THE GREAT PYRAMID

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 852, 21 December 1929, Page 7

THE GREAT PYRAMID

TWO MILLION BLOCKS EACH Z\ TONS A PHARAOH’S MIGHTY TOMB What presided over the erection of the Great Pyramid was not brute force, but organised ability, magnificently trained to use to the best advantage the strength of a race of fine workers, notes a Scottish reviewer of Dr. James Buikie’s new book, “A History of Egypt.” No doubt there was plenty of hard work at the building of the pyramid, more in all probability than anywhere else in the world at that time; no doubt, also, there were accidents and loss of life and maiming of limbs, as in every big piece of human work in all ages; but the place was not a shambles where slaves were driven till they died, but a hive of willing and skilled labour, in which men were proud to be able to say in after days that they had wrought. “How big the work was, everybody knows. The Greet Pyramid measures 755 feet along the baseline of each side. It is 451 feet in height, and in its present stripped condition it consists of more than 2,300,000 blocks of stone, weighing, on an average, zj ton? apiece, 'so that its total weight is about 5,750,000 tons. It has been calculated that the houses of a town to hold 120,000 people could be built-out of the materials of the pyramid, and that if its stones were divided up into blocks a foot square, and these were laid end to end, they would reach twothirds round the circumference of the earth at the Equator.

Astonishing Comparisons

“Perhaps the best idea of the astonishing magnitude of this huge tomb is afforded by a comparison of its area with that of a few famous buildings The area of the base of the Great Pyramid is 570,996 feet. That of St. Peter’s, Rome, is 227,000 feet; that of the Cathedral of Milan, 108,277; that of St. Paul’s, 84,311, and that of Westminster, 61,729. In other words, the area of the base of the Great Pyramid is two and a-half times as great as that of St. Peter’s, about five and aquarter times as great as that of Mi’an, six and three-quarters as great as that of St. Paul's, and more than nine times as great as that of Westminster Abbey. The whole of these four great cathedrals could be grouped within the area of the base of the pyramid, leaving room over for the accommodation of the Duomo of Florence or the Cathedral of Cologne, as might be found convenient.”