The Three Pyramids of Giza: Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure

 

Standing on the Giza Plateau for more than four thousand years, the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure form one of the most extraordinary archaeological landscapes in the world.

Although they are often viewed simply as three enormous pyramids standing side by side, each monument belonged to a different king of Egypt's Fourth Dynasty and formed part of a much larger funerary complex. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities identifies the three pyramids as the royal tombs of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure.

Who Was Hatshepsut? The Woman Who Became Pharaoh of Egypt

 

Hatshepsut was one of the most remarkable rulers of ancient Egypt. Born into the royal family of the Eighteenth Dynasty, she began her life as a queen and later assumed the title and authority of king, ruling alongside her young stepson and nephew, Thutmose III. Her reign is generally dated to around 1473–1458 BCE.

From Royal Daughter to Queen

Hatshepsut was the daughter of Thutmose I and the principal wife of Thutmose II, according to the Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities. After Thutmose II died, his

Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari: History, Architecture and the Story of a Remarkable Pharaoh

 Temple of Hatshepsut at Deir el-Bahari is one of the most distinctive monuments of ancient Egypt. Built on the west bank of the Nile at Luxor during the reign of Queen Hatshepsut, the temple combines monumental architecture, religious symbolism, royal history, and some of the most informative reliefs from ancient Egypt.

Today, the temple stands beneath the dramatic cliffs of Deir el-Bahari, facing the ancient religious center of Thebes on the opposite bank of the Nile. It forms part of the archaeological landscape of Ancient Thebes and its Necropolis, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Where Is the Temple of Hatshepsut?

The temple is located at Deir el-Bahari on the west bank of Luxor, in southern Egypt.

Menkaure Pyramid – The Smallest of the Three Great Pyramids

The Pyramid of Menkaure is the smallest of the three great pyramids on the Giza Plateau, yet its architecture and unusual use of granite make it one of the most fascinating monuments of ancient Egypt.

Menkaure, known to the ancient Greeks as Mykerinos, was a king of Egypt's Fourth Dynasty and is generally identified as the builder of the Third Pyramid at Giza. The Egyptian Ministry of Tourism and Antiquities dates his reign to approximately 2532–2503 BC and describes him as most likely the son of Khafre and grandson of Khufu.

Khufu Pyramid: The Great Pyramid of Egypt

The Great Pyramid of Giza, also known as the Pyramid of Khufu or Pyramid of Cheops, is the largest and oldest of the three great pyramids on the Giza Plateau in Egypt.

Built during the reign of King Khufu of the Fourth Dynasty, the pyramid is generally dated to around 2589–2566 BC. With an original height of approximately 146.5 meters (481 feet), it remained the tallest human-made structure in the world for about 3,800 years. It is also the only surviving monument of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The Grand Egyptian Museum: A New Home for Ancient Egypt

Near the famous Pyramids of Giza stands one of Egypt's most remarkable modern cultural landmarks: the Grand Egyptian Museum (GEM).

Khafre Pyramid

The designations of the pyramids Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure correspond to the kings for whom they were built.

 The northernmost and oldest pyramid of the group was built for Khufu (Greek: Cheops), the second king of the 4th dynasty.

ZOSER PYRAMID

During an excavation in 1924-26, a pedestal of a statue of Djoser (Zoser) was found. This complex represents the first major work in stone. That is, unless there are other works that have yet to be found.

Who Built the Pyramids?

Over several seasons, Lehner surveyed the plateau to an accuracy of within a millimeter, and began to see with greater certainty how the pyramid builders had arranged themselves across the landscape. An ancient wadi—a desert streambed that flows with water only during the occasional downpour—would have made a perfect harbor, he surmised. The locations of the stone quarries, down the slope from the pyramids themselves, were known, and he thought he knew where a city of pyramid builders might fit into this pattern.

Explore the lives of the ancients ( Marriage to the Pharaohs )

To the ancient Egyptians, the most attractive women tended to be the fertile ones. A woman who had children was seen to be more fortunate than ones without. Taking after Isis, the mother goddess of Horus, Egyptian women strove to be intelligent, wise, mystical and mothers. Where her twin sister Nephthys was barren, Isis was fertile.

In the Egyptian community, men had to prove their masculinity by fathering children, while the women had to be able to bear these sons and daughters. Being a mother meant being able to keep her marriage secure and to gain a better position in society.

But an Egyptian family was not just a status symbol - the Egyptians loved their children and were not afraid to show it. But there were some advice to parents, written by scribes:

Do not prefer one of your children above the others; after all, you never know which one of them will be kind to you.

Unmarried women, on the other hand, seem to be free to choose partners as they so desire, and enjoy their love life to its fullest.

Adultery in Egypt was wrong. Women got the worst punishment for adultery - a man might just be forced into a divorce, but a woman could conceivably be killed for that crime. In the Tale of Two Brothers, the adulterous wife was found out, murdered and her body was thrown to the dogs.

Prostitutes advertised themselves through their clothing and make up. Some prostitutes wore blue faience beaded fish-net dresses, some of which is kept in the Weingreen Museum of Biblical Archaeology in Dublin. They painted their lips red, and tattooed themselves on the breasts or thighs and even went around totally nude.

What Did Herodotus Say About Ancient Egyptians?

When the Greek historian Herodotus visited Egypt in the fifth century BC, he devoted a large part of Book Two of The Histories to the country's people, customs, religion, and daily life.

His account is one of the most famous surviving descriptions of ancient Egypt written by a Greek observer. However, Herodotus often reported information that he had heard from local people as well as things he believed he had observed himself. For this reason, his statements must be treated as an important historical source, but not automatically as proof of every custom he described.

Sex and Fertility in Ancient Egypt: What the Evidence Tells Us

Ancient Egyptians viewed fertility, birth, family life, and reproduction as important parts of human existence. Evidence from temples, tombs, religious texts, medical papyri, and works of art shows that ideas about sexuality and fertility were present in several areas of Egyptian culture.

Hatshepsut Temple

Hatshepsut's chancellor, the royal architect Senenmut, oversaw the construction of the temple.

Although the adjacent, earlier mortuary temple of Mentuhotep II was used as a model, the two structures are nevertheless significantly different in many ways. Hatshepsut's temple employs a lengthy, colonnaded terrace that deviates from the centralised structure of Mentuhotep’s model – an anomaly that may be caused by the decentralized location of her burial chamber.

    

There are three layered terraces reaching 29.5 metres 

tall. Each story is articulated by a double colonnade of square piers, with the exception of the northwest corner of the central terrace, which employs proto-Doric columns to house the chapel. These terraces are connected by long ramps which were once surrounded by gardens with foreign plants including frankincense and myrrh trees.

The temple incorporates pylons, courts, hypostyle, sun court, chapel and sanctuary.

Under the Pharaohs

pharaoh

The word pharaoh ultimately derive from the Egyptian compound pr-ˤ "great house," written with the two biliteral hieroglyphs pr "house" and ˤ "column", here meaning "great" or "high". It was used only in larger phrases such as smr pr-ˤ "Courtier of the High House", with specific reference to the buildings of the court or palace.

 From the twelfth dynasty onward, the word appears in a wish formula "Great House, may it live, prosper, and be in health", but again only with reference to the royal palace and not the person.

During the reign of Thutmose III (circa 1479–1425 BCE) in the New Kingdom, after the foreign rule of the Hyksos during the Second Intermediate Period, pharaoh became the form of address for a person who was king.

The earliest instance where pr-ˤ3 is used specifically to address the ruler is in a letter to Amenhotep IV (Akhenaten), who reigned circa 1353–1336 BCE, which is addressed to "Pharaoh, all life, prosperity, and health".

 During the eighteenth dynasty (16th to 14th centuries BCE) the title pharaoh was employed as a reverential designation of the ruler. About the late twenty-first dynasty (10th century BCE), however, instead of being used alone as before, it began to be added to the other titles before the ruler's name, and from the twenty-fifth dynasty (eighth to seventh centuries BCE) it was, at least in ordinary usage, the only epithet prefixed to the royal appellative.

From the nineteenth dynasty onward pr-ˤ3 on its own was used as regularly as hm.f, "Majesty". The term, therefore, evolved from a word specifically referring to a building to a respectful designation for the ruler, particularly by the twenty-second dynasty and twenty-third dynasty.[citation needed]

For instance, the first dated appearance of the title pharaoh being attached to a ruler's name occurs in Year 17 of Siamun on a fragment from the Karnak Priestly Annals. Here, an induction of an individual to the Amun priesthood is dated specifically to the reign of Pharaoh Siamun.

 This new practice was continued under his successor Psusennes II and the twenty-second dynasty kings. For instance, the Large Dakhla stela is specifically dated to Year 5 of king "Pharaoh Shoshenk, beloved of Amun", whom all Egyptologists concur was Shoshenq I—the founder of the Twenty-second dynasty—including Alan Gardiner in his original 1933 publication of this stela.

 Shoshenq I was the second successor of Siamun. Meanwhile, the old custom of referring to the sovereign simply as pr-ˤ3 continued in traditional Egyptian narratives.

By this time, the Late Egyptian word is reconstructed to have been pronounced *[par-ʕoʔ] whence Herodotus derived the name of one of the Egyptian kings, Φερων.[10] In the Bible, the title also occurs as פרעה [par‘ōh]("Pharaoh").

 from that, Septuagint φαραώ pharaō and then Late Latin pharaō, both -n stem nouns. The Qur'an likewise spells it  fir'awn with "n" (here, always referring to the one evil king in the Exodus story, by contrast to the good king Aziz in sura 12's Joseph story). Interestingly, the Arabic combines the original pharyngeal ayin sound from Egyptian, along with the -n ending from Greek.

English at first spelt it "Pharao", but the King James Bible revived "Pharaoh" with "h" from the Hebrew. Meanwhile in Egypt itself, *[par-ʕoʔ] evolved into Sahidic Coptic ⲡⲣ̅ⲣⲟ prro and then rro (by mistaking p- as the definite article prefix "the" from ancient Egyptian p3).