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Here I Stood: The Pyramids of Egypt

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The only remaining one of the seven wonders of the ancient world is the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt. It was built by King Cheops or Khufu perhaps around 2400 BC. The huge limestone blocks are not native to the Nile region, and how they were transported and then erected into this enormous monument remains a mystery and the object of much speculation. I stood there, actually I climbed up and sat on the rocks, in 1997. Of course, I was aware, as were the members of our group, of the history of Israel in Egypt from the captivity resulting from Joseph’s going there only to be followed by his family and then four hundred years of captivity, to the Exodus under Moses who was brought up as a prince of Egypt, to Pharaoh Neco’s involvement with the politics of Israel to Mary and Joseph taking refuge from Herod in Egypt.


We made a trip to nearby Saqqara in the midst of a sandstorm that ruined my camera,

but we got to see the step pyramid there, built probably around 2700 BC. I asked the guide if perhaps this pyramid was the oldest surviving monument in the world, and her reply was that it probably was such. I had stood there, enduring the stings of sand in my face, contemplating the matter and trying to think of any earlier monument. Sumer was the first civilization, and there are surviving ziggurats there which strongly resemble the pyramids of Egypt. Quite likely thy served as the example followed by the kings of Egypt. But I could not think of a single ziggurat that had been calculated to be constructed earlier than the step pyramid of Saqqara.





The step pyramid was built of rectangular blocks called mastabas which were stacked on top of each other, each one smaller than the preceding one on which it was placed, until they formed the pyramid. The Giza pyramids, of which there are three large ones extant, did not employ the mastaba technique but rather used enormous stones to shape the structure. One has to stand in amazement, or sit, as in my case, and just contemplate what these structures could say, if they could. And maybe they can speak, as all kinds of mysterious powers have been attributed to them. But until then, we use our minds and knowledge of history, especially Biblical history, to reconstruct the many events that have transpired here in the desert of northern Egypt.


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