No pyramids are more celebrated than the Great Pyramids of
Giza, located on a plateau on the west bank of the Nile River, on the outskirts
of modern-day Cairo. The oldest and largest of the three pyramids at Giza,
known as the Great Pyramid, is the only surviving structure out of the famed
seven wonders of the ancient world. It was built for Khufu (Cheops, in Greek),
Sneferu's successor and the second of the eight kings of the fourth dynasty.
Though Khufu reigned for 23 years (2589-2566 B.C.), relatively little is known
of his reign beyond the grandeur of his pyramid. The sides of the pyramid's
base average 755.75 feet (230 meters), and its original height was 481.4 feet
(147 meters), making it the largest pyramid in the world. Three small pyramids
built for Khufu's queens are lined up next to the Great Pyramid, and a tomb was
found nearby containing the empty sarcophagus of his mother, Queen Hetepheres.
Like other pyramids, Khufu's is surrounded by rows of mastabas, where relatives
or officials of the king were buried to accompany and support him in the
afterlife.
The middle pyramid at Giza was built for Khufu's son Khafre
(2558-2532 B.C). A unique feature built inside Khafre's pyramid complex was the
Great Sphinx, a guardian statue carved in limestone with the head of a man and
the body of a lion. It was the largest statue in the ancient world, measuring
240 feet long and 66 feet high. In the 18th dynasty (c. 1500 B.C.) the Great
Sphinx would come to be worshiped itself, as the image of a local form of the
god Horus. The southernmost pyramid at Giza was built for Khafre's son Menkaure
(2532-2503 B.C.). It is the shortest of the three pyramids (218 feet) and is a
precursor of the smaller pyramids that would be constructed during the fifth
and sixth dynasties.
Approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone (averaging about
2.5 tons each) had to be cut, transported and assembled to build Khufu's Great
Pyramid. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus wrote that it took 20 years to
build and required the labor of 100,000 men, but later archaeological evidence
suggests that the workforce might actually have been around 20,000. Though some
popular versions of history held that the pyramids were built by slaves or
foreigners forced into labor, skeletons excavated from the area show that the
workers were probably native Egyptian agricultural laborers who worked on the
pyramids during the time of year when the Nile River flooded much of the land
nearby.
SOURCE : http://www.history.com/topics/the-egyptian-pyramids