Tombs

This page is by:Tyler
= = =**Tombs**= Ancient Egyptian religion is often called a death cult, and there's much truth in this. Many of the activities and wealth of rich and poor was connected to death. Tombs were built as big and richly decorated as the owner could afford, and anyone with enough money to prepare for mummification, would prepare for it.

For some 3,000 years the Ancient Egyptians buried their dead on the edge of the western desert. It has been estimated that from the period of the Old Kingdom up to the Christian era that 150,000,000 to 200,000,000 people would have been buried in upper Egypt alone. Those people were buried in tombs alongside the Nile River. That's 150 to 200 million people buried in a strip of land about 450 miles long! They noticed that the sand helped dry them, and preserve them so that's why they buried them there.

Inside Ramses Tomb
=**W**hy they built the tombs= The Ancient Egyptians built the tombs to protect the bodies of the dead pharaohs from floods, wild animals and[| grave robbers]. The tombs also held supplies that the pharaoh might need in the spirit world, including clothing, furniture, jewelry and food.

The entrance to an Ancient Egyptian Tomb
=How they built the tombs= The Ancient Egyptians built tombs with many fake burial chambers to fool grave robbers. A long passageway normally led up to two chambers. One being the Antechamber (or fake chamber) and the other being the real Burial chamber where the pharaoh was buried. Connected to the Burial chamber was a treasury where the pharaohs kept the things that were important to them. Like[| gold and other amazing artifacts.] There were are also many sealed doorways so that if a grave robber did somehow enter the tombs those doors would make it difficult to get to the burial chamber.

These pyramids took more than manual labor to build though. Architects achieved an accurate pyramid shape by running ropes from the outer corners up to the planned summit, to make sure the stones were positioned correctly. =**Who Built the tombs**= Contrary to some popular depictoins, the pyramid were not slaves or foreigners. Some people considered it an honor to be involved in the building of a tomb. Excavated skeletons show that they were Egyptians who lived in villages developed and overseen by the pharaoh's supervisors.

The builders' villages boasted bakers, butchers brewers, granaries, houses cemeteries, and probably some sort of Health-care facilities--there is evidence of laborers survivong crushed or amputated limbs. Bakeries excavated near the Great Pyramids could have produced thousand of loaves of bread every week.

Some of the builders were permanent employees of the pharaoh. Others were conscripted for a limited time from some local villages. Some may have been women: Although no depictions of women builders have been found, some female skeletons show wear that might suggest that they labored with heavy stone for long periods of time.

An estimated 20,000 to 30,000 workers built the pyramids of Giza over an 80 year span. Much of the work on those pyramids probably happened during the Nile floods.

=What the tombs were modeled as= Before the pyramids, tombs (like the one below) were carved into the bedrock and topped and topped by flat roof structures called Mastabas. Mounds of dirt in turn would sometimes top the strustures. The pyramid shape of later tombs could have come from these mounds. More likely, Egyptian pyramids were modeled on a sacred, pointed stone named the benben. The benben symbolized the rays of the sun; ancient texts claimed that claimed that pharaohs reached the heavens through sunbeams.



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