How many years does it ?
1- Almost 5000 years ago, the Giza plateau on the West Bank of the Nile [ the region of the dead ] became the royal necropolis of Memphis , the capital of the pharaohs of the 4th dynasty.
2- The Giza site lies about 15 km west of modern Cairo, and covers an area of about 2000 m on the south west side , A 40 m cliff descends to where a channel of the Nile once ran marking the borderline between fertile land and the desert .
3- The site of Giza is the only one of the 7 wonders of the ancient World to have survived to our day , the others have long since disappeared destroyed by man and time .
4- Giza however still hosts the tombs of 3 pharaohs of the 4 dynasty ...........
The pyramids khufu , khafre and Menkaure and the sphinx [ the father of terror ] .
The development of the royal tomb from
The predynastic period to the Middle Kingdom
From the very beginning of the Egyptian history , the people believed in life after the death , so they did their best to preserve their bodies to help
The soul of the deceased to recognise his body.
As result mummification was invented . Also they made statues to serve as substitutes for their bodies .
1- In the predynastic period
1- The tomb was an around pit in which the deceased was placed in squatting attitude , lying on his right side while the face facing the west where the sun sets .
2- It was placed in the tomb some of his daily equipment and few funerary objects , such as Jars full of offerings .
2- The kings of the 1- 2 dynasties
1- better known as archaic period , built their tombs in the form of Mastaba
2- The Mastaba is arectangular construction, built of mud-brick , similar in the shape to the benches outside the house of the modern Egyptian village .
3- The Mastaba consists of 2 parts , the superstructure which contains several rooms for placing the offerings and the structure in which the burial chamber cut as a big room in the ground surrounded with several rooms for placing, the offerings the 2 parts of the Mastaba were linked together by a shaft which usually cut in the center of the superstructure.
4- The kings of the Archaic period used to built to tombs , one at the north in Saqqara and the second in the south at Abydos .
5- The question of where the kings buried whether in the northern tombs or in the southern tombs ?....it’s too difficult to say where the kings were buried and which is the real tomb and which is the Cenotaph tomb .
1- The kings of the old kingdom [ 3-6 dynasties ]
2- The kings of the Old Middle ..........[ 12 dynasty ] built their tombs in the form of the pyramid .
King Zoser
At the beginning of the 3rd dynasty, king Zoser built his tomb as a Mastaba of square shape .
His genius architect Imhotep developed this shape of the Mastaba into step pyramid through various stages of development.
In the 5th and 6th dynasties
Pyramids became smaller in size and constructed of small stones and rubble cased Tura limestone such as the Pyramids of King Userkaf at Saqqara .
King Unas
1- The last king in the 5th dynasty started a new tradition by covering the interior walls of his pyramid at Saqqara with hieroglyphic texts known today as the pyramid texts .
2- They are funerary and religious spells and the main purpose is to help the dead king in the afterlife and his daily journey with the sun god .
3- After the collapse of the 6th dynasty and the old kingdom Egypt went through a very dark period of history known as the first intermediate period .
It includes 5 dynasties starting with the 7th dynasty and ending with 11th dynasty.
- The pyramids of kings of the first intermediate period are also smaller in the size and constructed of small stones.
- The kings of the Middle Kingdom built their pyramids from mud brick ...
- The Memphis necropolis contains the majority of the pyramids of Egypt, this Necropolis extend from the north to the south starting with Abu-Rawash , Giza . Abu sir north Saqqara.
- There are also few scattered Pyramids in upper Egypt built by The Kings Merve between 300 B.C . 350-A.D .
Pyramids today have new names for example the Pyramid of Cheops is Called the great Pyramid .
Pyramids sometimes are named after Colors .
Nowadays the number of the pyramids discovered in Egypt is 108 .
Comments
Post a Comment