The True Secret of the Pyramids

The True Secret of the Pyramids

The true secret of the pyramids is that they are exactly what they seem to be: Piles of rocks in the middle
of the desert.

Once upon a time, about Four Thousand six hundred years ago, give or take a few, the king of Egypt at
the time, whose name was Djoser, was walking along the banks of the Nile with his prime minister,
physician, and friend, Imhotep. They were not alone, of course. Numerous attendants and guards
followed them.

The king was dismayed at what he perceived as the lack of respect given him by his people.

Now ancient Egypt was a wealthy land. Though mostly desert, the great river Nile ran through it. The
Nile ran from the heart of Africa, to the south, north, through the center of Egypt, to the Mediterranean
Sea. Each year in spring the Nile rose above its banks, and flooded the land along its banks, leaving
behind gifts of water and fertile soil, from which the people each year grew a wondrous bounty of grain.
There were slaves, this being ancient times, but most of Egypt's people were free, and well off for the
time, and proud. They walked tall. They each farmed their own land along the Nile, raising their crops of
grain. It was hard work, but with diligence, a farmer could raise a family, and in good years, when the
Nile was generous, save some extra. In lean years, when the Nile was not so generous, and the
floodwaters were low, there might be hardship. But they set aside grain during the good years, so they
would not go hungry during the bad. By and large, things evened out. The people prospered.

"Imhotep," said the king, "I am annoyed by the lack to respect I get from these peasants, these mere
toilers of the soil. Instead of bowing and scraping and groveling when I walk by, they wave and say 'Hi,
Djoser, how are you?' Or, 'What's up, Your Majesty?' as if I was merely the first among equals. I tire of
this, this informality. I want them to bow. And scrape. And grovel. Imhotep, you are the smartest and
cleverest man in all Egypt, if not the world. I want you, Imhotep, to figure out how to make them bow
and scrape, and grovel to me as I walk by."

Well, Imhotep kind of liked the informality, but he was nothing if not loyal to his friend the king. He told
the king he would get on it. So Imhotep thought and thought, And he thought and thought some more.

Eventually the king grew impatient, and said to Imhotep, "Imhotep, I asked you to figure out how to
make the peasants bow and scrape, and grovel, yet you do nothing." And Imhotep said to the king that it
was a difficult problem, but yes, he was thinking very hard about it.

Well, the king respected that, for Imhotep was regarded far and wide as the smartest and cleverest man in
all Egypt, if not the world. So he left Imhotep alone. And Imhotep thought some more.

He thought, to make them bow and scrape and grovel to the king, they must be very poor compared to the
king. They must be so poor, in fact, that they do not even have their freedom. The king must own
everything, even them. They must be his slaves. How to make them poor, how to take away everything
they have, even their freedom...

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 The True Secret of the Pyramids

At last, it came to him. “Yes,” he thought. “Yes!” And he laughed and he laughed and he laughed. He
would put them to work. He would put them all to work.

But he had just the start of a plan. He thought about it some more, and eventually worked out all the
details. Finally, laughing, he went to the king.

"Your majesty, I have figured out how to make them bow and scrape and grovel. It will take a long time,
however. So long, I am afraid to say, they may not bow and scrape to you. But they will bow and scrape
to your descendents."

Well, the king was not perfectly happy.

"It is the best I can do," said Imhotep.

Now the king respected that, for Imhotep was regarded far and wide as the smartest and cleverest man in
all Egypt, if not the world. "Tell me,” said the king.

So Imhotep told the king. They would have the people pile rocks in the desert. Of course, they couldn't
say that was what they were having the people do. The people wouldn't stand for it, if they thought all
they were doing was piling rocks in the desert. They would have to give them a reason. An excuse. But
that was what it would come down to, piling rocks in the desert.

“Why pile rocks in the desert?” The king asked. “Why not something useful?”

“The more useless the better, “ Imhotep explained. “If we make something valuable, society will be no
poorer, and the peasants still won’t bow and scrape to you.”

The king was rather humorless, so he did not see the joke behind it, but he agreed that the plan was a good
one, and agreed that it might just work.

"Do it," said the king to Imhotep. Imhotep bowed, and set to work.

So Imhotep sent the king's men out among the people, and the king's men told the people of a plan. A
plan to please and appease the Gods. A plan to celebrate the glory and might of Egypt. A plan to honor
their wise and benevolent king. They would build a building, a mighty building, the greatest the world
had ever seen. A mighty pyramid, in the desert. A tomb for their king, to send him on his way to live in
the afterlife in style, with the many Gods of Egypt, and so gain the blessings of the Gods for Egypt. The
entire world, and all the Gods, would be amazed.

Of course, building a pyramid would be hard work, and expensive. They might have to raise taxes a little.

Now, they didn't have money in those days, so taxes were mostly paid in grain. Raising taxes meant there
would be a little less food to go around to the people who grew it, because it would go to pay the workers
on the pyramid.

But Imhotep and the king's men exhorted the people, and eventually the people came around, and got
excited. They had actually been doing this sort of thing, burying their kings and sending them to live in
the afterlife with a certain amount of style anyway, but never on so grand a scale.
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So the king raised taxes a little. And started to build a pyramid, a pile of rocks, in the middle of the
desert.

Well, building a pyramid was hard work. And expensive. A great space of land, of hard rock, had to be
cleared away and made perfectly level, to provide a solid foundation. The foundation had to be of rock,
because a great mass of stone such as a pyramid would sink into the sand. Making a level area from the
rock of the earth was already hard work, and the pyramid was not even begun. Then a quarry had to be
found, from which to cut the stones for the pyramid. Then the stones had to be quarried, cut from the
earth, and shaped into blocks and sized so they would all fit together. They then had to be hauled from
the quarry, where they were cut from the earth, to the site of the pyramid. Finally, they had to be laid in
their courses, and the courses laid one upon the other. And the work had to be well and carefully and
skillfully done. A sloppy pyramid, a mere pile of rocks in the desert, would not impress the world, or the
Gods.

And the people who worked on the pyramid were well paid. Building a pyramid was hard work. There
were the quarry men, who cut and shaped the stones. Since this was a long time ago, they didn't have
power tools. Everything had to be done by hand, mostly using tools made out of wood and copper,
because they hadn't even discovered iron yet. Copper is soft and does not cut stone very well, nor last
very long cutting it.

There were the people who hauled the stones to the pyramid. They hauled by hand. And so too did the
people who actually built the pyramid, and who set the stones in place. All by hand, and the most
primitive wooden machinery. Thousands and thousands, tens of thousands of people, set to work. The
work all done by hand.

And then, too, there were the planners and the engineers. And there were also the suppliers of grain and
beer, of wood and copper and papyrus.

Now the workers were all well fed, and well supplied in beer, so people eagerly sought to work on the
pyramids. And of course the planners and administrators of the building of the pyramid were especially
well paid.

In fact, the people who worked on the pyramid were so well paid, and work on the pyramid was so
expensive, that supplies of food and beer became a little short in the rest of Egypt, and people who didn't
work on the pyramid had to work a little harder to feed and amuse themselves. They had to work a little
harder, grow a little more, or work an outside job, to pay the higher taxes, to pay for the pyramid. And to
pay the higher prices for the other things they needed, because something of everything went to the
building of the pyramid, and drove up the prices. Copper and wood, and Egypt did not have many trees,
and papyrus, used for fiber for rope for hauling, and paper for writing; all became harder to come by.

The stocks of grain they had saved during the good years were taxed away to supply the pyramids. So if
the floods of the river Nile failed, and they had a bad harvest, or some other misfortune befell any of
them, an injury or something, it became difficult to make ends meet. Some had to borrow. Some few
even had to sell their land to make ends meet. Then they would have to work the land they once owned,
and pay a share of the grain they grew to the new owners, and still have to pay the taxes to the king. And

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some were so beset with misfortune they fell into debt they could not get out of, and were sold into
slavery. Or they could not pay their taxes, and became slaves to the king, Their land became the king's,
and then they had to bow and scrape and grovel whenever the king passed by.

And finally, after many years, the people finished the first of the great pyramids. It is called the Step
Pyramid. They built it in the desert at a place called Saqquarah. It actually looks like a pile of rocks,
although a neat and tidy one. It rises, in six great steps, each step consisting of many courses of blocks, to
over 180 feet. That's a pile of blocks, which are just rocks which a great deal of expense and effort has
been made to shape and size, over half a football field tall. It's about the length of a football field on each
side, at the base. It had many underground corridors. They surrounded it by a vast courtyard, and many
other structures to supply the wants of the king in the afterlife. Fine carvings and reliefs covered the
courtyard and structure walls. Why not? The more spent, the better. That was why they made it out of
stone, and not inexpensive brick.

And the people were a little poorer for the pyramid, though a few were made wealthy, who had profited
from the building of the pyramid, and the rising prices of grain and wood, papyrus and copper and beer.

Well, building a pyramid takes a long time, many years, and Djoser and Imhotep died before the people
had to bow and grovel, except for the ones who had become slaves.

No one is really sure if they actually buried Djoser in his pyramid.

But the secret was passed on. Indeed, there came to be a job called the Keeper of the Secret of Secrets,
whose sole task was to remember the secret, the true secret of the pyramids, so it would not be forgotten
when a king died. After all, the actual building of the pyramids, the how of it, was no secret. Everybody
could see how it was being done.

And they kept on building pyramids. Each one became easier to build, and better, and bigger, as the
people became used to their labor, and more skilled.

And with each pyramid, the people grew a little poorer. A few more would lose their land to misfortune.
A few more fell into debt they could not get out of, and were sold into slavery. Or they could no longer
pay their taxes, for the taxes kept going up, as the king consolidated his power. Then they became the
slaves of the king, and their lands forfeit. Taxes also kept going up, because with more and more people
becoming impoverished, and with more and more people becoming slaves, there were fewer and fewer
people left who could pay the taxes. Of course, they could always work on the pyramid the taxes paid
for. But no taxes could be collected from the builders of the pyramid. No grain could be taxed from them,
because they didn't grow grain. No copper could be taxed from them, because they didn't mine copper.
Nor did they harvest any trees from Egypt's rapidly shrinking forests, nor papyrus reeds from the marshes
at the delta of the Nile, where the Nile flowed into the Mediterranean Sea. All they did was pile rocks in
the desert.

But with each pyramid, the influence and power of the king increased as well. With each pyramid, his
government became larger, his ability to collect taxes greater.

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And with each pyramid, the wealthy became a little wealthier, and their influence over the people greater.
They owned more and more of the land, worked sometimes by the same people who had lost their land to
hardship and debt. And they had more and more slaves.

___________________________________

The next king after Djoser was named Snefru. He lived a long time, and is thought to have built three
pyramids. The first, was built as a step pyramid, but bigger than the one Djoser and Imhotep built. The
second, which was also the first true pyramid, a pyramid with smooth sides, they call the Bent Pyramid.
Since it was their first true pyramid, and they weren't very good at building true smooth sided pyramids
yet, they started out making it too steep. Half way up, they had to make the rest of it a little flatter, or it
would have collapsed. That's why it's called the Bent Pyramid. The third they call the Red Pyramid.
Each pyramid was bigger than the one before. Piles of rocks in the desert.

Snefru probably hadn’t planned on being buried in three different places.

After that came the 3 Great Pyramids of Giza, built by Khufu, Kaphre, and Menkuare . The first was the
greatest, the most massive structure ever built. It is apparently a tomb, as all the pyramids of Egypt were
made to seem. It is a marvel of skill and engineering. And size. Each side at the base is 755 feet. That's
about 2 and a half football fields a side, or almost four times the size of the field at Yankee Stadium. Its
height is 481 feet. It's over one and a half football fields tall. It is far higher than the distance from home
plate to center field is long.

The Great Pyramid of Khufu is all built of dressed stone, all carved out and hauled and set by hand, using
copper tools and primitive wooden machines. So are all the great pyramids of Egypt. Of course they also
built temples and courtyards and gardens, with many carvings and reliefs. Why not? No need to spare
any expense.

The second, by Kaphre, is almost as big, and almost as marvelous. Kaphre apparently also built the Great
Sphinx, still one of the largest statues in the world. Why not?

Even now, people wonder at how the ancient Egyptians built them. But of course, that’s not really the
important thing.

Anyway, the third, by Menkuare, is much smaller, and not even properly finished. That's because Egypt
could no longer afford to build great pyramids. The people had become impoverished. They had sold
their lands to the wealthy, and worked the land they had once owned. Many were mere slaves, and the
poor, and the slaves, could not be taxed. They had nothing left to pay taxes with. In fact, the only people
left to be taxed, even before the second great pyramid was finished, were the wealthy. So more and more
were the wealthy taxed, until many of them too were impoverished. Of course those who administered
the building of the pyramids, and those who collected the taxes, or who held the contracts for supplying
the grain and beer and copper and papyrus to the pyramids, were not impoverished.

And Pharaoh, although they didn't actually call him Pharaoh until much, much later, Pharaoh was now a
god, the Son of Ra, the Son of Ra the sun god. He was no longer merely a king. He owned much of

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Egypt. And all of Egypt bowed, and scraped and groveled before him. Even those still wealthy bowed
and scraped and groveled, for they now all owed all their wealth to Pharaoh, the Son of Ra.

And so, after more than a century, the desire of Djoser, and the plan of Imhotep, came to fruition.

Pharaoh was now a god, and all of Egypt lay at his feet, and all who approached him prostrated
themselves before him. But Egypt was impoverished. Even Pharaoh was neither so rich nor powerful as
he could be, for how rich and powerful can a ruler be, who rules over a poor people.

Long centuries followed, and many Pharaohs lived and died, and were buried in style, to one degree or
another, though never the style of Khufu or Kaphre or even Menkuare. But from time to time, or
whenever it seemed the people were getting restless and uppity, and starting to accumulate a little wealth,
the Keeper of the Secret of Secrets would whisper in Pharaoh's ear. He would remind Pharaoh, and
Pharaoh would nod and build something wondrous and expensive. He would build a palace or a temple, a
tomb, a monument, or often a pyramid, though never again one so great and wonderful as the Great
Pyramids. Even mighty Pharaoh could no longer afford one of those. So the people remained poor, and
humble, and had to bow and scrape and grovel whenever Pharaoh came by.

And Egypt, though rich in architecture, was poor in society. It often had more than enough food, and
food was the foundation of wealth in the ancient world. But never would it become a great power, as
Assyria and Babylon and Persia, and later the Romans, were to become. Never would it be able to send
its armies far beyond its borders.

Even today, they are unsure of how the pyramids were built. But now you know what is more important.
Now you know why they were built. And what they truly are. Now you know what the people of ancient
Egypt worked so very hard at: Piling rocks, in the middle of the desert. And if you go there, you can see
the measure of how rich a society Egypt had been in the time of Djoser, that the kings of Egypt had to
build so many, and build so large, to take for themselves the wealth of their people.

And the joke, that Imhotep found so amusing? Why, that the people of Egypt worked hard, so very hard,
not to become wealthy, and not for their freedom, but to become slaves, the slaves of Pharaoh.

Moral of the story: If someone pays you, or someone you know, to pile rocks in the desert, they probably
don't have your best interests at heart.

Charles St. Pierre 2/11/2010