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The Great Pyramid of Giza

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  Location: Giza, Egypt (Continent of Africa)
• Built by: Pharaoh Khufu for his tomb (He was the 2nd pharaoh of the 4th Dynasty)
• Date built: 2589-2566 BCE (about 4,500 years ago)
• How long to build: It took about 22 years to build
• Size: It is 479 ft (146 m) tall and is the tallest of the three pyramids in the complex
• Weight: It took over 2 million stones. It weighs about 5.75 million tons in total. Each block weighs about 2.3 metric tons (2267.96 kg)
• Archaeologists think the workers used ramps wrapped around the sides as they built the pyramid.
• On the outside of the Great Pyramid, there used to be white limestone which made the side smooth, and on the very top, there was a gold cap.
• The people who built the pyramid were mainly paid workers and well cared for and fed. Some enslaved people helped build the pyramid, but not as many as archaeologists had previously thought.
• The other smaller pyramids at Giza are the Pyramid of Khafre (the son of Khufu) and the Pyramid of Menkaure (the son of Khafre and the grandson of Khufu). The three smaller pyramids at Giza go with Pharaoh Menkaure’s pyramid. But none of them seem to have been completed. They found one empty sarcophagus in one. The other two were empty, but some paintings were on the walls.
• It was one of the original seven wonders of the ancient world, and only one still stands, the Great Pyramid. The seven wonders of the ancient world were The statue of Zeus at Olympia, The Colossus of Rhodes, the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, the Great Pyramid of Giza, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the Lighthouse of Alexandria.