The Pyramids

I realized I have been remiss in sharing some important and fun facts about Cairo and Egypt. I will try to rectify that in this and upcoming posts.

The pyramids are the only surviving object of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The oldest and largest of the pyramids was built for the 4th dynasty pharaoh Cheops around 2650 BC. It is 480 feet tall and covers an area of 13.6 acres equivalent to 7 city blocks in NYC . It consists of 2,300,000 limestone blocks (quarried from my Mokataam Mountain) each about the size of a large fridge-freezer and weighing an average of 3 tons. Lined end to end these stones would pave a single-lane road from NY to San Fran.

Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids were not built by slaves - not in the way Americans would define slavery anyway. It was more like a public works project; like how the American highways were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps, or more recently Americorp projects. (Aren’t you all glad we did that crazy volunteer stuff in the 1990s and not sooner.)

The pyramids of Giza are the most well known and best surviving pyramids. However, there are like 35 pyramids surviving still in Egypt. The Giza plateau includes 3 pyramids and the Sphinx. It also includes a Solar Boat museum, which is a really cool huge wooden ship that was discovered under the pyramids. And yes, the rumors are true. The pyramids are right in the middle of the city – well Giza, a suburb about a 20 min drive from downtown Cairo. On a clear day, you can see the pyramids from my mountain – not my window but not far.

The are tons of fun and funny facts about the pyramids. For example, the Great Pyramid is supposedly located at the exact center of the earth’s land mass. Each of the bases measures 9,131 inches long for a total perimeter of 36,524 inches. Although the number may seem insignificant, move the decimal point two places and you get 365.24 the exact length of the solar year. Also the average height of all land on earth above sea level is said to be 5,759, the Great Pyramid is precisely that high.

There are pyramidologists that say if you draw a line from the center of the pyramids through the east west axis you will apparently hit the exact spot where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, and later where they crossed the Jordan and apparently the lione also passes directly through the town of Bethlehem.

I don’t know if any of these things are true or just mythology. I just know that I can sit and stare at the pyramids for hours. I know they don’t move. But the sun moves around them, and like a canyon or a mountain, I just watch the light change the view. It’s awesome. It’s stunning and break taking every single time.