The pyramids Some of the most interesting building in the world are the pyramids. The pyramids stand huge and silent, and in

Only one of the "seven Wonders" of the ancient world remains; the pyramids of Egypt.
   The most famous of the Egyptian pyramids are the pyramids of Giza. These pyramids were built more than 5,000 years ago. The biggest of them was the "Great Pyramid" ,the pyramid of Khufu. It was 146 metres high, and each of the four sides measured 230 metres and faced exactly north, south, east or west. It was made of about 2,300,000 blocks of stone, all exactly the same shape. The weight of each block was about tons. The inside blocks were cut out of rock near to the place of pyramid. The blocks of fine stone for the outside came from Turn on the other side of the River Nile. It would be difficult to make a pyramid like the Great Pyramid at Giza even today. How did they do it 5,000 years ago?
   The ancient Egyptians had nothing like our machines to lift heavy things. They used sledges, levers and rollers. They were very clever with these things. The power was supplied by hundreds or thousands of men. To move a big block of stone to a position 100 metres up, they first built up a long slope from the ground to that position. Then they used levers and rollers to put the block on a sledge, and many men pulled the sledge up the slope.
   How do we know all this? We have learnt it from pictures in Egyptian tombs. And we can read their writing--the hieroglyphics in which they kept their records.
   The pyramids were built on high ground, above the highest point that the Nile flood water ever reached. The pyramid builders first built a slope from the Nile bank to the place for the Great Pyramid. Making this road and preparing the ground took ten years. After that, building the Great pyramid itself took twenty years more. And this was possible only because the Pharaoh of Egypt used a very large number of people for the work. Some of them were prisoners of war and other captured people. But many of them were the Pharaoh’s own people--the farmers of Egypt. When the Nile flood began in September and their fields were under water, the Pharaoh’s servants ordered them to go to work at the pyramids.
   By the end of the great period of pyramid building the rich country of Egypt had become poor. Why did the Pharaohs do it? It was a time of change in their religion. At the beginning of the period, the Pharaoh expected to live in his tomb after death. His life there, he thought, would be like his life before his death. So he needed a tomb with plenty of room for everything--his beds, his chairs, his gold dishes, food, drink, all his treasure. But at the same time, the Pharaohs began to call themselves the sons of the sun god, Ra. They expected to join Ra in his journeys across the sky. So they needed a place to start from. Tile pyramid pointed to the sky and showed the east - west direction of the sun’s journey. It was big in order to hide and guard the Pharaoh’s tomb--because that was still full of treasure. (In fact thieves later found their way into all the pyramids and into most of the Pharaoh’s tombs.)
   An earlier pyramid than those at Giza was the "step pyramid" of the Pharaoh Zoser. As the name suggests, it was built in great steps. Probably they were steps up to the sky and the kingdom of Ra. The shape is rather like the shape of the great ziggurats of Mesopotamia and the teocalli of Mexico.
   Like the pyramids, the ziggurats and the teocalli reached up towards the sky, but they were different in other ways. They did not contain a tomb. And the top was not a point; it was a temple. The biggest of the teocolli--bigger than the great pyramid--is at Cholula in central Mexico and there are many others. The inside is a huge pyramid. Of earth, the outside, and the temple at the top, were of finely cut stone. The pyramids of Egypt were never for human sacrifice. But at a particular time in the year and at a particular point in the sun’s journey, the sides of the great pyramids of Mexico ran with human blood from sacrifices at the top, in the temples of the gods, Tezcatlipoca, the "soul of the world", Huitilopochtli, the god of war, or Tlaloc, the rain god.