Great Pyramid at Giza

The Great Pyramid is located at Giza, Egypt.  It is the only one of the famous "Seven Wonders of the Ancient World" that still stands today!  It stands 756 feet long on each side and 450 high. It is composed of 2,300,000 blocks of stone, each averaging 2 1/2 tons in weight. Despite the limited surveying tools of the time, no side is more than 8 inches different in length than another. Until the 19th century, the Great Pyramid was the tallest building in the world.

Some of the earliest history of the Pyramid comes from a Greek traveler named Herodotus of Halicanassus.  He visited Egypt around 450 BC and included a description of the Great Pyramid in a history book he wrote.  Herodotus was told by Egyptian guides that it took twenty-years for a force of 100,000 oppressed slaves to build the pyramid.  Stones were lifted into position by the use of immense machines.  The purpose of the structure, according to Herodotus's sources, was as a tomb for the Pharaoh Khufu.

Some archeologists went inside the pyramid to look for the treasure of king Khufu but when they got to the King's tomb it was empty exept for a open coffin or sarcoughagus without a top! So what happened to the treasure of King Khufu? Conventional wisdom says that, like so many other royal tombs, the pyramid was the victim of robbers in ancient times.

Some have suggested that the pyramid was never meant as a tomb, but as an astronomical observatory.  The Roman author Proclus, in fact, states that before the pyramid was completed it did serve in this function.  Can we depend on Proclus words, though?  When he proposed this theory the pyramid was already over 2000 years old!!

Many strange, and some silly, theories have arisen over the years to explain the pyramid and it's passageways. Most archaeologists, though, accept the theory that the great pyramid was just the largest of a tradition of tombs used for the Pharaohs of Egypt.

So what happened to Khufu's mummy and treasure?  Nobody knows. Extensive explorations have found no other chambers or passageways. Still one must wonder if, perhaps in this one case, the King and his architects out smarted both the ancient thieves and modern archaeologists and that somewhere in, or below, the last wonder of the ancient world, rests Khufu and his gold treasures.