The Great Pyramid of Giza remains to this day both intact and in surprisingly good shape. The reason for this, clearly, is its intrinsic structural stability.
Of all the seven wonders of the ancient world – the first six being the Pharos of Alexandria, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, the Colossus of Rhodes and the Mausoleum at Halicarnasus – only one is still standing today.
This is, of course, the greatest of all the ancient wonders – the Great Pyramid of Giza. In terms of architectural achievement and size, it is difficult to dispute the pyramid’s vast superiority.
The very fact that the pyramid is still standing today – and almost entirely intact – is a testament to the prowess of both its ancient architects and its builders. While the other wonders have been utterly decimated by Earthquakes, fires, raids and wars, the pyramid has continued to stand strong.
Reasons for Longevity
One look at this massive structure (and the other, slightly smaller, pyramids nearby) tells why: The shape of a pyramid is such that there is practically no way to knock it down. No Earthquake could fully shake it from its foundations and no amount of weathering could wear it down entirely.
Any army taking over Egypt would surely think it absurd to even attempt to destroy the pyramid (as they did the Temple of Artemis and attempted with the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus), as it would take nearly as long to destroy it as it must have to build it.
The Most Ancient Wonder
Amazingly enough, the pyramids were also the first of the wonders built by nearly two thousand years. There was nearly as much time in between the construction of the pyramids and the later wonders as between the later wonders and the present day.
This being the case, it is truly quite impossible to fully emphasize just how undeniably astounding the pyramids are. The pyramid of Giza stood for nearly four thousand years without equal as the world’s tallest building (until the construction of the Lincoln Cathedral in London, c. A.D. 1300). There is nothing about the pyramid which is not utterly impressive.
Even More Impressive…
How about the fact that, despite the rudimentary tools and limited mathematical skills available to the ancient builders, the base of the pyramid has been shown to diverge from a perfect square by a grand total of 58 millimeters (that is, five inches) and one minute of angle (that is, one sixtieth of one degree)?
How about the fact that the longest tunnel within the pyramid, at more than a hundred meters, was built perfectly straight, but for a difference of just half a millimeter? This is far better than just about any building in existence, even today.
The Construction
It has been estimated that it took somewhere around twenty years to build the pyramids (which is still far faster than many of the other wonders), judging from what few records are left from those times (this is not counting the century it is said to have taken to build the “Giza Plateau” upon which the pyramid sits).
Actually, even by modern standards twenty years is an impressive time to build such a structure – it has been estimated that in order to complete the project in this amount of time, the stones (nearly 2.5 million of them, averaging about 2.5 tons each) would have been have to have been laid at a rate of more than one every two minutes (providing for full ten-hour workdays).
Furthermore, many people don’t realize that the pyramid which still stands near Cairo in Egypt, while certainly a sight to behold, is but a shadow of what once stood there, prior to thousands of years of weather and raids and wars and robbers.
While today’s pyramid appears as a series of stone blocks, moving step by step up the vast sides of this structure, this was not how it was originally built. Originally, there were casing stones placed in each of these steps with flat bottoms and angled edges (triangular, that is), so as to give the impression of a perfectly smooth surface from top to bottom.
These casing stones were built from polished white limestone, so the Pyramid shined brightly in the hot Egyptian sun, making it look even more impressive than it does today. It is known that these casing stones existed because a few of them still exist around the base of the pyramid (which probably looked not altogether dissimilar to the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas, which was modeled after the Egyptian pyramids).
Who Built Them?
It was not aliens, nor was it the Israelites, as many people believe (the pyramids predate the period when the Israelites were in Egypt).
The truth is, in fact, much more benign than this.
Scholars recently have begun to realize that the evidence in Egypt points to a workforce not of slaves, but of paid workers (which suggests a fairly complex bureaucratic system, which is impressive in its own right).
Some scholars have suggested that while some of these laborers worked on the pyramids year-round, most of the work was performed during the summer months, when the Nile river flooded and farmers were out of a job. When there was no farming to be done due to the floods, the Egyptians would flock to the site of the pyramids, where there was always work available. In this way, the Egyptians had found a way to tackle the problem of unemployment head-on, and in the end, they had something to show for it which still impresses us to this day.
There is almost no end to the impressive qualities to list when discussing the pyramids. Surely they, even more so than the other six, have truly earned their place as a wonder of the ancient world.
See also:
The Hanging Gardens of Babylon
The Temple of Artemus at Ephesus
The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus
References:
