Number of words – 262<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why were these particular pyramids built? Were they just individual tombs for individual pharaohs? Here\u2019s where there\u2019s some disagreement. Traditional Egyptologists suppose that a new pyramid was built for each new pharaoh. But if a pharaoh reigned 40 years, and his pyramid could be completed in 20, the huge work crews would have to be sent home. And then have to be reorganised at start of the next reign. The mammoth logistic problem of each new start up has led one analyst, Kurt Mendelssohn, to suggest that pyramid building may have been continuous. Fewer labourers were needed as they neared the top of a pyramid. But they weren\u2019t sent home until time for the next pyramid. They were just ordered to a new site to start another pyramid, right away, independent of the reigns of the pharaohs. History\u2019s first make-work project!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This argument fits the numbers better too \u2013 the number of workers needed to drag nine million stone blocks into place in a hundred and years. And it makes a plausible case for why this particular sequence of pyramids was built. Mendelssohn has proposed that because of the antagonism between the tribes of the Valley and Delta kingdoms, pyramid building was intended to weld the two kingdoms of Egypt into a unitary state. To engage the peasants in an all-consuming project that kept them busy and out of trouble every summer while the Nile flooded their farmland \u2013 to impose a single, national allegiance over the many tribal loyalties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n