Why did the ancient Egyptians use the pyramid shape?
The Egyptologists had developed some theories about the reason of the early pharoah's tombs were built in the pyramid shape, which is the pyramid:
(a) represented the first land to appear at the beginning of time - a hill called 'Ben-Ben'.
(b) symbolic the dead pharaoh can climb to the sky and live forever
(c) represented the rays of the sun
The structure of pyramid
A pyramid's design with the heavy weight closer to the ground and pyramidion on top means that less material higher up on the pyramid will be pushing down from above. This distribution of weight allowed early civilizations able to create stable monumental structures.
The base of a pyramid which is in trilateral, quadrilateral, or any polygon shape give the meaning that a pyramid has at least three triangular surfaces. For thousands of years, the largest structures on Earth were the Red Pyramid in Dashur Necropolis and the Great Pyramid of Khufu in Egypt.
Khufu's Pyramid is built entirely of limestone and is considered an architectural masterpiece. It contains around 1,300,000 blocks ranging in weight from 2.5 tonnes to 15 tonnes and is built on a square base with sides about 230m, covering 13 acres. The height of the pyramid was 146.5m(488 ft), but today it is only 137m (455 ft) high because the 9m is missing due to the theft of the fine quality of limestone covering. But it still consider the tallest pyramid.
The Egyptolotgists show that this structure was built to a tomb for the king and queen. But this interpretation of evidence is satisfied by less and less people. According to the research, they believe the structure of pyramid was an active device for living or the enhancement of life for those who built this massive structure. For example, the Great Pyramid was not built to be a tomb for a self-proclaimed man-god but was the high-water mark of an advanced civilization because water was important for the civilizations and it was at the central to the construction of the Great Pyramid, just as the purpose of the Great Pyramid.
Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts
The purpose and meaning of the pyramids is to ensure the eternal welfare of the king. The earliest known of these 'pyramid texts' are at Saqqara in the pyramid of Unas, the last king of the fifth dynasty who died in about 2345 BC. While the others are more than 700 in all, which is in the tombs of kings and queens of the sixth dynasty (c.2345- c.2184 BC). During the Middle Kingdom (c.2134-1787 BC) similar texts were inscribed on the inside walls of wooden coffins of the nobility as well as royalty.
The basic system of Egyptian hieroglyphics had been discovered in 1822 by Jean-Francois Champollion by studying the 'Rosetta Stone'. He recognized two types of sign were combined which are ideograms and phonograms. Ideograms are conventional representations of objects signifying nouns and associated verbs such as sun, light, to rise, to shine while phonograms indicate the sounds of consonants.
The pyramid texts were believed to be more effective in securing the well being of the dead than the relief carvings of servants, animals, piles of food on the walls of outer chambers of tombs and mortuary temples. They repeated continuously the action during funeral ceremories. Although many are similar to one another, but there is still don't have any two are exactly the same. A typical resurrection text includes the following sentences:
O flesh of the King, do not decay, do not rot, do not smell unpleasant. Your foot will not be overpassed, your stride will not be overstridden, you shall not tread on the corruption of Osiris. You shall reach the sky as Orion, your soul shall be as effective as Sothis; have power, having power; be strong, having strength; may your soul stand among the gods as Horus who dwells i 'Irw. May the terror of you come into being in the hearts of the gods like the Nt-crown which is on the King of Lower Egypt, like the Mizwt- crown which is on the King of Upper Egypt, like the tress which is on vertex of the Mntw-tribesmen. You shall lay hold of the hand of the Imperishable Stars, your bones shall not perish, your flesh shall not sicken, O King, your members shall not be far from you, because you are one of the gods.
In another pyramid text a prayer is addressed to the goddess of weaving, called Tait.
Hail to you, Tait, who are upon the lip of the Great Lagoon, who reconciled the god to his brother! Do you exist, or do you not? Will you exist or will you not? Guard the King's head, lest it become loose,; gather together the King's bones, lest they become loose, and put the love of the King into the body of every god who shall see him.
(R.O. Faulkner, The Ancient Egyptian Pyramid Texts, Oxford 1969)
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