In fact, Pharaoh Khufu constructed the Great Pyramid well in advance of his death as his final resting place. His was not the first, however. Pyramid building was a tradition to the old Egyptians long before Khufu's era. "It started with the construction of a small structure known as Mastaba (the Mastaba is an Arabic word meaning a bench), where a king and his personal belongings were buried (Ashmawy)." Later kings and dynasties arose who seemed to want to outdo their predecessors, and subsequent structures grew larger and more complex, until the Great Pyramid outdid them all.
The purpose for the building of such great structures was related to the Egyptian religion. The Egyptian religion was a very complex one, with a belief in an afterlife as one of its most striking features. Furthermore, through the help of the scenes, paintings, and texts that are found on the walls of the Pyramids, we conclude that the reason that led the Egyptians to build the Pyramids was to protect the body of the mummified king. The reasoning behind mummification was itself religious. "They believed that as long as the .
Nation 3.
body endured the soul continued with it, not as quickening and animating it, but as an attendant or guardian unwilling to leave the former habitation (Moffet)." .
On the other hand, on entering the Great Pyramid investigators found that the pharaoh's body was missing, which lead the scientists to believe that it was stolen along with most of the treasures stored there, just as it had happened with other smaller pyramids which were also found empty. Moreover, the pyramidologists got the idea that these empty pyramids are tombs for old pharaohs, because there are more than seventy pyramids found in Egypt that contained mummified bodies of old dead kings (Gupton). .
As for the manner and means by which they were built, the conventional theory straightforwardly proposes that the limestone blocks of which the Pyramids are built were quarried from the Mokkatam Hills on the opposite bank of the Nile, and floated across in barges at flood time.
