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Pyramid Lake Reservoir in California is a reservoir formed by Pyramid Dam on Piru Creek in the eastern San Emigdio Mountains, near Castaic, Southern California. It is a part of the West Branch California Aqueduct, which is a part of the California State Water Project. Wikipedia
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The Pyramid of Menkaure, located on the Giza Plateau in the southwestern outskirts of Cairo, Egypt, is the smallest of the three Pyramids of Giza. It is thought to have been built to serve as the tomb of the fourth dynasty Egyptian Pharaoh Menkaure.
Menkaure's Pyramid had an original height of 65.5 metres (215 feet) and was the smallest of the three major pyramids at the Giza Necropolis. It now stands at 61 m (204 ft) tall with a base of 108.5 m. Its angle of incline is approximately 51°20′25″. It was constructed of limestone and granite. The first sixteen courses of the exterior were made of granite. The upper portion was cased in the normal manner with Tura limestone. Part of the granite was left in the rough. Incomplete projects like this help archeologists understand the methods used to build pyramids and temples. South of the pyramid of Menkaure were 3 satellite pyramids none of which appear to have been completed. The largest was made partly in granite like the main pyramid. Neither of the other 2 progressed beyond the construction of the inner core.
Herodotus's legend
Menkaure was allegedly a much more benevolent Pharaoh than his predecessors. According to legends related by Herodotus, he wrote the following:
"This Prince (Mycerinus) disapproved of the conduct of his father, reopened the temples and allowed the people, who were ground down to the lowest point of misery, to return to their occupations and to resume the practice of sacrifice. His justice in the decision of causes was beyond that of all the former kings. The Egyptians praise him in this respect more highly than any other monarchs, declaring that he not only gave his judgements with fairness, but also, when anyone was dissatisfied with his sentence, made compensation to him out of his own purse and thus pacified his anger."
The Gods however ordained that Egypt should suffer tyrannical rulers for a hundred and fifty years according to this legend, Herodotus goes on:
"An oracle reached him from the town of Buto, which said 'six years only shalt thou live upon this earth, and in the seventh thou shalt end thy days'. Mycerinus, indignant, sent an angry message to the oracle, reproaching the god with his injustice -'My father and uncle,' he said 'though they shut up the temples, took no thought of the gods and destroyed multitudes of men, nevertheless enjoyed a long life; I, who am pious , am to die soon!' There came in reply a second message from the oracle - 'for this very reason is thy life brought so quickly to a close - thou hast not done as it behoved thee. Egypt was fated to suffer affliction one hundred and fifty years - the two kings who preceded thee upon the throne understood this - thou hast not understood it' Mycerinus, when this answer reached him, perceiving that his doom was fixed, had lamps prepared, which he lighted every day at eventime, and feasted and enjoyed himself unceasingly both day and night, moving about in the marsh-country and the woods, and visiting all the places he heard were agreeable sojourns. His wish was to prove the oracle false, by turning night into days and so living twelve years in the space of six.Temple complex
In the mortuary temple the foundations and the inner core were made of limestone. The floors were begun with granite and granite facings were added to some of the walls. The foundations of the valley temple were made of stone. However they were both finished with crude bricks. Reisner estimated that some of the blocks of local stone in the walls of the mortuary temple weighed as much as 220 tons, while the heaviest granite ashlars imported from Aswan weighed more than 30 tons. It is not unusual for a son or successor to complete a temple when a Pharaoh dies so it is not unreasonable to assume that Shepseskaf finished the temples with crude brick. There was an inscription in the mortuary temple that said he "made it (the temple) as his monument for his father, the king of upper and lower Egypt." During excavations of the temples Reisner found a large number of statues mostly of Menkaure alone and as a member of a group. These were all carved in the naturalistic style of the old kingdom with a high degree of detail evident.
The pyramid's date of construction is unknown, because Menkaure's reign has not been accurately defined, but it was probably completed in the 26th century BC. It lies a few hundred meters southwest of its larger neighbors, the Pyramid of Khafre and the Great Pyramid of Khufu in the Giza necropolis.
Coffin and sarcophagus
Richard William Howard Vyse, who first visited Egypt in 1835, discovered in the upper antechamber the remains of a wooden anthropoid coffin inscribed with Menkaure's name and containing human bones. This is now considered to be a substitute coffin from the Saite period, and radiocarbon dating on the bones determined them to be less than 2,000 years old[citation needed], suggesting either an all-too-common bungled handling of remains from another site, or access to the pyramid during Roman times. Deeper into the pyramid Vyse came upon a beautiful basalt sarcophagus, rich in detail with a bold projecting cornice. Unfortunately, this sarcophagus now lies at the bottom of the Mediterranean, sinking on October 13, 1838, with the ship Beatrice, as she made her way between Cartagena and Malta, on the way to Great Britain.[4] It is one of only a handful of extant Old Kingdom sarcophagi. The anthropoid coffin, however, was successfully transported on a separate ship and may be seen today at the British Museum.
Attempted demolition
At the end of the twelfth century al-Malek al-Aziz Othman ben Yusuf, Saladin's son and heir, attempted to demolish the pyramids starting with Menkaure's pyramid. The workmen who Al-Aziz had recruited to demolish the pyramid found it almost as expensive to destroy as to build. They stayed at their job for eight months. They were not able to remove more than one or two stones each day at a cost of tiring themselves out utterly. Some used wedges and levers to move the stones while others used ropes to pull them down. When it fell it would bury itself in the sand requiring extraordinary efforts to free it. Wedges were used to split the stones into several pieces and a cart was used to carry it to the foot of the escarpment, where it was left. Far from accomplishing what they intended to do they merely spoiled the pyramid by leaving a large vertical gash in its north face.
The sole surviving ancient wonder of the world, Egypt's Giza pyramids are on the outskirts of Cairo city. This is the pyramid of King Khufu (Cheops), the largest of the three.
According to Toby Wilkinson's excellent 'The rise and fall of Ancient Egypt', it's built from more than 2.3 million blocks of stone, each weighing on average about a ton, covering an area of 13 square acres. I really hope he has his maths right since I doubt modern technology could lay one block of stone every two minutes, ten hours a day for twenty years and meet Australian industrial relations best practice. I know it was an autocracy but what, no smoko? Khufu reigned from 2545-2525 BC. The completed pyramid once stood at 481 feet high and was the tallest building in the world until 1889, when the Eiffel Tower took the accolade.
La necrópolis de Guiza es la mayor del Antiguo Egipto, con enterramientos datados desde las primeras dinastías.
Su esplendor lo alcanzó durante la cuarta dinastía, cuando se erigieron la pirámide de Jufu (Keops), también conocida como la Gran Pirámide, la pirámide de Jafra (Kefrén) y la relativamente pequeña pirámide de Menkaura (Micerino, donde entramos), junto con varias otras subsidiarias menores.
También se esculpió en la roca de la meseta la Gran Esfinge de Guiza.
Asociados a estos monumentos reales se encuentran numerosas mastabas de miembros de la familia real, otras concedidas por el faraón a funcionarios y sacerdotes, y algunos monumentos de épocas posteriores relacionados con el culto a los antepasados.
De las tres pirámides principales se conserva su núcleo, conformado por bloques de piedra caliza, pero de su revestimiento, de caliza pulida o granito rosado, solo quedan algunos restos, pues estos bloques fueron utilizados para construir edificios en la cercana ciudad de El Cairo.
La pirámide de Jafra (Kefrén) parece la más alta, pero es debido a que fue construida sobre una zona más elevada de la meseta de Guiza; en realidad es la que se adjudica a Jufu (Keops) la de mayor altura y volumen. La Gran Pirámide estaba considerada en la antigüedad una de las Siete maravillas del mundo, y es la única de las siete que aun perdura.
El conjunto es Patrimonio de la Humanidad de la UNESCO desde 1979.
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The Giza Necropolis is an archaeological site on the Giza Plateau, on the outskirts of Cairo, Egypt. This complex of ancient monuments includes the three pyramid complexes known as the Great Pyramids, the massive sculpture known as the Great Sphinx, several cemeteries, a workers' village and an industrial complex.
The pyramids, which have always loomed large as emblems of ancient Egypt in the Western imagination, were popularised in Hellenistic times, when the Great Pyramid was listed by Antipater of Sidon as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is by far the oldest of the ancient Wonders and the only one still in existence.
The Pyramids of Giza consist of the Great Pyramid of Giza (known as the Great Pyramid and the Pyramid of Cheops or Khufu), the somewhat smaller Pyramid of Khafre (or Chephren), and the relatively modest-sized Pyramid of Menkaure (or Mykerinos). The Great Sphinx lies on the east side of the complex. Current consensus among Egyptologists is that the head of the Great Sphinx is that of Khafre. Along with these major monuments are a number of smaller satellite edifices, known as "queens" pyramids, causeways and valley pyramids.
The Transamerica Pyramid in the Financial District of San Francisco, California, United States, is a 48-story postmodern building and the second-tallest skyscraper in the San Francisco skyline. The building no longer houses the headquarters of the Transamerica Corporation, which moved its U.S. headquarters to Baltimore, Maryland, but it is still associated with the company and is depicted in the company's logo. Designed by architect William Pereira and built by Hathaway Dinwiddie Construction Company, at 853 feet (260 m), on completion in 1972 it was the eighth-tallest building in the world. Because of the shape of the building, the majority of the windows can pivot 360 degrees so they can be washed from the inside. Model Credit: Amanda Brown (@amandabrrownn)
The Red Pyramid at Dashur was the third attempt at a pyramid for Snefru, the inaugural 4th Dynasty ruler who (rather madly) ordered the largest construction spree in human history via continual tomb-building projects. Two previous tombs appear to have been abandoned, with the collapse of a partially completed steep-walled pyramid at Meidum, and then the unused Bent pyramid about 2km to the south. The latter's angle was found to be too steep midway during construction and was adjusted to lower angle on its upper half; the Red Pyramid has this same angle (43°) throughout but a larger footprint, bringing it to equal the 105m height of the Bent Pyramid. The result was evidently the first straight-sided true pyramid. Though it was immediately surpassed by the Great Pyramid at Giza, the Red Pyramid remains the third largest ever completed.
In the foreground is the area of the mortuary temple at the western face of the pyramid. Fragments of a pyramidion have been set up on a modern base here.
4th Dynasty, early 26th century BCE, Dashur.
La pyramide du Louvre est une pyramide constituée de verre et de métal, située au milieu de la cour Napoléon du musée du Louvre à Paris. Elle abrite l'entrée principale du musée.
Commandée par François Mitterrand en 1983, la pyramide a été conçue par l'architecte sino-américain Ieoh Ming Pei. La structure métallique qui supporte le parement en verre est faite d'acier et d'aluminium et pèse 200 tonnes ; elle s'élève à 21,64 mètres sur une base carrée de 35,42 mètres de côté. Elle est recouverte de 603 losanges et de 70 triangles en verre et est la première grande construction à utiliser le verre feuilleté.
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Here's a new one from the weekend.
I named it Pyramid Barn because when looking at it from the right spot it kinda did look like a pyramid and as I was standing there taking this shot in the middle of a vast expanse of farmland I had a sudden flashback to the Glastonbury festivals I attended in '98, '00 and '02.
I got a little creative with the post processing to try and bring out the soft pastels that were in the RAW file and make them glow a little more intensely than they appeared in real, but we won't tell anyone about that ;)
a smooth-sided pyramid built in the 24th century BC for the Egyptian pharaoh Unas.
Unas built his pyramid between the complexes of Sekhemket and Djoser, in North Saqqara. Anchored to the valley temple at a nearby lake, a long causeway was constructed to provide access to the pyramid site. The pyramid is situated on the Saqqara plateau and lies on a line running from the pyramid of Sekhemkhet to the pyramid of Menkauhor.[18] The site required the construction of an exceptionally long causeway to reach a nearby lake, suggesting the site held some significance to Unas.
A late afternoon / evening photo-cruise around Pyramid Valley (North Canterbury) is always worthwhile. The environment changes quite dramatically in colour scheme throughout the seasons, and I was surprised how green it is - reflects the mild summer we're having so far.
Wasn't as much cloud around at sunset as I like, yet the more subtle tones can be quite relaxing to enjoy.
Kay Martin - The Divorcees
Pyramid Books F-750, 1962
Cover Artist: Rudy Nappi
"Three mixed-up, sex-starved women on the loose in Reno."
Kay Martin was a pseudonym of Adela Maritano.
Today there was little wind, so I could get close: pyramidal orchid (Anacamptis pyramidalis).
Heute war kaum wind, sodass ich nah heran konnte: die Pyramidenhundswurz (Anacamptis pyramidalis).
The Pyramidal Orchid is a small orchid - its pink flower spike forms a pyramidal shape. It grows on chalk grassland, coastal habitats, scrub, roadside verges, old quarries and railway embankments. It flowers in June and July, holding up to 100 flowers. This one was spotted in Moulsecoomb Wild Park, Brighton and Hove.
Khafre (2558–2532 BC), known to the ancient Greeks as Khefren, was a son of King Khufu (Cheops), the illustrious builder of the Great Pyramid. He constructed the second pyramid complex at Giza, strategically placing his tomb on slightly higher ground to create an illusion of equal height to his father’s grand monument.