The Pyramids at Giza
Rising out of the desert, Cairo’s three Pyramids lie on the Giza Plateau about 10 miles from central Cairo, the city’s sprawling suburbs having spread almost to their feet. Awesome achievement of mathematicians, skilled stonecutters and masons, when they were built the capital of Ancient Egypt was at Memphis, about 15 miles away, and Cairo wasn’t even a gleam in anyone’s eye.
The statistics are mind-boggling. About two and a half million precisely cut limestone blocks, weighing around six million tonnes, were used to build the Great Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu, the biggest pyramid in Egypt and the oldest at Giza, which stood over 450ft high when it was completed around 2500BC. It is the last surviving Wonder of the Ancient World.
Over the years, stripping of the fine polished limestone and granite exterior covering has removed their light-catching splendour, leaving the blocks of stone open to face the ravages of the elements and millions of tourists. One of the Pyramids may be opened for visitors to enter narrow inside passages, an experience strictly for the non-claustrophobic.
Erected by three rulers of the 4th Dynasty – Khufu (Cheops), Khafre (Chephren) and Menkaure (Mycerinus) – each Pyramid was surrounded by a complex of buildings. These included two temples linked by a causeway, smaller pyramids that were probably the burial places of the principal queens, oblong tombs where the bodies of nobles would have been laid, and pits for the solar barques believed to be required for journeying in the afterlife. A renovated cedar boat can be seen in the Solar Barque Museum alongside the Great Pyramid.
At night the mysterious Sphinx, on guard before the Pyramids, takes on the role of narrator for the Sound and Light show. Sound and Light Show tickets from £6.
Ground is being cleared on a 100-acre site next to the Pyramids for the erection of the Grand Egyptian Museum, planned to be ‘the biggest museum in the world’.
Off Saqqara Road, Giza
Big white air-conditioned buses run every 20 minutes from Heliopolis and the bus station by the Egyptian Museum to the Pyramids at Giza. The fare is about 20p.
Cost per person (no concessions): £5 - £10 pp
Added 2008/07/03 @ 14:09:46
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