Sticks, Stones, & Shadows
Subtitle: Building the Egyptian Pyramids
Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
Published: November 2001
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 352
ISBN-13: 9780806133423
Subjects: Egyptian archaeology; History - General History; Ancient Architecture; Ancient Egypt - History; History; History: World; Egypt; Ancient - Egypt; Middle East - Egypt; Design and construction; Pyramids
First sentence: The similarity of the monuments of Mexico to the earliest pyramid of Egypt, with its set-back levels, is startling.
Description: What do the pyramids of Egypt really represent? What could have driven so many to so great, and often so dangerous, an effort? Was the motivation religious or practical? Illustrated with more than 300 photographs and drawings, this book presents an original approach to the subject of pyramid building. It reveals the connection between devices that served both a practical need for survival and a spiritual belief in gods and goddesses. It examines Egyptian technologies and techniques from the origins of pyramid development to the step-by-step details of how the ground was leveled, how the site was oriented, and how the stone was raised and placed to meet at a distant point in the sky. Here the author also asks and answers questions virtually ignored for the last century. He discloses, for example, the ancient use of shadows, now denigrated to the ornamental back-yard sundial, but once an important tool for telling the height of an object, geographical directions, the seasons of the year, and the time of day. He also reinterprets the ancient "stretching of the cord" ceremony, which once was thought to have only religious significance but here is shown as the means of establishing the sides of a pyramid.