(ABOUT 3000 TO 2500 B.C.) No traveler ever forgets the first drive from Cairo to the pyramids
of Gizeh, as he sees their giant forms rising higher and higher above the
crest of the western desert (Fig.
24). A thousand questions arise in the visitor’s mind. He
has read that these vast buildings he is approaching are tombs, in which
the kings of Egypt were buried. Such mighty buildings reveal many things
about the men who built them. In the first place, these tombs show that
the Egyptians believed in a life after death, and that to obtain such life
it was necessary to preserve the body from destruction. They built these
tombs to shelter and protect the body after death. From this belief came
also the practice of embalmment, by which the body was preserved as a mummy
(Fig. 72). It was then placed in the
great tomb, in a small room deep under the pyramid masonry. Other tombs
of masonry, much smaller in size, cluster about the pyramids in great numbers
(Figs. 39 and 42).
Here were buried the relatives of the king, and the great men of his court,
who assisted him in the government of the land. [NEXT]
FIG. 34. WINGED SUN-DISK, A SYMBOL OF THE SUN-GOD In this form the Sun-god was believed to be a falcon flying across the
sky. We shall later see how the other nations of the Orient in Asia also
adopted this Egyptian symbol
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68. The pyra- mids as royal tombs
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