Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [49]
Still, it is understandable that Egyptians might have been a little peeved with Khufu. Most likely, the scale of his pyramid, the Great Pyramid at Giza, must have placed extraordinary demands on the Egyptian farmers and working class who paid the taxes and provided most of the labor force that built the pyramids, which could account for stories like the one that Herodotus told.
Even so, the very existence of these pyramids speaks eloquently to the power of Egyptian religion and an incredibly well ordered society that could have produced such marvels in a time with precious little technology. As Egyptologist Jaromir Malek notes, “For a modern mind, especially one that no longer knows profound religious experience and deep faith, it is not easy to understand the reasons for such huge and seemingly wasteful projects as the building of pyramids. This lack of understanding is reflected in the large number of esoteric theories about their purpose and origin.” Those theories, which began in the nineteenth century, inspired the word “pyramidiots,” for people who proposed extravagantly fanciful ideas about both the function and construction of the pyramids.
The pyramids we typically associate with Egypt today had evolved from earlier burial sites called “mastaba tombs,” simple, rectangular, flat-topped structures built from mud bricks. Observing their profound religious beliefs, the earliest Egyptian kings were buried in these tombs to begin their journey to eternity. Initially, these tombs simply served as a safe place for the remains of the mummified king until he was resurrected to join the other gods.
But others apparently went along for the ride. Recent discoveries suggest that household servants and government officials in Egypt’s earliest dynasties were sometimes sacrificed to spend eternity with their kings. In 2004, archaeologists announced finding the remains of human sacrifice in some early Egyptian tombs that predate the pyramids. The practice, while it had been suspected, had never been substantiated until a team from New York University, Yale, and the University of Pennsylvania found a series of graves near the tomb of King Aha, believed to be the first king in the First Dynasty. The graves, as reported in the New York Times in March 2004, yielded the remains of court officials, servants, and artisans, all apparently sacrificed to serve the king’s needs in the afterlife. Nearby graves held the bones of seven young lions, symbols of kingly power, and one grave also held the bones of donkeys, presumably to help transport the king into the afterlife. “We may think of the ritual slaughter of a large number of retainers as barbaric,” one researcher told the New York Times. But the ancient Egyptians “may have come to look upon the sacrifices as passports to eternal life, a guarantee of immortality….”
The mastaba tomb became more elaborate with the first Egyptian pyramid, the Step Pyramid of Third Dynasty King Djoser (also Zoser, 2667–2648 BCE), which rose like a gigantic stairway, allowing the king to climb to the heavens and join the sun god.
The magnificence of the pyramids took on extraordinary new dimensions, both in size and decoration, with the Fourth Dynasty pyramids at Giza.* Called the Great Pyramid, the pyramid of Khufu contains an estimated 2.5 million stone blocks that average 2.5 tons each, with a base covering about 13 acres. Originally it was 481 feet (147 meters) tall, but some of its upper stones have fallen away, and today it stands about 450 feet (138 meters) high. A dismantled cedar boat, discovered near the southern face of the pyramid, has been restored, and a second boat has also been uncovered nearby. Undoubtedly these boats were intended for the deceased king to make his journey across the sky to