Should people have built this? Anyone who stands in front of the monumental tombs will be overwhelmed by a solemn atmosphere that can quickly turn into funfair merriment.
They are larger than expected, significantly larger: is it still a building or is it already a mountain? Millions of tons of limestone blocks form three perfect pyramids that are up to 140 meters high and whose sides are up to 230 meters long. It is a solemn moment to stand in front of the tombs of the pharaohs Cheops (Khufu), Chephren and Menkaure for the first time in one’s life. Because everything about them is so unbelievable that even the most incredulous here suggests the presence of some kind of divine power. Is that supposed to have been built by people 4500 years ago? Without trucks, bulldozers and giant cranes? Dream On!
Alone, it was like that. Tens of thousands of workers brought the stone blocks, weighing several tons, by ship from quarries along a now dry arm of the Nile, piled them on top of each other using ramps made of Nile mud and sand, and finally covered them with polished, snow-white limestone slabs. Nobody knows how many of them died.
Only the ruler’s burial chamber is accessible today, through stuffy, steep passages in the Pyramid of Cheops, but where nothing can be seen save a neon-lit granite sarcophagus. The atmosphere is much nicer when walking around the pyramids. Horse-drawn carriage vendors, souvenir sellers, camel drivers and curious school classes scurry about. The atmosphere oscillates between fairground and reverence. Anyone who walks the dead straight processional path from the great sphinx, which represents Chephren, to his pyramid can well imagine how the mummy of the pharaoh was brought along this last path with a large entourage – 4500 years ago.