Between about 2700 and 2200 BCE, the Egyptian rulers began building the giant pyramids that many people have seen on postcards or in the movies. These pyramids were like huge gravestones for kings and queens.
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| View of the Pyramids at Giza, as seen from the south. In the distance is the pyramid of King Khufu, the largest ever built. It is 146.5 m high and 230.4 m on the sides. In the middle is the pyramid of his son Khafre, which was only a little smaller. Nearer still is the pyramid of Khafre's son Menkaure. The pyramids of his three queens are in the foreground. Egypt, Dynasty 4, ca. 2550-2450 BCE. |
| Photo: T. Kendall. |
The Egyptian builders used the most rare and interesting stones they could find to make the pyramids' chapels and statues. These stones often came from far away. The Egyptians brought red granite blocks from as far away as 750 kilometers (466 miles)! They found diorite, a beautiful dark bluish gray stone, even farther away in the Nubian desert. The kings sent large groups of workers to these sites to cut and bring the stone back to Egypt.
The stone was first cut into blocks. Some of the granite blocks used in the pyramids weigh 50 to 80 tons each, which is about as much as a three or four 18-wheeled trucks! Archaeologists believe that hundreds of men, pulling on ropes, put the stones on giant sleds and moved them a few inches at a time. Sometimes they had to move the stones up to 100 km (60 miles) to reach the river.
They loaded them onto ships when the Nile was low and the ships rested on hard ground. When the Nile rose, the ships floated and they could be towed downstream to the pyramids.
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| Interior view of the "Valley Temple" of King Khafre, built far in front of his pyramid at Giza. The huge red granite blocks and pillars were mined in the quarry at Aswan, at the border of Nubia, and were shipped by river to the pyramid construction site. |
| Photo: T. Kendall. |
One of the most famous objects made of Nubian diorite is the statue of Pharaoh Khafre, now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. It was Khafre who built the second of the three great pyramids at Giza.
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Statue of King Khafre, builder of the second pyramid at Giza, carved from Nubian diorite. Egypt, Dynasty 4, ca. 2550-2450 BCE. |
| Courtesy of the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. |