramids are all on the West bank of the Nile – the side on which the sun sets. This is for religious reasons.
The Pharaohs were buried with religious writings to help them in the afterlife. The earliest ones were written on the walls of the burial chambers. Later, they were written on the coffins. The last were written on papyrus and rolled up and placed in the dead man's coffin. The writings described different ways to get to the afterworld and are known as the Books of the Dead (seen below).
Pyramids contained everything the King would need in the afterlife... ...including a toilet.
There are over 90 pyramids in Egypt.
The pyramids of Egypt are the oldest stone buildings in the world.
It is forbidden to climb the pyramids today. There have been too many accidents, so now you have to have special permission.

The sphynx is a mythical creature that supposedly was built by the Pharaoh Khafre-Chephren (his pyramid is shown directly above) about 2500 B.C. (during the Old Kingdom).

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