The Imagination of the Ancient Pyramids in the Land of the Thousand and One Nights.

Many of us are familiar with the modern legends surrounding the Egyptian Pyramids, especially those of Khufu, known as the Great Pyramid and one of the Wonders of the Ancient World. However, many legends and even information that is still occasionally reported as factual comes from ancient legends again.

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Indeed from the writings of the famous Greek historian, Herodotus, we find a mixture of facts and folklore about the pyramids that live today. He came to Egypt between 449 and 430 BC, when the hieroglyphic manuscripts still read and the pharaoh's religion is still practiced, but still this is several thousand years after the construction of the Khufu temple. According to Herodotus, he was told by the priests, concerning Khufu, that:

"[He] brought the country into all kinds of tribulations, he closed all the temples, then, dissatisfied with excluding his subjects from their religious practice, forcing them without exception to labor as slaves for their own benefit"

Khufu's reputation has been tarnished by Papyrus Westcar legend, probably derived from the Second Intermediate period, but copied from an older document, but Herodotus founded the wrong and now almost indelible associations between pyramidal buildings and slave labor. Herodotus's credibility must be strained when he goes on to report that:

"The crime is not too big for the Cheops: when he's still short of money, he sends his daughter to the house nasty-with instructions to fill a certain amount - they do not tell me how much this he actually does, adds it. with the intention of leaving something to be remembered after his death, he asked each of his customers to stone blocks, and from these stones [the story] built a three-middle pyramid standing in front of the Great Pyramid. "

At the time of Herodotus's visit to Egypt, Khufu on the causeway was intact, with "polished stone blocks adorned with animal carvings... Work ... almost no less than the pyramid itself." It took time, he was told, ten years of "oppressive forced labor" to build. The pyramid itself, takes 20:

"Includes an underground grave space on a hill where the pyramid stands, wounds made from the Nile, so the water turns this place into an island."

About two centuries after Herodotus, the Egyptian priest Manetho composed his Aegyptiaca, perhaps to improve the chronology of Herodotus, which we know only through the edited and summarized versions of Josephus (c 70 AD), Africanus (3 centuries) and Eusebius (4th century). He credits Khufu, written as Suphis, by building the Great Pyramid and, away from the wicked, by writing "The Holy Book".

Another myth became attached to the pyramids when, towards the end of the 1st century, the Jewish Josephus historians included pyramidal buildings among the suffering that the Hebrews had to endure during their years of work in Egypt:

"For [Egypt] ordered them to cut a large number of channels for the river, and build walls for towns and fortresses, that is, they hold the river, and hamper water from stagnation, after running by itself some banks in the company, they also set them to build pyramids, and hereby wear them out ... "

This idea remains in the popular imagination, although we know know that the Great Pyramid was built more than a thousand years before the Hebrew era.

The last person who could read the hieroglyphic manuscripts died sometime in the 4th century, and as an ancient inscription becomes vague, the real knowledge of pyramid builders is drowned in a sea of ​​myths and legends. It will not be until the modern age that we will once again gain real factual knowledge about them.

As Coptic Christians came to domination in Egypt, the story of the pyramids became more wild. One legend states that:

"Then Surid ordered the construction of the pyramid, was recorded in their sciences, and had treasures and pieces of statues put in. Finally, he arranged idols to guard each pyramid of the tree [in Giza] .... After his death, Surid was buried in the 'East' Pyramid [Khufu], his brother Hujib in the 'West' [Khafre] one, and the son of Hujib, Karuras in the Pied Pyramid [Menkaure]. "

Tells us that King Surid dreamed where (evenly) the earth was handed over and the stars began to fall on it. This so feared it, fearing that the end of the world was imminent, he decided to set up a pyramid and to include in it all his age knowledge.

King Surid is largely legendary, although his name may be Suphis corruption, the final form of Khufu. He is said to have lived about three centuries before the Biblical flood. The story is a mixture of Jewish-Christian themes. Surid lives in Amsus.