Ancient Egypt: Travels Beyond the Grave - The Wise World Traveler: Becoming a Part of All that You Meet - page 197

Figure 13.6. King Tutankhamen's Tomb
WHY DO THE PYRAMIDS STILL EXCITE WONDER?
The grandest of the three pyramids is the tomb of Khufu (Cheops in ancient Greek). Built
sometime around 2500 BCE, its monumentality challenges comprehension. Measuring 755
feet square at its base, level on all sides to one inch, the pyramid covers thirty-five acres.
It is aligned with the four cardinal corners of the compass. It soars almost 500 feet, and its
sides are sloped to a near-perfect fifty-two degrees. Something on the order of two milli-
on precisely cut blocks of stone, some weighing two-and-a-half tons, set in more than 200
courses, were used in the pyramid's construction. And when finished, the entire surface
was covered with smooth-cut limestone. As befits a monument to the king who proclaimed
himself a descendant of Ra, it must have dazzled the beholder as its surface shimmered and
glowed with the reflected light of the sun high in the cloudless Egyptian sky.
Inside the pyramid is a series of galleries and chambers sloping down and up in precise
gradients, designed, it is presumed, to lead intruders astray. The main chamber, known as
the king's chamber, is almost twenty feet high, thirty-five feet long, and seventeen feet
wide. To keep the massive weight of the pyramid from crushing the interior spaces requires
a precise overlay of weight-distributing spaces and massive corbelled blocks. The king's
open, granite sarcophagus (Greek: flesh eater) is empty, the preserved royal body presum-
ably carted away by thieves many centuries ago.