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Big controversy these days in the world of Egyptology, with some fringe groups going the whole "built by aliens from Sirius B" route. The coincidence of the placement of these structures chiming in with cosmological constellations and eclipse predictions is fairly well accepted nowadays, although exactly why it mattered and how it was achieved is still hugely mysterious.
Suggests that with a few hundred years of the original Scorpion Kings of the first dynasty, the Egyptians had come from a relatively primitive desert lifestyle to understanding and charting the cosmos, which implies the development also of some accurate mathematics and instruments of measurement. Not impossible but remarkable.
The absence of corpses and grave goods has in the past just been written off as "tomb raiders with good night vision got there before us" and maybe that's it but there is also the issue that pyramidal structures have proliferated in some other ancient cultures, particularly the step-pyramid model.
There's the Assyro-Babylonian ziggurats, temples of the great Central American pre-Columbian civilisations, even got them in the Canary Islands. Also echoed in the stupa of the temples of the Far East, and remember that hinduism likely predates by millennia all this Egyptian mythology. All ways for man or priest to get physically closer to the gods and thereby enhance communication.
With the flood myth so prevalent in so many cultures, it's not surprising that many creation myths also involve a mound of sorts arising from the swirling waters of creation and this is definitely true of the Ancient Egyptian religious fables. At Khnum, a hump of land tumesced out of the waters and the Earth God Geb inseminated the over-arching Sky Goddess Nut, giving life to the world as the Egyptians knew it, so the pyramids (and some natural landscape features) were worshipped for their resonance with that myth.
The great pyramids of Giza, with the smooth surfaces and the supposed blade-sharpening properties advanced by the Duchess of York and mentioned earlier by Ganesh, seemed to come from almost nowhere, architecturally and historically speaking, in the third dynasty and into the fourth dynasty of Pharaonic times. There are lots of other pyramidal structures, usually with the more classic step pattern, being uncovered all the time all over Egypt and down into Nubia and the Sudan.
A few of these seem to have been tombs but most, like the ziggurats of Babylon, were just representations of the original mound of Earth what arose from the waters of creation. In many instances, one Pharaoh build several in a lifetime and this suggests he wasn't just looking for a final resting place or "resurrection machine" (as many archaeologists suggest).
Their purpose was symbolic and religious, representing that foundation myth. Perhaps that goes for the pyramids of Giza too, which were in essence just deluxe versions of the same. If people were buried in them at any point, I think that was secondary to their true significance as ways of communing with the gods and the universe.
Putting a Pharaoh inside was probably like burying British monarchs in Westminster Abbey. After all, Queens Elizabeth and Mary are buried right bang in the middle of the Abbey but that's not why it was built or its principle significance for generations of Brits.
Lots of sites out there debating these issues but it does get kind of confusing because there are so many theories. And that's without even starting on the mystery of the Sphinx' water-damaged face. Or the linguistic research into the Nostratic mother language of the Indo-Europeans which many scholars belief wasn't a kick in the arse off the tongue of the ancient Egyptians, demonstrating Heyerdahl-type ideas of cultural diffusion that complicate the whole picture.
Fascinating though. |
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