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| Artist's impression of The Great Pyramid (Copyright Lee Krystek, 1999.) |
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| Artist's impression of The Great Pyramid (Copyright Lee Krystek, 1999.) |
The monument was built by the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty around the year 2560 BC to serve as a tomb when he died.
It's 756 feet long on each side, and when it was built, the Great Pyramid was 145.75 m (481 ft) high. Over the years, it lost 10 m (30 ft) off its top. It ranked as the tallest structure on Earth for more than 43 centuries, only to be surpassed in height in the nineteenth century AD. It was covered with a casing of stones to smooth its surface (some of the casing can still be seen near the top of Khefre's Pyramid). The sloping angle of its sides is 51 degrees and 51 minutes. Each side is carefully oriented with one of the cardinal points of the compass, that is, north, south, east, and west. The horizontal cross section of the Pyramid is square at any level, with each side measuring 229 m (751 ft) in length. The maximum error between side lengths is astonishingly less than 0.1%.
The structure consists of approximately 2 million blocks of stone, each averaging 2.5 tons in weight. It has been suggested that there are enough blocks in the three pyramids to build a 3 m (10 ft) high, 0.3 m (1 ft) thick wall around France. The area covered by the Great Pyramid can accommodate St Peter's in Rome, the cathedrals of Florence, Milan, Westminster and St Paul's in London combined.
The Great Pyramid is the only one of the Seven Wonders to have survived to the present day. It is a monument to human endeavour and one of the great engineering marvels of all time. At around 4,500 years old, it is worthy of the ancient Arab proverb:
"Man fears Time, yet Time fears the Pyramids"
