Everything We Know (And Don't) About How The Pyramids Were Built

The pyramids have risen up out of the sands of Egypt as a proud testament to the nature of human achievement. They are both monuments to that which endures and to that which fades away. Their original grandeur has been sandblasted by time, but these man-made mountains, the product of many thousands of hours of sweat and blood, now stand as fixed points in the North African landscape. They are as natural a part of it as the desert plains, the mountains, or the great River Nile. Modern Egypt is very far removed from the ancient nation of the pyramid builders, but still her pyramids form a focus for national pride and identity. They are a legacy which has been handed down to the Egyptians from ancestors who believed in multiple gods and whose government was imposed by ruling dynasties. The great rulers of these dynasties were the Egyptian pharaohs, the creators of the pyramids. Anyone who has visited Egypt will have visited the pyramids, and the sheer size immediately fills you with such awe that you begin to want to find out more, I think. The pyramids and the sphinx are the symbols of Egyptian culture more than any other. If you want to invoke the culture of ancient Egypt, you stick a picture of the pyramids or the sphinx on it and it automatically calls up all those associations. One thing worth bearing in mind is up until the early part of this century, the Great Pyramid at Giza was the tallest building ever created by mankind and still, for sheer mass of stone, it's the most massive building ever created, which is fairly amazing given it's one of the earliest buildings of mankind. When the first pyramid was built, Western Europe was still shrouded in the mists of prehistory. Stonehenge would not be built for another 500 years or more. Civilisation grew in Egypt, as it would elsewhere, on the banks of a river, the Nile, the great life provider in an otherwise hostile environment. The Egyptians considered the river to be a god and that it was Cuno, the god of creation, who caused the river to swell. The south of Egypt was as arid as it is today, but in the north, where the land was low, lay the wide delta of the Nile, which was cool and marshy. After the river had flooded and receded, the land would be left covered by mud washed down from the African interior. The whole of the Nile valley would then become fertile. The Nile, I think we can say, was the lifeline for the ancient Egyptians. It was the fact that the Nile flooded every year that meant that the ancient Egyptians had fertile land and this fertile land enabled them to pretty much every year grow a good enough crop to then feed the people. And if it hadn't been for that annual flooding of the Nile and the new deposit of thick black Nile silt that was laid down each year, then the ancient Egyptians just would not have been able to feed their population. Egyptian farmers could then grow crops such as wheat, barley and fruit, as well as papyrus reeds, from which they made paper. Papyrus was perhaps the single most important crop as far as the creation of a civilization was concerned. The Egyptians had developed a written language by 3000 BC. The chief minister of the land, under the pharaoh, was also the agriculture minister, which reveals what an important role crops played in Egyptian life. Centuries later, when Egypt was an eastern province of the Roman Empire, it was as an area of arable production that it was most valued. It was cultivation of the land that led to other forms of cultivation. The organization of food production allowed time and manpower for the development of writing, arts and building, and in turn, a highly advanced civilization. The cradle of Egyptian civilization was founded on the Nile's regular flooding and ability to sustain life. The Nile provides all kinds of things. First of all, it's the highway of Egypt. Egypt itself really is constrained to the narrow territory on either side of the Nile, so therefore all transport really could go along there. It also was the source of food, fish and so on comes from there. And the inundation, the annual flooding of the Nile, was the whole basis of the agriculture of Egypt. So without the Nile, there would not have been an Egypt. There still wouldn't be an Egypt. But this culture, which relied so much upon the life given by the Nile, was also one which was very much preoccupied with death. The first pyramid arose in the time of Zosa, who reigned as pharaoh from 2667 to 2648 BC. During this time, the Nile had failed to flood for seven years, resulting in a lengthy and severe famine. Perhaps it was this which caused Zosa to contemplate his own death. He employed the architect Imhotep to build him a mausoleum, which would be incomparable to anything ever made by man. So important did Zosa deem the task that he honored Imhotep with the title of Sculptor-Builder and Chief Minister of the Land. Imhotep is a fascinating figure. His memory survived down through the generations, and by the Greco-Roman period, he became a god. But his fame goes right back to early times, as the fact there was a statue base which was found in the enclosure of the Step Pyramid. It was a statue base of the king himself, and normally such a statue base would perhaps have the king's name and members of his family. But this has the name of Imhotep on it as well. Prior to this, such large structures had been made with mud bricks. But for this project, Imhotep used stone, and stone was the material which would remain in favour from then on in. To begin with, a stone base was built ten and a half metres high. This was surmounted by three squares of diminishing size, positioned symmetrically and forming steps on the four sides. The base was then enlarged, allowing for two additional steps. These early pyramids are known as Step Pyramids, and are clearly distinguished from the smooth later pyramids by their giant step sides. Through the dynasties which followed, the Egyptians built nearly a hundred pyramids. In fact, it would be true to say that it became Egypt's biggest industry. During the period that we refer to as the Pyramid Building Era, a considerable number of the ancient Egyptian people would have been put to working the pyramids. So this, of course, means that these people are then given employment, and this will then generate a whole host of other associated industries, such as feeding those people, such as supplying the tools, such as supplying work for people in the area around Aswan where they were quarrying the granite, of course the supervisors, the administrative officials. Then, of course, once the pyramid is completed, a funerary cult developed around the pyramid site with associated temples, and we have a whole host of Wab priests, purified priests, lectoral priests, the priests who spoke the spells of the daily rituals of the king, the deceased king's spirit, and so there was a whole associated industry that evolved around the pyramid building. Although pyramid building was continued for centuries, it is the pyramids that were built during the time of the Old Kingdom, on the site at Giza, just a short distance from the royal palace at Memphis, which have caught the eternal imagination. It is no wonder that these giants have earned a place among the seven wonders of the world. Cheops, who reigned from 2589 to 2566 BC, commissioned a pyramid of such size and splendor that it took 30 years to complete. I think that at the time they were complete, the pyramids would have been regarded with great awe by people who saw them. First of all, we've got to remember what else they can see in the built environment at that time. It's not very impressive. And these great polished structures coming off the horizon would have seemed quite awesome. The Greek historian Herodotus, writing 2,000 years after the event, claimed that the pyramids used the labour of around 100,000 workmen at any one time. In all likelihood, only about 8,000 would work in a shift. Any more men, especially 92,000 more, would have got in each other's way. Herodotus' further claim that these men were slaves is equally untrue. There are probably two basic groups of people involved in this. First of all, they were the skilled workmen who were working on the pyramids all the time. They were the skilled masons, artists, overseers, all those sorts of people. But then, probably working on a seasonal basis, were basically farmers, other labourers, who were brought in from the point of view of dragging stone up to the site. So probably when they were otherwise unengaged, when they were working on their fields, the permanent staff would actually be doing the actual job of bringing everything together and building the pyramid. Whereas during the period of the inundation, when the fields were underwater, farmers and their families would be brought in to drag the stone close up to the building site. The building of a structure meant to protect the dead pharaoh was an honour. The pyramids were intended as resting places for the pharaohs, somewhere they were protected and preserved for the afterlife. A measure of the honour of the task was that the workers were fed from the royal stores. Mainly it would appear on onions, often at times when food elsewhere was in very short supply. They were provided with free accommodation as well as food. But in return for this, the work they undertook must have been arduous at best and dangerous at worst. These people are doing work that is so unbelievably strenuous, that is in a climate which at the best of times is fairly warm. And they were living in mud brick housing, very close together, smelly. It would have been pretty grim, I would have thought. And yet these people are necessary. They need to be kept alive, of course. So these people were being given homes, they were being well fed, but it must have been fairly dire. Pyramid building was really a turning point in the history of man, because it was our first large-scale application of technology. It required organisation of manpower and correct application of tools and materials. The first ten years were taken up with preparation. First the builders cleared the site of sand, then levelled the stone. To do this they had to rely on tools made of hard stone or of copper, which had to be constantly sharpened or replaced, creating work for coppersmiths. When this task was completed they dug a tunnel, running steeply down into the rock, and a burial chamber was carved out deep underground. This was the first of three such chambers, which would eventually lie beneath or within the finished structure. Nearly all of the pyramids contained a subterranean structure, as well as an internal system, although no two of these were the same. Much of the next ten years were taken up with quarrying and shaping measured blocks of limestone from a site in the Moktan Hills. These blocks formed the great foundation, which covered 13 acres. The transportation of the finished building blocks from the quarry to the site at Giza depended, as so much of Egyptian life did, on the flood pattern of the Nile. When the water level was at its height, the blocks were floated downstream on barges. They were then unloaded onto a specially constructed landing wall. A massive ramp was also built, via which the great blocks could be hauled to their destination as the pyramid took shape. With a number of different categories of stone built going into the pyramids, first of all there's the simple core blocks, and those were quarried very close to the pyramids, within a few hundred yards if possible. Next there was the much finer quality limestone, which was used for sheathing the outside of the pyramid, and that was quarried just across the river at a place called Tura, and that was floated over on barges during the flood seasons. There was also some hard specialist stone, like granite, basalt and so on. These came from other parts of Egypt, and here the Nile became absolutely fundamental, because the quarries for granite were down at Aswan, a couple of hundred miles south of the pyramid sites, so the river was the only way these great blocks of this very hard, very prized stone granite were brought up to the pyramid plateau. Cheops Pyramid, built in the late 4th dynasty, contains 2,003,000 blocks of stone, some weighing as much as 60 tonnes. Some of the largest stones were used to form the roofs of the burial chambers. The enormous stone tomb, known as a sarcophagus, in which the body of the pharaoh was to be laid, was first lowered into the burial chamber. The sarcophagus would have been far too large to carry through the complex small tunnels. This was done by filling the chamber up with sand, hauling the sarcophagus on top, then removing the sand from the chamber, which in turn gradually lowered the tomb. The sarcophagus was finally placed into a hole, which was specially prepared for it in the floor of the burial chamber. When this was done, more sand was then piled in, this time forming a mound, on top of which the giant slabs of stone could be supported as they were set in position over the chamber. The stones were arranged to lean into one another, forming a roof shape, so that when the sand was removed, each took the weight of the opposing stone. The weight of the stones, which would be built on top of this roof, would further push the stones together, but the inverted V arrangement would ensure that the burden was transferred to the surrounding stones, of which there would be an abundance. The visible structure above the ground, the pyramid we can see, is formed from a mastaba. The first and second dynasty kings were being buried in what we refer to as mastaba tombs, and this is from the Arabic word for bench, because what we have is a superstructure, which is a mound, basically. So the earlier kings of the early dynastic period were being buried in subterranean tombs with mound-style superstructures. And what we find is that the later tombs at Saqqara are in fact stepped, mud-brick stepped superstructures. So we don't have a leap out of the blue when, in the third dynasty, Zoser chose to create a stepped superstructure to his burial. What he did decide to do was to make it quite enormous and to create it out of stone. The giant superstructure of the pyramid had the same functioning as the mastaba, the visible outer monument, rather like the front of the pharaoh's house. The Greek historian Herodotus, whose account of the pyramid is remarkable for its combination of hard research and shrewd speculation, described its construction. The pyramid was constructed in tiers or steps, something like battlements, and when the base was completed, the remaining blocks were lifted up by a kind of crane, made of short timbers, onto the first tier. On this first tier there was another lifting crane, which raised the blocks higher still. It must be remembered that Herodotus was writing many centuries after the events he describes, and it's possible he was inferring the use of the cranes from seeing similar structures at the time, perhaps serving to raise water from the Nile for purposes of irrigation. But it's also possible that this is indeed how they lifted the great blocks of stone. These machines could have been built of timber from the great cedars of Lebanon, from which the Egyptians also built their boats. Herodotus also describes how they completed the pyramid, and marvels at the costliness of it all. The finishing off of the pyramid started at the top and worked downwards, ending with the parts nearest the ground. An inscription on the pyramid, in Egyptian characters, records the amount spent on horseradish, onion and heads of garlic, and if I remember what the interpreter who read me the inscription said, the sum involved was 1,600 talents of silver. If this is true, how much must have been spent on the iron used, on other foodstuffs and on the clothes of the labourers? I think we need to be quite careful about using Herodotus' account of the building of the pyramids. First of all, we need to consider that Herodotus is writing in the 5th century BC, so thousands of years after the pyramids were actually built. Secondly, I think we need to think of Herodotus' broader agenda, which is really to talk about the conflict between the culture of Greece and the culture of the East, in which Egypt obviously plays an important part. So he isn't really trying to write an authoritative and reliable history. He has broader agendas, I think. So I think we do have to take Herodotus with a pinch of salt. We also have to remember that very likely he was being fed information by Egyptian priests who couldn't necessarily converse in Greek, and so Herodotus was perhaps communicating with them through an interpreter. Perhaps they considered that they wouldn't for one moment tell Herodotus the mysteries of their ancient traditions, and so perhaps they chose to lead him up the garden path. Zoser's Step Pyramid looks as if six mastabas, or layers of stone, each one smaller than the last, have simply been put on top of one another. It was in 1837 that the discovery was made that the Step Pyramid consists of an accumulation of vertical steep buttress walls, which slope inwards at an angle of 75 degrees. The buttress walls decrease in height in stages towards the outside of the pyramid, giving the impression that it's made up of horizontally formed layers. Imhotep had discovered a way to make tall structures safe, and this stable design formed the basis for all pyramids. But for all the work, and all the profound significance that was afforded it on its inception, this pyramid, like those which succeeded it, was to be overtaken by time, both universal and personal. Its religious purpose as a mausoleum was forgotten, and it was plundered by those without the ability or the inclination to quarry stone for themselves. And sand, blown relentlessly into its sides by the desert winds, have eroded it over the centuries. The result is that the pyramid has been reduced by some 30 feet from its original height of 481 feet. The pyramids of Zoser and his successor Skemket are located at Saqqara, close to the capital of Memphis. These are the only large pyramids close to the capital, the rest of them having been erected well away from the city. Whilst the foundations of the pyramid nation were laid in the 3rd dynasty by Zoser and his architect Imhotep, it was the 4th dynasty, founded by the pharaoh Snofru, which is renowned for the great stone pyramids. Snofru is probably the greatest of all the pyramid builders. He actually built four pyramids during his lifetime, one of which was abandoned due to structural failure, another one was actually used for his burial, and one was some kind of cenotaph. The other one is most interesting because it started off life as a step pyramid, but was converted into a true pointy pyramid while it was under construction. And that's the big difference between the 3rd dynasty and the 4th dynasty. In the 3rd dynasty you have these stepped monuments, the stepped pyramids, in the 4th it's the true pyramids, which remain the standard form of pyramid right through to the end of pyramid building. Following on from him, of course, his son, Cheops, built the largest of all the pyramids. Cheops' pyramid stands today, 20 miles north of Memphis, at Giza. Not only is this the largest pyramid, it is still the largest stone building in the world. No cathedral, not even St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, comes close to competing with it. Its structure is so sound that the first archaeologists to explore it were able to blast out entrances with gunpowder, secure in the knowledge that it would not collapse. Cheops' pyramid covers an area of 230 meters square, rises to a height of almost 150 meters, and is made up of about 6.5 million tons of limestone. As such, it remains one of the seven wonders of the world. Originally, the pyramid would have been clad with white tiara limestone, giving it a smooth appearance, but unfortunately it's been completely stripped of its casing. The pyramid contains a polar entrance in the north face, a feature which is common to all the pyramids from the fourth dynasty onwards. By the fourth dynasty, the dead pharaoh was regarded as a companion to the sun god, and the circumpolar stars were linked to the king's burial chamber by the direction of the entrance passage. It would be wonderful to know what the people actually thought when they looked at the pyramid, and if only we had their musings recorded, their jottings. What we have to assume is that a pyramid to the ancient Egyptians was symbolic of kingship, was symbolic of the power of the king, and, very importantly, was an icon of the solar element to the religion. Because for the ancient Egyptians, the flooding of the Nile, coupled with the creative power of the sun, meant that they could live. When Cheob's son, Khefren, became pharaoh in around 2,566 BC, he commissioned a pyramid of his own. Though containing a mere 60,000 cubic feet of stone, and weighing only about 5,310,000 tons, it was not one to rival his father's in scale. The new pyramid had a far less complex internal structure too, containing just one burial chamber. However, Khefren was a pharaoh who awarded himself unlimited power, and was perhaps the first to give himself the title, The Great God. It would appear that the smaller size of the pyramid was related to its being built uphill from the first one, with the aim that its summit should equal it in altitude. Khefren built the second largest of all the pyramids, the so-called Second Pyramid of Giza, which, although smaller in volume and actual height to his father's, it actually looks higher when you're actually on site at Giza, because it's on higher ground. Situated 500 feet southwest of Cheob's pyramid, Khefren's is positioned so that the diagonals of the two lie along the same straight line. The white tira limestone casing has remained intact on the upper part of the pyramid, revealing how closely this casing fitted together, and how smooth the entire pyramid must have been. Though in terms of size this pyramid may have been less impressive than its predecessor at 140 meters, it was given a protector which is the only ancient monument in Egypt to rival the pyramids. This monument immediately strikes the onlooker with awe, and in its sheer recognizability. The Great Sphinx. There are a lot of theories about the purpose of the Sphinx. My own is that it's some kind of boundary marker for the Giza plateau. It's something which sets it apart as a sort of sacred area. But it's important to remember that the Egyptians themselves forget what it's for. So after the Old Kingdom in the 18th Dynasty, 1400 years after it was built, it's thought to be a representation of the god Harmachis, Horus of the Horizon. And later on Herodotus is told something completely different as well. So it's important to remember that it is something which slips out of popular memory. The Sphinx, like much of Egyptian antiquity, does remain a mystery to us. And we can only speculate as to why Khefren chose to create, out of this natural limestone desert escarpment, an incredible monument. A lion-formed body with the human head, with the nemes headdress. And it's often suggested that this is a guardian figure, as it's alongside his valley temple. In Arabic, this giant sculpture is known as Abu al-Hawl, the Father of Terror. Representing a creature with the body of a lion, but the face of a human, it seems to combine the most distinctive attributes of both. The impassive face suggests an enigmatic intelligence. The body exudes power and natural authority. Some believe the face to be that of Khefren himself, set to watch over his last resting place before his journey to the next world. As to the theory that it's a portrait of Khefren, it's difficult. But it does seem to be that a pharaoh is being shown, because he is wearing the so-called nemes headcloth, which is generally an indicator of pharaonic status. So whoever is being represented here, he is in some way, anyway, a pharaoh. Khefren's son, Miserinus, also erected a pyramid when he ascended to power. Though smaller again, covering only about half the area occupied by that of Cheops, this pyramid is considered by many to be the finest of those at Giza. Miserinus' pyramid is interesting because it's half of its casing stone is actually granite rather than limestone. And as far as one can look at the detail of the building, it's more finely built. There are less rough edges, if you like. But it also really marks the end of the great period of pyramid building. Subsequent pyramids are far less well built, and nowadays look little more than piles of rubble in quite a few cases. So on size, Miserinus' pyramid is much smaller than the previous two. But yes, the actual effort expended on various elements of it is probably equal to that. Although the pharaohs continued to build pyramids, all the great pyramids were built in a space of just 100 years, during the 4th dynasty. There was a distinct downwards turn in standards and size in the following 5th dynasty. But however impressive the outsides of the pyramids were, it was what they were to contain which most concerned those who first commissioned them. For these tombs of such massive volume and weight were made to contain just a single body, that of the pharaoh. Ancient Egyptians worshipped many gods. There were nine chief gods, among them Nut, the goddess of the sky, Geb, the god of the earth, Tefnut, the goddess of water, and Ra, the sun god. But even he was rivaled in prominence by Osiris, the god of the dead. He was supposed to have been murdered by the evil god Seth, his brother. Osiris having been killed by his wicked brother Seth, and the killing involved being cut up into a number of pieces, Osiris' sister, who was also his consort or wife, Isis, very much associated with magic and healing in Egyptian religion, she then makes this grand pilgrimage to gather together the parts of Osiris' body and then create a whole by embalming and mummifying the body. The kingdom of Osiris, it was taught, lay over the horizon to the west and under the earth. It was in this place that the ordinary Egyptian citizen would hope his spirit would reside after death. The pharaoh, however, was believed to be divine. In fact, he was believed to be Horus, the god who had brought Osiris back to life and who had killed the evil Seth. For him, eternity lay, according to some, in ruling over the kingdom of Osiris, and, according to others, in the heavens, with Ra, the sun god. But, like Osiris, it also lay in mummification. Mummification was intended to preserve the body forever. The reasoning behind this seems to be connected with a view that for the spirit to survive intact in the afterworld, the body had to remain intact on earth as well, as a conduit, if you like. The origins of the idea that you needed to do this to a body seem to go back to what happened to bodies in prehistoric times when they were interred in the hot sand of Egypt. The hot sand naturally desiccates, dries out the bodies, and one suspects that when Egyptians noticed that after they started building proper tombs and putting the bodies in chambers rather than in the sand, they started to decay, there may have been some thought, hang on, if nature is drying out these bodies and preserving them, does that mean there is something important about that drying out for the afterlife? All wealthy Egyptians were mummified, and if they were not wealthy, then they were buried naked on their sides, facing the west, and sand would dry the body, preserving it as effectively. The body of the pharaoh was laid out on a boat, beneath a canopy, with a lamp burning in its bow. Two professional mourners, representing Isis and Nephthys, would stand in attendance. Then the body would be taken down the Nile to the final resting place at Giza, which he himself had commissioned. The great river, whose nourishing floods had sustained his life and provided the means by which the stones of his mausoleum had been transported from the quarries, now served him one more time. The short journey up the Nile represented the journey that the pharaoh would shortly make to heaven. Eventually the boat in which this journey was taken would be dismantled and buried by the mortuary temple at the base of the pyramid. Facing west, it would wait to take the pharaoh on his final voyage to the kingdom of Osiris. The next 70 days would be taken up with mummification by priests of the Guild of Embalmers. The remains were then washed and infused with natron, and then each part was separately bandaged. The ancient Egyptians used this naturally occurring salt, natron, to dry out the body artificially and then wrapped it in bandaging and used other various ingredients to create a preserved body. The entrails, the heart, liver, stomach and intestines were kept in four canopic jars, on which were carved the heads of the gods thought to protect these organs. After the mummy had been lain in a wooden coffin, the priests performed a religious ceremony called the Saach. They believed that this enabled the pharaoh's Ka, his spirit, to re-enter the mummified body. Like the Vikings many centuries later, the Egyptians believed in supplying the dead for their journey to the new world. The burial chambers in the pyramids were provided with jewellery, incense and clothes. Food, or even stone representations of food, were often left. The pharaoh would need sustenance for his journey. In fact, thereafter, priests would regularly leave offerings of food at the pyramid to provide for the pharaoh's Ka. The Egyptians have quite a complex set of beliefs about the nature of the body and the spirit. First of all, the personality is split into multiple parts, so it's very different from this Western idea of the body being the corporeal element and the spirit being just one thing. So, for instance, not only do you have the Ba and the Ka, which are the ones that people are most familiar with, the Egyptians also have other spiritual components, such as the Ach, which is the transfigured part of the personality when it attains union with Osiris, the chute, the shadow and the name. There are many, many other parts of it. The priest's next ceremony was that of opening the mouth. These involved statues of the pharaoh, sculpted by the royal sculptors on lines laid down in the official book of the artist. Their creation, as well as their final use, was a matter of religion. When the statue was completed, the name of the pharaoh was inscribed on its base, and at this point it was believed to become the pharaoh himself. The ceremony for which they were produced again followed the myth of Osiris. As each statue is touched on the mouth by a priest, taking on the role which they believed to have been played by Horus, so the pharaoh's Ka enters it, giving his spirit multiple resting places. It was only on completion of this ceremony that the pharaoh's coffin was carried through a tunnel into the depths of the pyramid where the burial chamber had been prepared. Lowered into the sarcophagus, covered by the great stone lid which was then sealed, the mummified remains were left to take their place in eternity. Some believed that the pharaoh ascended to heaven and to Ram, but others maintained that as the pharaoh had been Horus on earth, in heaven he became Osiris. A new Horus, a new pharaoh, would rule over the mortals on earth, while the old pharaoh, Osiris, would guard them from his fortified tomb. We know that from as early as the ancient Egyptians were constructing what we'd call tombs, they were using security measures to try and keep the tomb robbers out. But, ultimately, the fortification proved inadequate. Not a single one of the pyramids remained completely unplundered, and the evidence seems to suggest that they were plundered pretty soon after the burials were actually deposited in there. Plundering the pyramids has gone on into recorded history, so, for instance, in medieval times the caliphs who were ruling Egypt blew up parts of the pyramids because they believed they were filled with gold. And then in the 19th century, when European collectors start getting very interested in Egyptian monuments, that's when large-scale looting goes on. The Egyptians continued to build pyramids to house their pharaoh's sacred remains, as well as complex necropoli, such as those at Memphis, Darshur, Thebes, and, most famously, in the Valley of the Kings. But none of these would rival the pyramids at Giza for scale or endurance. All of these structures were built with one purpose in mind, to cheat the passage of time and defeat death, as Osiris had. Yet, if the almighty pharaohs failed to cheat death, they did, in their commissioning of the pyramids, at least leave a legacy. The pyramids, probably more so than any other monument of the past, seem to have gripped the human imagination. They were a tourist attraction even in ancient Egyptian times. And, of course, the pharaohs themselves would have absolutely welcomed this, because the whole idea in Egyptian belief was, if your name survived on the lips of the living, you survive for eternity. People, I think, are still fascinated by the pyramids, because they are so enormous, and because they are so old. And people are still studying these structures, because we actually know so little about them. There is still so much to learn about the pyramids, and that, I think, is why people continue to be mystified by them, or inspired by them, and very importantly, are still studying and researching those pyramids. But the pyramids, it must be remembered, were emphatically not the work of just one man. There were astronomers, architects, engineers, not to mention the legions of labourers, who were needed to complete each massive project. And it is perhaps these people, as much as their ruler, who live on to some extent in the weathered, ravaged remains of the great pyramids. It is perhaps their car which inhabits the stone.