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Giza: Giza Plateau
built 230 days ago
The Giza plateau ... includes the Great Sphinx. To the Ancient Egyptians, the sphinx was a lion, which was a guardian to the sacred monuments. The lion had the head of a pharaoh who wore the royal headdress. Today his nose is missing.
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On the Giza Plateau, Khufu's builders oriented his pyramid almost perfectly north. The largest pyramid ever built, it incorporates about 2.3 million stone blocks, weighing an average of 2.5 to 15 tons each. It is estimated that the workers would have had to set a block every two and a half minutes.
Copyright (c) 2001 - Andrew Bayuk, All Rights Reserved Carved from the bedrock of the Giza plateau, the Sphinx is truly a mysterious marvel from the days of ancient Egypt. The body of a lion with the head of a king or god, the sphinx has come to symbolize strength and wisdom.
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The Great Pyramid of Giza stands on the northern edge of the Giza Plateau, located about 10 miles west of Cairo. It is composed of over 2 ½ million blocks of limestone, which weigh from 2 to 70 tons each.
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Not much more than a century ago, the Pyramids Road existed as little more than a dusty carriage track amongst irrigated fields, leading out from the city to the then small peasant village of Giza adjoining the pyramid field. Given the rapidly increasing population of Cairo in the 20th century, and the obvious tourist opportunities that the Pyramids provided, Giza has now been transformed beyond recognition to those pioneering Western travellers of the late 19th century. Major arterial roads, apartment blocks, retail strips, restaurants and night clubs now replace what used to be palm-fringed farmers' fields, and the city has now spread to the very limit of the desert plateau. Such rapid development, of course, has not been without its costs - social, economic and aesthetic - and the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities is now making some efforts to control and channel future (re)development in areas closest to the Pyramids themselves.
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Wireframe Topography in plan view Archeologists at the Oriental Institute, University of Chicago, have created several superb computer models of the Giza Plateau to aid them in their excavations of the site. Details of ruins uncovered so far reveal the layout and extent of Egyptian society's dedication to its Pharaohs. The computer models help the archeologists in determining their next excavations and render an overall "picture" of the site.
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