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Egyptian Pyramids Essay

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When most people mention Ancient Egypt the first thing that comes to mind is the Pyramids. To construct such monuments required a mastery of art, architecture and social organization that few cultures would ever rival. The pyramids are said to have built Egypt by being the force that knit together the kingdom's economy. Their creations were so substantial, that the sight of these vast pyramids would take your breath away. Today, the valley of the Nile has an open air museum so people can witness these grand monuments. <br><br>Obsessed with the afterlife, Egypt's rulers of 4,500 years ago glorified themselves in stone, thereby laying the foundation of the first great nation-state. A Pyramid is an enormous machine that helps the king go …show more content…

Immovable doors hung on great carved hinges. Facades called false doors through which the pharaoh's ka, or vital force, was presumed to pass, lay recessed within walls. The interiors of dummy temples were packed with rubble. Everything about the place bespoke illusion. The Step Pyramid was a ladder. Not a symbol of a ladder but an actual one, by which the soul of a dead ruler might climb to the sky, joining the gods in immortality.<br><br>No one knows why the Egyptians created this fantastic scene, but some archaeologists speculate that there was an Old Kingdom belief that a work of art, a building, had power and utility in the afterlife in direct proportion to its uselessness in the real world. In this view, each false door, each dummy temple worked in the afterlife precisely because it could not function in this one. <br><br>On the north side of the pyramid is a small stone cubicle, with a pair of tiny holes in its facade. When you look through these holes, you see two eyes retuning your stare, the blank gaze of a life size statue of Djoser sitting on the throne. The holes are there for the pharaoh to look out perhaps at the stars in the northern sky called the Imperishables because they never set.<br><br>Many believe that the building of Djoser's pyramid complex, which was accomplished by hundreds of workers from across the land, served to join those provinces into the world's first nation-state. During the Old

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