Pyramids
There is no doubt that the pyramids are considered one of the greatest architectural structures witnessed and contemplated by the ancient and modern man to our time, and they are considered one of the most important achievements of the ancient Egyptian man, as the pyramids were used in the past in the era of the ancient Egyptians as great royal burials.
Among the most important of these are the pyramids of Giza in Egypt and one of the most important These pyramids are the pyramid of Khufu, which is considered one of the Seven Wonders of the World, where the pyramids are considered characteristics of the ancient Egyptian civilization, although there are some pyramids that have been discovered on the American continent that refer to the Utica and Mayan civilization.
The architectural form of the pyramid
The pyramid contains a square base that rises on each of its four sides a triangle that tilts inward as the building rises until the four sides of the triangle meet at the top of the pyramid, and each of the four sides faces one of the original four sides, and the pyramids are built by means of stones that are placed above Some have an angle of inclination of about 45 degrees from each side of the triangle until all of them meet at the top.
There are many different forms of pyramids, and there are in Egypt the listed pyramid, which is the pyramid of Saqqara, which is considered one of the first pyramids in the ancient Egyptian civilization, as it differs in form and architectural design from the pyramids of Giza in terms of size and shape of design from the outside, but all the functions of the pyramid have met, which all aim to be a cemetery Ownership is nothing more than that although the architects at that time were careful in designing the pyramids, this indicates the extent of their architectural and functional importance in the life of the ancient Egyptian person.
The purpose of building the pyramids
The purpose of building the pyramids is to use it as a funerary function and a seat for the burial of the mummy of the king where the pyramids were intended only for kings as men in the beginning and then became for the queens as well, and the exaggeration in the size of the pyramid had a great purpose and that it was intended to maximize the alleged divine nature of the king and give to his soul And his path after his death to ascend to the sun god, which is in the form of a stepped staircase.
The ancient Egyptian doctrine and the ancient Egyptian belief in life after death are considered to have greatly affected the development of the tomb’s form, reaching the hierarchical form, where the other life was not very different from worldly life, so the body had to be preserved intact until the soul returned to it again after death, similar to That is, the tomb was built and provided with many of the requirements of daily life in order to secure the needs of the dead and help him to live after death, as this was called (the house of eternity).
Tomb building developments until it reached a pyramid shape
The shape of the tomb was initially an oval or round pit and was not deep, then its shape became rectangular, and the roof was placed by branches of trees and divided into two parts: one for funeral furniture and the other for visitors to graves.
And with the beginning of the era of imams, the shape of the royal tomb developed and there became a big difference between the tombs of ordinary individuals and royal tombs, where the royal tombs of each of the kings of the first family were kings of the second family in the northern Saqqara from a burial chamber located under the surface of the earth and surrounded by other rooms and funerary furniture stores that were The king needed him to die, according to the beliefs of the ancient Egyptians, and on the surface of the ground was another large rectangular building similar to the terraces that the villagers built in Egypt in front of and inside their homes, and they were covered with clay mortar and white lime paint and were decorated with serrated molds or grills.
The first hierarchical tomb
After these developments, until we reached the hierarchical form, King Djoser, founder of the Third Dynasty (2780 BC) was considered the first to build a pyramid-shaped tomb, and at that time the architect was Imhotep, the chief priest of Ain Shams, where King Djoser ordered him to build a huge architectural complex in the Saqqara region.
Then he built the burial chamber and its annexes under the surface of the earth, and it was difficult to reach it through a long descending tunnel, and this was intended due to the difficulty of looting the tombs from thieves, then after that, he built on the ground level a square terrace and five additional mastabas above it so that the total of the terraces of the pyramid is six terraces smaller in size Each mastaba was separated from the other starting from the first mastaba and then the next to the top of the pyramid, The area of each mastaba is less than the other, starting from the first mastaba and then the next to the top of the pyramid, and it was made of fine limestone, and then the construction of tombs continued in the form of a hierarchical, graded pyramid.