The Pyramids at Giza in Egypt
The kings of the Egyptian Old Kingdom built massive stone pyramids for their tombs. The largest pyramid shown here is the Great Pyramid of King Khufu (Cheops). Erected at Giza in the desert outside what is today Cairo in the twenty-sixth century B.C.E., it stands almost 480 feet high, not much shorter than the 550-foot-high Washington Monument in Washington, D.C. The pyramids formed the centerpieces of large complexes of temples and courtyards stretching down to the banks of the Nile River or along a canal leading there. The hidden burial chambers of the kings lay at the end of narrow tunnels snaking deep into the pyramids’ interiors. (Guido Alberto Rossi / Tips Images RM / age footstock.)