The great pyramid of Khufu is by far the most famous pyramid in egypt, the biggest, tallest, and most intact. It is one of the "Seven wonders of the world." It is the last one standing. It is built of entirely limestone and consinlered an architectural masterpiece. It contains around 1,300,000 blocks ranging in weight from 2.5 tons to 15 tons and is built on a square base with sides measuring about 230m (775 ft.) covering 13 acreas!
It is located in Giza where it guards the front of Khafra's pyramid. The greatest monumental sculpture in the ancient world, the Sphinx is carved out of a single ridge of stone 240 feet (73 meters) long and 66 feet (20 meters) high. The sphinx is built of soft sandstone and would have disappeared long ago had it not been buried for so long. It was the first time that a pharaoh had been represented in this way with the body of a lion, even though this animal had symbolised royalty ancient Egypt’s beginnings around 3000 BC. The animal body of the Sphinx in fact represented the king’s triumphant strength.
“Stonehenge Decoded” Stonehenge Decoded examines British archaeologist Mike Parker Pearson’s theory about Stonehenge. His theory suggests that the stone circle was at the center of one of the largest prehistoric religious sites in the world. Pearson and his team uncover the first evidence of a 4,500 year-old lost settlement with at least 300 houses. It is the largest Stone Age settlement ever found in Northern Europe. At its center lie the remains of a near replica of Stonehenge built of wood.
|The Old and the New, Djoser’s Step Pyramid and Hatshepsut’s Mortuary Temple | | | | | Djoser’s Step Pyramid Built to hold his body after death, Djoser’s Step Pyramid rises 62 meters high and is built entirely of stone. Until the beginning of the Third Dynasty of Ancient Egypt, the main building materials were wood, reeds, and mudbrick. The first building to be constructed complexly in stone was the Step Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser at Saqqara (Garret). Before this only a few details, such as doorways or the paving of a tomb chamber, had been made of stone. According to Manetho, the inventor of the art of building in stone was Imhotep.
They also used native copper, silver and gold for metalworking, in which they used very advanced methods. The period between 250 CE and 650 CE was a time of intense flourishing of Maya civilized accomplishments. While the many Mayans city-states never achieved political unity on the order of the central Mexican civilizations, they exerted a tremendous intellectual influence upon Mexico and Central America. The Mayans built some of the most elaborate cities on the continent, and made innovations in mathematics, astronomy, and calendrics. The Mayans also evolved the only true writing system native to the Americas using pictographs and syllabic elements in the form of texts and codices inscribed on stone, pottery, wood, or highly perishable books made from bark paper.
Jared Marshall Period: G 12/5/14 The Persian Empire The Persian Empire is still the biggest empire we know of to this day. Even today, there are still remains of this massive empire. After reading Herodotus’s views on the Persian empire, one gets the message that the Persians had no temples to worship kings, and they borrowed ideas for engineering. Herodotus doesn’t exactly depict the truth, in fact a clearer representation portrays a dynamic and robust empire. History argues that the Persians had mighty temples to worship past kings, and advanced engineering.
This conceivable late-planning tactic was further reaffirmed as the tomb only had a few large figures painted on the walls. These paintings showcased the pharaoh with his subjects performing the opening of the mouth ceremony. Finding just these few paintings along the inside walls of a pharaoh’s tomb is unheard of as most tombs belonging to the elite and the pharaoh class usually displayed finely detailed murals covering the inside of the tomb and ceiling. If the artisans had had more time to decorate the tomb’s walls, the tomb of Tutankhamun may have been dressed up with magical spells, achievements, and godly depictions. But it wasn’t.
As I took measurements of the temple I noticed it was 210 feet in length and 150 feet in width and over 100 feet in height. This monument is similar to the Egyptian Pharaoh Djoser step pyramid, with its block on block construction (next chapter and time travel visit to Ancient Egypt). This building also served as the administrative capital for the city. As I climbed to the top of the temple a Sumerian man said King Urnammu did not complete the temple, but it was king
The Great Pyramid of Khufu is one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. It was built with 2.3 million stone blocks, and its top rose four hundred and eighty feet above the desert. Egyptians were the first to build using stone. They constructed ginormous pyramids and statues such as the Sphinx. Ancient Egyptian inventions include papyrus, sails, bowling, door locks, and a calendar with three hundred and sixty-five days in a year.
The city then rises about 304 metres high stretching south for 2 kilometres. It is quite odd that such a location could be the capital of the Hittite Empire, but many factors such as a plentiful water source (Kızılırmak River), fields for growing produce and an intricate defence systems kept the kings of the empire safe here. The first evidence of settlements in Hattusha are from the early bronze age, but there are no documents or any evidence that tells us who built these early settlements in Hattusha. These early people lived on the top and northwest foot of the high hill which dominates the east side of the city, called Büyükkale ("Great Fortress"). This hill later became the Hittite Acropolis.