Seven Wonders of the Ancient World
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World : Great
Pyramid of Giza | Hanging
Gardens of Babylon | Statue
of Zeus at Olympia | Temple
of Artemis | Mausoleum
of Maussollos | Colossus
of Rhodes | Lighthouse
of Alexandria
Great Pyramid of Giza
The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest and the largest
of the three pyramids in the Giza Necropolis bordering what is
now Cairo, Egypt in Africa ( 29°58'45.25?N, 31°08'03.75?E). The
oldest and only remaining member of the Seven Wonders of the World,
it is believed to have been constructed over a 20 year period
concluding around 2560 BC. The Great Pyramid was built as a tomb
for Fourth dynasty Egyptian pharaoh Khufu, and is sometimes called
Khufu's Pyramid or the Pyramid of Khufu.
Materials and workforce
Many varied estimates have been made regarding the workforce needed to construct the Great Pyramid. Herodotus, the Greek historian in the 5th century BC, estimated that construction may have required 100,000 workers for 20 years. Recent evidence has been found that suggests the workforce was in fact paid[citation needed], which would require accounting and bureaucratic skills of a high order. Polish architect Wieslaw Kozinski believed that it took as many as 20 men to transport a 1.5-ton stone block. Based on this, he estimated the workforce to be 300,000 men on the construction site, with an additional 60,000 off-site. 19th century Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie proposed that the workforce was largely composed not of slaves but of the rural Egyptian population, working during periods when the Nile river was flooded and agricultural activity suspended. Egyptologist Miroslav Verner posited that the labor was organized into a hierarchy, consisting of two gangs of 100,000 men, divided into five zaa or phyle of 20,000 men each, which may have been further divided according to the skills of the workers. Some research suggests alternate estimates to the accepted workforce size. For instance, mathematician Kurt Mendelssohn calculated that the workforce may have been 50,000 men at most, while Ludwig Borchardt and Louis Croon placed the number at 36,000. According to Verner, a workforce of no more than 30,000 was needed in the Great Pyramid's construction.
Alternative theories
In common with many other monumental structures from antiquity, the Great Pyramid has over time been the subject of a great number of speculative or alternative theories, which put forward a variety of explanations about its origins, dating, construction and purpose. In support of these claims such accounts either rely upon novel reinterpretations of the available data from fields such as archaeology, history and astronomy, or appeal to biblical, mythological, mystical, numerological, astrological and other esoteric sources of knowledge, or some combination of these.
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