They never believed it woul!.
d stay together. Egyptian builders made ramps (that still can be seen today) to transport blocks to build the lower part of the pyramid. But to get the blocks to the ramps, the builders had to ease the stones on to log rollers. .
This was very dangerous, and the Egyptians lost many builders this way. As they would pull and push the blocks across these log rollers builders would get caught underneath and be crushed to death. They would have to be replaced with more workers. Builders had to transport the blocks along the Nile River one hundred yards away. Before laying the blocks on the ground, the ground was also leveled and smoothed. A string .
stretched between two sticks of equal length would the .
touch the ground. Then the space between the string .
and ground would be measured to decide if the ground .
was level or not. They would have to go over acre .
after acre to make sure the pyramid would end up .
balanced. Transporting was by far the most difficult .
part of building the pyramids. .
.
One of the most important questions when .
archeologists discovered the inside of the pyramid, or .
the tomb, was how was it put there? Egyptian builders .
put in extra passageways and chambers. Some were .
built to store royal possessions, and others went off .
in mystifying directions. The blocks were built up in .
horizontal layers, with more blocks being positioned as .
the building progressed. This gave them the .
opportunity to lay out how they wanted the inside to .
look. .
The Pyramid of King Khufu, the largest, had one .
opening at ground level. The passage was 153 feet long .
and climbs at a twenty-six degree angle. The first .
chamber inside was going to be the "Queens chamber," but it was abandoned. The next was the Kings chamber. The chamber had a flat ceiling composed of nine slabs of stone weighing over four hundred tons. There was a air shaft from the king's tomb that angles out half was .
