This book examines the architectural achievements of the Egyptian pyramid builders and how they may have accomplished those deeds. Many of their building techniques we today cannot explain. The baffling puzzle of how the stones were raised is one of these. The big puzzle aside, many minor mysteries are for the first time explained. Egyptologists agree that those performing the heavy labor were conscripted citizens, not slaves. The builders were inventive, motivated, daring, and superbly organized. They made mistakes, the price of innovation. Still, they persevered, and created some of the most impressive monuments in history. This book should help the reader understand the problems the builders faced, and instill admiration of their work.

The Pyramid Texts are the oldest body of extant literature from ancient Egypt. First carved on the walls of the burial chambers in the pyramids of kings and queens of the Old Kingdom, they provide the earliest comprehensive view of the way in which the ancient Egyptians understood the structure of the universe, the role of the gods, and the fate of human beings after death. Their importance lies in their antiquity and in their endurance throughout the entire intellectual history of ancient Egypt. This volume contains the complete translation of the Pyramid Texts, including new texts recently discovered and published. It incorporates full restorations and readings indicated by post-Old Kingdom copies of the texts and is the first translation that presents the texts in the order in which they were meant to be read in each of the original sources.

The Pyramid Texts were funerary inscriptions that were written on the walls of the early Ancient Egyptian pyramids at Sakkara. These date back to the fifth and sixth dynasties, approximately the years 2350-2175 B.C.E. However, because of extensive internal evidence, it is believed that they were composed much earlier, circa 3000 B.C.E. The Pyramid Texts are, therefore, essentially the oldest sacred texts known. Samuel Mercer was the first to produce a complete English translation. This is Volume 1 of a 4 Volume set. This particular volume, apart from the Preface and Introduction, contains the actual verses of the Pyramid texts. Volumes 2-4 contained all the commentary by Mercer and others, and are very hard to come by, so I don't think they will be going up on the site anytime soon.

The most remarkable piece of ground in the World as Flinders Petrie described the Giza Plateau. Here the Pyramid Complexes of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure have stood for 4,600 years. The Giza pyramids have been scientifically studied for the last 300 years; now for the first time all three are brought together in one book. Virtually all contemporary "pyramid" books address only Khufu's Great Pyramid. This book provides a complete detailed look at all three Giza pyramids and their complexes: the Sphinx, subsidiary pyramids, temples, boat pits, and enclosures. The descriptions are supplemented by almost 300 photos and drawings to provide the reader a detail look which can only be surpassed by being there in person with a very knowledgeable guide. But it is not just descriptions as the complexes are today, but how the early explorers entered the pyramids and what they found. In addition Charles Rigano provides new ideas on: * How Khufu was interred in his Great Pyramid. * How the first robbers gained entry and robbed Khufu's pyramid. * How Caliph Al Mamun in 820AD really penetrated the Great Pyramid. * Why Heterpheres "tomb" is at Giza. * Why there is a field of stone bases near Khafre's Pyramid. * The initial smaller plan for Khafre's Pyramid. * Conclusive evidence that ties the Sphinx to Khafre. * How Menkaure's Burial Chamber and Inclined Passage were built. In this book Charles Rigano combines both his on-site examinations and study of more than 200 references from the early explorers to the recent Egyptologists to form a complete picture of the Pyramid Complexes. This material is available nowhere else in a single volume.

An authoritative account by preeminent Egyptologist Miroslav Verner covering over 70 of Egypt’s and Sudan’s pyramids, their historical and political significance, updated in a magnificent new edition A pyramid, as the posthumous residence of a king and the place of his eternal cult, was just a single, if dominant, part of a larger complex of structures with specific religious, economic, and administrative functions. The first royal pyramid in Egypt was built at the beginning of the Third Dynasty (ca. 2592–2544 BC) by Horus Netjerykhet, later called Djoser, while the last pyramid was the work of Ahmose I, the first king of the Eighteenth Dynasty (ca. 1539–1292 BC). Nearly two decades have passed since distinguished Egyptologist Miroslav Verner’s seminal The Pyramids was first published. In that time, fresh explorations and new sophisticated technologies have contributed to ever more detailed and compelling discussions around Egypt’s enigmatic and most celebrated of ancient monuments. In this newly revised and updated edition, including color photographs for the first time, Verner brings his rich erudition and long years of site experience comes to bear on all the latest discoveries and archaeological and historical aspects of over 70 of Egypt’s and Sudan's pyramids in the broader context of their more than one-thousand-year-long development. Lucidly written, with 300 illustrations, and filled with gripping insights, this comprehensive study illuminates an era that is both millennia away and vividly immediate.