Pyramids Essay Research Paper PYRAMIDSINTRODUCTIONANCIENT EGYPT

Pyramids Essay, Research Paper

PYRAMIDS

INTRODUCTION

ANCIENT EGYPT- “PYRAMIDS”

There are days when the sand blows ceaselessly, blanketing the remains of a powerful dynasty that ruled Egypt 5,000 years ago. When the wind dies down and the sands are still, a long shadow casts a wedge of darkness across the Sahara, creeping ever longer as the north African sun sinks beyond the horizon. This is where our history of Egypt begins, in the shadow of the Great Pyramid of Giza, where stone meets sky as a testament to one of the greatest civilizations on earth. Here, on the plateau of Giza, 2,300,000 blocks of stone, some weighing as much as 9 tons, were used to build an eternal tomb for a divine king.

Five thousand years ago, the fourth dynasty of Egypt’s Old Kingdom was a highly advanced civilization where the kings, known as pharaohs, were believed to be gods. They lived amidst palaces and temples built to honor them and their deified ancestors. “Pharaoh” originally meant “great house,” but later came to mean king. What we know of this early society changes and is re-intepreted year by year as new archaeological finds discovered beneath the desert sands revise our understanding of ancient Egypt. This web site will show you science in action — bringing you face to face with the evidence archaeologists use to understand the meaning of Giza’s pyramids, and to the process of evaluating the finds they will uncover beneath the sands of the plateau.

CHAPTER-1

ARCHITECTURAL CHARACTER OF ANCIENT EGYPTIANS

The primitive architecture in the valley of the Nile consisted of readily architectural character available tractable materials like reeds, papyrus and palm branch ribs. Plastered over with clay. With bundles of stems placed vertically side by side and lashed to a bundle placed horizontally near the top . Walls or fences could be made alternatively. Palm – leaf ribs were planted in the ground at short intervals, with others laced in a diagonal network across them and secured to a horizontal member near the top, the whole being daubed with mud afterwards. Buildings with circular plans could have domical coverings of similar construction, or if rectangular, could have a tunnel shaped covering or a flat roof. The pressure of the flat reed and mud roofs against the tops of the wall reeds may have produced the characteristic Egyptian ‘Gorge’ cornice, while the ‘Kheker’ cresting less frequently appearing in later architecture may have originated in the terminal tufts of a papyrus-stalk wall. The horizontal binders and angle bundles survived in the roll moulding of stone cornices and wall angles of the historic period .

A type of kiosk or pavilion which came to have a special religious significance in connection with the ‘Heb-sed’ or jubilee festivals of the Pharoahs though originally commonly used on Nile boats as well as on land- consisted of a light, rectangular structure open-fronted and with a porch carried on teo slender angle-shafts and having a slab-like roof arching from the back to the front. In the heb-sed ceremony, held at definite intervals of the years in the king’s reign. The Pharoah seated himself on a throne beneath such an awning. Raised on a high podium and approached by a flight of steps at the front.

Timber, once quite plentiful, was used for the better buildings in square heavy vertical plates lapping one in front of the other and producing an effect of composite buttresses joined at the head and enframing narrow panels ,in the upper parts of which window-vents might occur . Palm logs, rounded on the underside were sometimes used for roofs. All these various forms of construction produced their effects on matured art and architecture, and apart from timber, which had become scare by dynastic times, never entirely went out use.

Stone was not much employed before the third dynasty, except as rubble and as a stiffening or foundation to solid mud walls. Sun-dried mud brick walling never ceased to be employed, for it was only for the finest buildings of religious character that cut stone became normal. Even places remained always relatively frail. Made of Nile mud and mixed with chopped straw or sand, and thoroughly matured by exposure to the sun, the mud bricks were very long lasting, and large, about 14 inch long, 7 inch wide and 4 inch thick. For stability walls diminished course by course towards the top, chiefly because of the alternate shrinkage and expansion of the soil caused by the annual inundation. As the inner face of the walls had to be vertical for ordinary convenience, it was the outer face only which showed this inward inclination, are batter which remained through out the principal characteristics of Egyptian architecture whether in brick or stone. Sometimes fibres or reed mats were placed between the brick courses at interval up the walls, to reinforce them particularly at a buildings angles and lay development was the use of sagging concave courses, for alternate lengths of long wall built in advance of the intervening stretches, to allow the drying out of the inner brick work, since walls such as doors around the great temples enclosures were very thick between 9 metre and 24.5 metre .

Greek temples were each planned has one homogenous whole, and the component parts were all essential to the complete design, by some of the greatest Egyptian temples were but a str