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Why did pharaohs build pyramids

Pyramids of Giza: All three of Giza’s famed pyramids and their elaborate burial complexes were built during a frenetic period of construction, from roughly 2550 to 2490 B.C. The pyramids were built by Pharaohs Khufu (tallest), Khafre (background), and Menkaure (front).

The Egyptian Pyramids are said to be the tombs of the pharaohs (kings) of ancient Egypt, but archaeologists have never found the mummies of the pharaohs in the pyramids. Pyramids were mainly popular during the Old Kingdom period of Egypt. So why did the pharaohs build pyramids?

According to legend, before the third dynasty of ancient Egypt, after no matter the princes and ministers or the common people died, they were all buried into a rectangular grave built with mud bricks. Ancient Egyptians called it “Mastaba”. Later, a smart young man named Imhotep invented a new construction method when he designed the tomb of the Egyptian Pharaoh King Djoser. He replaced the mud bricks with square stones picked from the mountain, and constantly modified the design of the mausoleum, and finally built a six-level trapezoidal pyramid-this is the prototype of the pyramid we see now.

In ancient Egyptian, the pyramid is trapezoidal and layered, so it is also called a hierarchical pyramid. This is a tall pyramidal building with a square base and triangular sides on each side. It looks like a Chinese character, so we call it a “pyramid”. The tower mausoleum designed by Imhotep is the first stone mausoleum in Egyptian history. The Egyptian pharaohs after King Djoser followed suit one after another, and built tombs for themselves wantonly during their lifetimes. Since then, there has been a trend of building pyramids in ancient Egypt.

Since the pyramids originated in the Old Kingdom period, and the largest pyramid was also built during this period, the Old Kingdom period in Egypt is also known as the Pyramid Age. Why did the pharaohs of ancient Egypt build their tombs into pyramids, that is, into the shape of ziggurat in Chinese characters? It turns out that in the earliest days, the pharaohs of Egypt planned to use Mastaba as their permanent residence after death.

Later, around the time of the second to third dynasties, the Egyptians had the idea that the king would become a god after his death, and his soul would ascend to heaven. In the “Pyramid Inscriptions” discovered later, there are such words as “build a ladder to heaven for him (Pharaoh), so that he can go up to heaven from here”.

Pyramids are such ladders. At the same time, the form of the pyramidal pyramid also expresses the worship of the sun god, because the symbol of the ancient Egyptian sun god “La” is the sun’s rays. The pyramid symbolizes the sun’s rays piercing the blue sky. Because, when you stand on the road leading to Kize and look west from the angle of the pyramid ridgeline, you can see that the pyramid is like the sun’s rays spreading to the earth.

In the “Pyramid Inscriptions”, there is such a saying: “The sky stretches out its own light to you, so that you can go to the sky, just like the eyes of Ra”. Later, the worship of the obelisk by the ancient Egyptians also had this meaning, because the obelisk also represented the rays of the sun. The largest of all the pyramids in ancient Egypt, it was the pyramid of the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh Khufu. The original height of the Great Pyramid was 146.59 meters.

After thousands of years of wind and rain, the top has been eroded by nearly 10 meters. But until Paris built the Eiffel Tower in 1888, it was the tallest building in the world. The bottom of this pyramid is square, and each side is more than 230 meters long. It takes almost one kilometer to walk around the pyramid.

Regarding the origin of the Egyptian pyramids, historians have been arguing endlessly for many years, and there is no conclusion until now. A British scientist has come up with a new theory that the pyramids may have been launch pads built by ancient Egyptian pharaohs to launch rockets to other planets after their death. Wilkinson is a scholar specializing in the history of ancient Egypt at the University of Cambridge. He said he came to this conclusion based on studying the orientation, shape and naming of the pyramids.

The ancient Egyptians considered the circumpolar stars near the sky to be the most symbolic of the afterlife, Wilkinson said, because to the naked eye they appear to revolve endlessly around the Polaris. They are indelible, indestructible, and are the home of the pharaoh’s soul after his death. And the research results show that since the pyramids appeared, all the pyramids point precisely to the North Star. Wilkinson said that the altar of the first pyramid built in ancient Egypt faced north, and the slope leading to its underground chamber was also built on the north side. If you stand in the tomb and look up the entrance slope, you will see the sky to the north.

He speculates that the ancient Egyptians believed that from here, the souls of the pharaohs could be launched to the North Star, where they could continue their afterlife. Moreover, a large amount of research data shows that the names of many pyramids are also related to stars. Among them, one pyramid is named “Shining”, and the other is directly called “Star Pyramid”. In the Egyptian dynasty long before the pyramids appeared, an Egyptian king built a huge tomb by himself, and named it “The King Rising Like a Star”. Wilkinson also deduced that the shape of the pyramid was also built by the ancient Egyptians according to the shape of the stars in their minds.

According to historical records, in the fourth dynasty of Egypt, there was a shrine named Helipris, in which a stone was enshrined, shaped like a pyramid. It is called “the book”, and the Egyptians also called the stone at the top of the pyramid “the small book”. Wilkinson speculates that this stone may be a meteorite in ancient times. It formed an obelisk shape when it entered the atmosphere. The Egyptians worshiped it as a celestial guest, and got inspiration from it to build the pyramid.