Unsolved secrets on our planet are becoming less and less every year. The constant improvement of technology, the cooperation of scientists from various fields of science reveals to us the secrets and mysteries of history. But the secrets of the pyramids are still not understandable - all discoveries give scientists only tentative answers to many questions. Who built the Egyptian pyramids, what was the construction technology, whether the curse of the pharaohs exists - these and many other questions still remain without an exact answer.
Description of Egyptian Pyramids
Archaeologists speak of 118 pyramids in Egypt, partially or fully preserved to our time. Their age is from 4 to 10 millennia. One of them - Cheops - is the only surviving "miracle" from the "Seven Wonders of the World." The complex called the Great Pyramids in Giza, which includes and was also considered as a participant in the competition of the "New Seven Wonders of the World", but it was removed from participation, since these magnificent buildings are actually a "wonder of the world" in the ancient list. 
These pyramids became the most visited sightseeing sites in Egypt. They are perfectly preserved, which can not be said about many other structures - time did not spare them. Yes and locals contributed to the destruction of the majestic necropolises, removing the cladding and breaking stones from the walls to build their homes. 
Egyptian pyramids were built by the pharaohs, ruling from the XXVII century BC. e. and later. They were intended to repose the rulers. The huge scale of the tombs (some up to almost 150 m high) were supposed to testify to the greatness of the buried pharaohs, here were placed things that the ruler loved during his lifetime and which would be useful to him in the afterlife. 
For the construction, stone blocks of various sizes were used, which were hollowed out of the rocks, and later brick became the material for the walls. The stone blocks were sharpened and adjusted so that the knife blade could not slip between them. Blocks were stacked on top of each other with a shift of several centimeters, which formed a stepped surface of the structure. Almost all Egyptian pyramids have a square base, the sides of which are oriented strictly to the cardinal points. 
Since the pyramids performed the same function, that is, they served as the burial place of the pharaohs, both inside the device and decoration they are similar. The main component is the funeral room, where the ruler’s sarcophagus was installed. The entrance was arranged not at ground level, but several meters higher, and was masked by facing plates. From the entrance to the inner hall there were stairs and corridor passages that sometimes narrow so much that they can only be squatted or crawled through. 
In most necropolises, funeral rooms (chambers) are below ground level. Ventilation was carried out through narrow shaft channels, which pierced the walls. Cave paintings and ancient religious texts are found on the walls of many pyramids - in fact, from them, scientists draw part of the information about the construction and owners of burials. 
The main riddles of the pyramids
The list of unsolved riddles begins with the form of necropolises. Why was the pyramid shape chosen, which translates from Greek as “polyhedron”? Why are the edges clearly located on the cardinal points? How did the huge stone blocks move from the place of development and how were they raised to a great height? Have the buildings been erected by aliens or people who own a magic crystal? 
Scientists even argue over the question of who built such high monumental structures that have stood for millennia. Some believe that they were built by slaves who died hundreds of thousands in the construction of each. However, new discoveries by archaeologists and anthropologists convince us that the builders were free people who received good nutrition and medical care. They made such conclusions based on the composition of the bones, the structure of the skeletons and the cured injuries of buried builders. 
Mystical coincidences were attributed to all deaths and deaths of people involved in the study of the Egyptian pyramids, which provoked rumors and talk about the curse of the pharaohs. There is no scientific evidence for this. Perhaps rumors were sent to scare away thieves and looters who want to find valuable things and jewelry in the graves. 
Mysterious and interesting facts include the tight schedule for the construction of Egyptian pyramids. According to calculations, large necropolises at that level of technology should have been built in at least a century. How, for example, was the Cheops Pyramid built in just 20 years? 
Great Pyramids
This is the name of the burial complex near the city of Giza, consisting of three large pyramids, a huge statue of the Sphinx and small satellite pyramids, which were probably intended for the wives of the rulers. 
The initial height of the Cheops pyramid was 146 m, the length of the side was 230 m. It was built in 20 years in the XXVI century BC. e. The largest of Egyptian attractions has not one, but three burial halls. One of them is below ground level, and two are above the base line. The interlocking corridor passages lead to the burial chambers. On them you can go to the chamber of the pharaoh (king), to the chamber of the queen and to the lower hall. The chamber of the pharaoh is a pink granite chamber, measuring 10x5 m. A granite sarcophagus without a cover is installed in it. None of the scientists' reports contained information on the found mummies, so it is not known whether Cheops was buried here. By the way, the mummy of Cheops was not found in other tombs. 
It still remains a mystery whether the Cheops pyramid was used for its intended purpose, and if so, then it was apparently looted by looters in past centuries. The name of the ruler, by order and project of which this tomb was built, was learned from the drawings and hieroglyphics above the burial chamber. All other Egyptian pyramids, with the exception of Djoser, have a simpler engineering device. 
The other two necropolises in Giza, built for the heirs of Cheops, are somewhat more modest in size:
Tourists travel to Giza from all over Egypt, because this city is actually a suburb of Cairo, and all transport interchanges lead to it. Travelers from Russia usually travel to Giza as part of excursion groups from Sharm el-Sheikh and Hurghada. The trip is long, 6-8 hours one way, so the tour is usually designed for 2 days. 
Great buildings are available for visiting only during working hours, usually up to 5 p.m., in the month of Ramadan - up to 3 p.m. Asthmatics, as well as people suffering from claustrophobia, nervous and cardiovascular diseases, are not recommended to go inside. You must take drinking water and hats with you on an excursion. The fee for excursions consists of several parts:
- Entrance to the complex.
- Entrance inside the pyramid of Cheops or Chefren.
- Entrance to the Museum of the Sun Rook, on which the body of the pharaoh was transported across the Nile.
Against the background of the Egyptian pyramids, many love to take photos while sitting on camels. You can bargain with camel owners.
Djoser Pyramid
The first pyramid in the world is located in Saqqara, near Memphis - former capital Ancient Egypt. Today, the Djoser pyramid is not as attractive for tourists as the Cheops necropolis, but at one time it was the largest in the country and the most complex in terms of engineering design. 
The burial complex included chapels, courtyards, storage. The six-step pyramid itself has not a square base, but a rectangular one, with sides 125x110 m. The height of the structure is 60 m, inside it there are 12 burial chambers, where Joser himself and his family members were presumably buried. The mummy of the pharaoh during excavations could not be found. The entire territory of the complex of 15 hectares was surrounded by a stone wall 10 m high. At present, a part of the wall and other buildings has been restored, and the pyramid, whose age is close to 4700 years, has been preserved quite well.
MOSCOW, July 12 - RIA Novosti.Egyptians from the AERA collaboration found out how the passages were arranged in the Cheops pyramid and restored the security system that protected the tomb of the pharaoh from tomb raiders, reports Live Science.
“I believe that Cheops’s funeral room has not yet been opened by us, and that all three tombs we know were built to confuse potential thieves. Pharaoh’s treasures still lie inside the pyramid,” said Zahi Hawass , former Egyptian Minister of Antiquities, whose words are quoted by Live Science.
The Cheops Pyramid, one of the seven original wonders of the world, was built in the middle of the third millennium BC by the pharaoh Khufu (Cheops), a representative of the fourth dynasty of the Old Kingdom, during which all the "great pyramids" of Ancient Egypt were built. This structure is 145 meters high and 230 meters wide and long remains one of the tallest and largest buildings ever created by mankind.
Over the past two centuries, scientists have discovered three rooms inside the pyramid, in one of which the pharaoh himself was presumably buried, the other his wife, and the third was considered a bait or trap for robbers. In the walls of the corridors that lead to the tomb of Khufu, unusual channels and structures were found that scientists today consider elements of a "security system" that protected the pharaoh from defilers.
A group of archaeologists from the AERA collaboration, led by Mark Lehner, analyzed the structure of these channels and blocks that were supposedly installed in them, and restored, so far in the virtual world, the construction of the world's first “safe”.
Cheops’s pyramid is beveled sideways, scientists sayCheops’s famous pyramid wasn’t as perfect as we thought before - scientists have found that it is slightly slanted on its side and that its eastern side is slightly shorter than the other three slopes of the “great pyramid”.According to scientists, the tomb of Cheops was protected from burglars by two levels of protection. The first of them was at the entrance to the tomb of the pharaoh herself - it was covered with three monolithic stone slabs, which were raised above its entrance with the help of grooves and blocks, and were probably held in place by some supports.
The second obstacle for thieves was installed in the so-called inner sanctuary, inside of which was the entrance to the tomb of Cheops. The entrance to it was closed in a similar way, using stone slabs that were lowered down through the grooves and channels in the walls of the pyramid.
All these measures did not save the pyramid from plunder - when scientists began to study it in the 19th century, the entrance to the tomb of Cheops was already open. On the other hand, according to some archaeologists, the fourth chamber may still be hidden in the pyramid, no one has yet found an entrance to it. Now archaeologists from the AERA collaboration and engineers and physicists are studying the Cheops pyramid using a “space” muon scanner that can see voids the size of a meter or less.
Scientists expect that the first data on the Giza pyramids will be obtained in early July, when muon photographic plates accumulate a sufficient number of collisions with "cosmic" particles. These data will help us understand how true the hypothesis of Zaha Havas is about, which he started talking about three years ago.
1. The three most famous Egyptian pyramids are those located in the Necropolis of Giza, but in fact in the area of \u200b\u200bancient Egypt, approximately 140 pyramids were discovered.
2. The most ancient Egyptian pyramid is the Djoser Pyramid, which was built in the Necropolis of Saqqara in the 27th century BC.
3. While the Djoser Pyramid is considered the oldest, the Cheops Pyramid is the largest. The initial height of the pyramid was 146.5 meters, and the current height is 138.8 meters.
4. Until the Lincoln Cathedral of the Virgin Mary was built in England in 1311, the Great Pyramid of Giza held the title of the tallest structure in the world created by human hands. She kept the record for at least three thousand years!
5. The Great Pyramid of Giza is the oldest of the Seven Wonders Ancient World and the last one available at the moment.
6. Estimates of the number of workers involved in the construction of the pyramids vary greatly, however, it is likely that they were built by at least 100,000 people.
7. The pyramids of Giza are guarded by the Great Sphinx, the largest monolithic sculpture in the world. It is believed that the face of the sphinx was given a resemblance to the face of the pharaoh Chephren.
8. All Egyptian pyramids were built on west bank the Nile River, which is the place of sunset and associated with the kingdom of the dead in Egyptian mythology.
9. The ancient Egyptians buried their noble citizens in pyramids with funeral gifts, which ranged from household items to the most expensive things, such as jewelry. They believed that the dead would use them in the afterlife.
10. The very first known architect of the pyramids was Imhotep, an ancient Egyptian scholar, engineer and doctor. He is considered the author of the first major pyramid - the Djoser Pyramid.
11. While experts generally agree on the hypothesis that the pyramids were built from huge stones carved with copper chisels in quarries, the methods used to move and stack them are still the subject of heated debate and speculation.
12. Another, relatively obvious, is the fact that the methods used to build the pyramids developed over time. The pyramids of a later period are not constructed in the same way as the earliest pyramids.
13. After the end of the period of construction of the pyramids in Ancient Egypt, an outbreak of the construction of the pyramids in the territory of modern Sudan began.
14. In the 12th century, an attempt was made to destroy the pyramids of Giza. Al-Azis, the Kurdish ruler and second sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty, tried to demolish them, but he had to surrender, since this task was too large-scale. However, he managed to damage the Pyramid of Mikerin, where, due to his attempts, a vertical gaping pit remained in its northern slope.
15. The three pyramids of Giza are precisely aligned in accordance with the constellation of Orion, which could well be the idea of \u200b\u200bthe builders, since the stars of Orion were associated with Osiris, the god of rebirth and afterlife in ancient Egyptian mythology.
16. According to estimates, the Great Pyramid of Giza consists of 2,300,000 stone blocks that weigh from 2 to 30 tons, and some of them even weigh more than 50 tons.
17. Initially, the pyramids were covered with facing stones made of well-polished white limestone. These stones reflected the light of the sun and made the pyramids shine like precious stones.
18. When facing stones covered the pyramids, they could be seen from the mountains in Israel, and maybe even from the moon.
19. Despite the wild heat around the pyramids, the temperature in the pyramids themselves actually remains relatively constant and remains in the region of 20 degrees Celsius.
21. The Cheops Pyramid was built face-down to the north. In fact, it is the most carefully north-aligned building in the world. Despite the fact that it was built millennia ago, the pyramid still stands facing north, with only a slight error. However, the error occurred because the North Pole is gradually shifting, which means that once the pyramid was directed exactly north.
22. On average, the construction of each pyramid took 200 years. This means that often several, rather than one pyramid, were built at once.
23. One of the reasons why the pyramids are so well preserved is the unique cement mortar used in them. It is stronger than real stone, but we still do not know how they prepared it.
24. Contrary to popular belief, the pyramids were most likely not built by slaves or prisoners. They were built by ordinary workers who received wages.
25. Although many people associate pyramids with hieroglyphs, in Great Pyramid Giza no records or characters were found.