Giza Necropolis

The Great Pyramids & Great Sphinx of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza. Also known as the Pyramid of Khufu or the Pyramid of Cheops. Looking at the Pyramid of Khafre.
Me and dad standing next to the blocks.  Each block weighs over 2 tons. Tourist police. This picture really confuses me, since we started out at the Pyramid of Khufu, yet here I am walking towards it from a decent distance away.  The white building is the solar boat museum.
Walking over to the Pyramid of Khafre. This didn't fare too well in Transformers 2. What remains of the white limestone casing.
The runt of the three, the Pyramid of Menkaure. View of all three pyramids.  The Pyramid of Menkaure on the right is 215 feet tall. The Pyramid of Khafre, in front, looks taller than the Pyramid of Khufu - but it's not.  It sits on 33 feet of bedrock, so it only looks higher.  The Pyramid of Khafre is 448 feet tall, while the Pyramid of Khufu is 455 feet tall (480 feet if it was still intact).
The Pyramid of Khafre, far left, has a slope of a little more than 53 degrees.  It's steeper than the taller Pyramid of Khufu, which has a slope of just under 52 degrees. The Pyramids of Queens. Built in the 23th century B.C., they remained the tallest structures on earth until 1311 when the Brits stole that title with the completion of the Lincoln Cathedral.
Getting ready for the obligatory camel ride around the pyramids. He doesn't look happy about it. En route from the rear of the pyramids to the Sphinx.
All lined up in a row. If you make your living from tourists, you should probably think about clearing away the stinking, rotting horse carcass. The Pyramid of Khufu, right, is the only one of the seven wonders of the ancient world that is still standing.
Pyramid of Menkaure and the Pyramids of the Queens. End point of the camel ride. The Great Sphinx of Giza.
Body of a lion, and the head of a human, possibly Khafre.  Believed to have been built around 2500 B.C. by Khafre. I'm pretty sure that every single person that has ever visited Egypt has taken this exact shot. Both monuments thought to have been built by Khafre.
Profile shot. Popular legend is that Napolean's soldiers shot off the nose with a cannon, but there are apparently sketches from 1737 that show the Sphinx without a nose.  Napolean didn't invade Egypt until 1798. 66 feet tall, 240 feet long.
Ass of the Sphinx. The front paws. Giza necropolis complex.
Standing in front of the Sphinx. Then I turned around and shot this picture.  People don't realize how close the city is to the pyramids. In case anyone had a desire to see what Pizza Hut looks like in arabic.
The Giza necropolis complex. A model of the solar boat (funerary boat) of Cheops, inside the solar boat museum. The rope and knots used to hold the solar boat together.
The boat was found underneath a limestone cover in 1954, and was then reassembled. Notice the ropes.  Everything is roped together - no nails or anything. There's some argument over whether the boat was actually used in a funeral processing, or simply built on site and then buried next to the pyramid.
143 feet long, 20 feet wide. Pretty cool musuem, located right at the base of the Pyramid of Cheops.

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