Ancient Egyptians Building to the Stars

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After the crops had been harvested in Egypt each year, the pyramid builders resumed work. The annual flooding of the River Nile made farming impossible, so the farmers went to work on the pyramids. They joined a crew of workers who were at the site all year round.

Contrary to popular belief, these pyramid builders were not slaves because they were paid ten loaves per day and worked in teams of 200. Foreign prisoners of war were also put to work on these sites.

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There was very little machinery used in the construction of these pyramids. Huge limestone blocks were cut from quarries, using just stone tools and wooden wedges. The wooden wedges were soaked in water so that they would expand and make the stone split more easily.

Stones were brought to the sites on a kind of wooden sledge and the sand was made wet infront of the sledge to make it easier to slide the stones along.  Stones were each around 2 tons in weight but some were very much heavier, weighing up to 300 tons.

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It is thought that the stones were put into place by sliding them up a ramp using the muscle power of thousands of men, but this is only a theory. The actual method of doing this has yet to be discovered.

Mathematically, the dimensions of the Egyptian Pyramids are very accurate. Inside the actual pyramids engineers designed burial chambers and the empty stone sarcophagus was put inside the chamber to await the death of the King.

After death the Pharoah (King) was embalmed and mumified and his body was placed in the lavishly decorated tomb, with its wall paintings and treasures, and all things he might need in the next life.  Magic symbols were left behind to avert evil as the tomb was sealed.

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Even though the pyramid builders went to great lengths to protect the tombs of the Pharoahs, and left spells, dummy tunnels and concealed entrances behind them, tomb raiders still managed to get into them.

Every known pyramid in Egypt was ransacked within two hundred years of its completion. The robbers were not worried about the spells and superstitions, but the prospect of being killed by a collapsing tunnel was an ever present threat.

The workers who built these tombs lived on the site and even had their own cemetaries on site. Traces of worker cemetaries around the pyramids still exist and there are even mini-pyramids in place on some of these sites. This shows that pyramid shapes were associated with death and the after life in Ancient Egypt and that despite the eccentric theories surrounding these amazing ancient monuments, the main reason for their construction had to do with the Egyptian idea of the hereafter.