Here's the rest of my favourite photographs of the Pyramids at Gizeh.

Menkare's Pyramid, sunset 1997

Menkare's Pyramid - noon 2000 The large slot is not the entrance - it's where some earlier tomb robbers tried to blow a hole in it to get any treasure inside.

 

The pyramid of Khufu, taken by Alice, who seems to have a very good eye for a photograph. The poles on the top mark its original height.... I sometimes have slight doubts about the conventional theory of how it was built in 20 years. There are approximately 2.5 million blocks, weighing between 2 tons and 20 tons, and it is estimated that there was a permanent labour force of about 20,000, which was swelled during the non-productive agricultural seasons. Now that means that the blocks would have to be laid at a rate of 1 block every 2 minutes - and this is based on a 12 hour working day. Some blocks, that form the chambers for instance, must have taken longer to install. It's just the organisation of the whole project that fascinates me. Archaelogists tend to agree that a system of ramps around the outside of the pyramid was used to transport the blocks to the right level. But to move such an amount of stone in such a short time does seem virtually impossible. And yet it was done, to a degree of precision that we could not easily achieve today. And that to me is the main mystery of the Pyramids..