Essay On The Sphinx And The Pyramids

Giza, where the sphinx is majestically perched and three great pyramids adorn the horizon, is well known through the realm of Egyptian history and in people’s mind in a general sense. When students and researchers are shown one picture of these great monuments, it sparks a response saying “Hey, that’s Egypt!”. However, there is more to Giza than the sphinx and the pyramids. People lived there and built the entire thing. They are normally the forgotten ones. Fortunately, there are two men named Mark Lehner and Zahi Hawass, two scholars of Egyptology, and they worked together in two separate areas. Lehner was in charge of unearthing the worker’s city and Hawass was in charge of discovering tombs that lay to rest the workers of the pyramids. Both have discovered amazing and
They were an important part in the city’s landscape because it means that the workers were respected enough to have tombs themselves and not just inferiors. Hawass’ team focused on one grave marked “Grave 53”. In this grave, they have found a coffin, which was a rare feat in the worker’s life because they generally did not have money to afford a coffin. The coffin had a person in it that was curled in the fetal position with its face pointing to the east, where the sun rises. The top of the skull points to the sky, where the spirit can exit the body in the dark of night and travel with the stars (Morell 2001). As the team uncovered more tombs, they also found things that are buried with the body. This is similar to what the higher officials would have in which they would carry things in the afterlife. They also found two tombs that belonged to leaders and they were the tombs of Weser-Petah and Ni-ankh-Petah. What was special about these tombs was that they had doorways and chambers. They were much less than the grand tombs found in the great pyramids but it does give the same sort of respect to the