~Art criticism and art history~

The old kingdom In the old kingdom, the Egyptians built the pyramid tombs. The
pyramid tombs are the oldest and only surviving pyramids of the ancient wonders. Today
there are about eighty (80) surviving pyramids in Egypt, the three largest and best
preserved of these being at Giza, near the city of Cairo. They were built at the beginning of
the Old Kingdom starting around 2560BC (over 4,500 years ago!)

The middle kingdom In the Middle Kingdom, the Mastaba tomb came back again,
although in a more elaborate form for the Pharaohs. There were no more pyramids built.

The largest of the Pyramids at Giza is the "Great Pyramid" constructed for the pharaoh
Khufu. It is 146 metres high and covers more than 52,609 square metres. Historians believe
that it took over 100,000 workers and an estimated 2.3 million stone blocks about 20 years to
built this pyramid.

Early historians believed that only slaves were used to construct the pyramids but many
modern historians now think that the pharaoh Khufu employed people for three months of
each year during the time of the Nile's annual flood which made it impossible to farm the land
and most of the population was unemployed. By working on Khufu's "Great Pyramid" the
people had food and clothing during these periods of inactivity.

The pyramids were built as tombs or burial places for the Egyptian pharaohs or kings. It was
very important to the ancient Egyptians to protect the bodies of their pharaohs as they believed
in an after-life when they would climb into the sky and join the gods. To keep the mummified
body safe the insides of the pyramids were like mazes, with secret doors, dead-end passages
and booby-traps.

To help the pharaoh in his after-life jewelry, food, clothes, furniture and even servants and pets
were entombed with him. Because of this almost all the tombs and pyramids were ransacked
or "burgled" by tomb robbers many thousands of years ago who stole most of the treasures.