Great Pyramid - the Only Remaining Ancient Wonder

The Great Pyramids at Giza, which date from the Old Kingdom (2700-2300 B. C. ), are the oldest and most famous of the Seven Wonders of the World.

The Pyramids of Egypt are three pyramids at Giza, outside modern Cairo.The 3 main pyramids were built as tombs for 3 Egyptian Pharaohs who were considered to be gods on earth. The first and largest pyramid, known as the Great Pyramid was a tomb for Pharaoh Khufu (Cheops to the Greeks), who ruled the 4th dynasty around 2575 BC,had an original estimated height of 482 ft (now approximately 450 ft). The base has sides 755 ft long. It contains 2,300,000 blocks; the average weight of each is 2.5 tons. Estimated date of completion is 2680 BC.




The question of who built the pyramids, and how, has long been debated by Egyptologists and historians and there is really no completely satisfactory answer. According to the earliest known historian of the Egyptian Pyramid Age, the ancient Greek historian Herodotus (5th cent. BC), the Great Pyramid took 20 years to construct and demanded the labor of 100,000 men, yet it is hard to believe that any of these enormous monuments could have been built in one pharaoh's lifetime. Even the ancient Herodotus was still 2200 years after the actual building of the pyramids.


Few texts concerning Egyptian engineering methods have survived the centuries, and in recent years experimental archaeology has been the main means for discovering the methods used for building the structure. Despite this, there are still many questions concerning the quarrying, dressing and transportation of the stone building blocks, let alone the methods by which they were placed meticulously in position.How these stones were cut is great mystery. Even with today's technology the cutting of these stones is an awesome task.Now there are all types of theories about the construction of the Great pyramid but there are further questions still about how the gigantic edifice was erected on a totally horizontal base, and aligned precisely with the stars.


It is clear that the Egyptians were using their knowledge of the stars to assist them in their architectural projects They were very particular about the direction the pyramid would be facing. The Egyptian astonomers had incredible skill lining up the sides of the pyramids on a particular star which causes the sides to face almost exactly North, South, East, and West.They usually achieved this with an error of less than half a degree.
The Great Pyramid is built on a perfectlu level ground. Its level is so exact that it varies less that 1/2 inches over the 13 acres. This is an amazing feat for the ancient surveyors and would have been difficult, if not almost impossible to match, even today with our advanced technology.



The Great Pyramid of Cheops at Giza, Egypt, demonstrates the remarkable character of its placement on the face of the Earth.
The Pyramid lies in the center of gravity of the continents. It also lies in the exact center of all the land area of the world, dividing the earth's land mass into approximately equal quarters.
The north-south axis (31 degrees east of Greenwich) is the longest land meridian, and the east-west axis (30 degrees north) is the longest land parallel on the globe. There is obviously only one place that these longest land-lines of the terrestrial earth can cross, and it is at the Great Pyramid!

One very unusual feature of the Great Pyramid is a concavity of the core that makes the monument an eight-sided figure, rather than four-sided like every other Egyptian pyramid. That is to say, that its four sides are hollowed in or indented along their central lines, from base to peak. This concavity divides each of the apparent four sides in half, creating a very special and unusual eight-sided pyramid; and it is executed to such an extraordinary degree of precision as to enter the realm of the uncanny. For, viewed from any ground position or distance, this concavity is quite invisible to the naked eye. The hollowing-in can be noticed only from the air, and only at certain times of the day. This explains why virtually every available photograph of the Great Pyramid does not show the hollowing-in phenomenon, and why the concavity was never discovered until the age of aviation.
It was discovered quite by accident in 1940, when a British Air Force pilot, P. Groves, was flying over the pyramid. He happened to notice the concavity and captured it in the now-famous photograph.

Aerial photo by Groves, 1940

Ikonos satelliteAerial photo by Groves

Although Classical Egyptologist's maintain that there is no significance to the way the pyramids are laid out, be it the terrain of the plateau or just an accident, recent studies has raised another possibility, were the pyramids built in a specific manner or more importantly, were they built in a specific position?
Below are two pictures one an aerial view of The Great Pyramids and the other a picture of The Belts Of Orion:

From the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, one can clearly see that the knowledge displayed there is more advanced than the Egyptians or any human civilization had at that time.
This pyramid is an architectural feat that cannot be duplicated with our modern technology and advanced knowledge.
So, there's still a lot of questions regarding WHO, HOW and WHY was the Great Pyramid built.


The Pyramids are shared world culture and heritage site and as the only remaining of the 7 Ancient Wonders are designated as the Honorary New7Wonders Candidate.

When Napoleon invaded Egypt in 1798, his pride was expressed through his famous quote:"Soldiers! From the top of these Pyramids, 40 centuries are looking at us".
There are two centuries more, loking at us now and there will be much more looking at our future.