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| Reisner recognized the need to model Giza in three dimensions, as evidenced by old photographs from the Museum of Fine Arts records which show a plaster model of Giza that Reisner must have made in Harvard Camp. His assistant and successor, Dows Dunham, prepared a model of the Third Pyramid to illustrate how it was built. This model is in the Boston Museum of Science. | |||||
| The Giza pyramids and Sphinx belong to the Old Kingdom, Dynasty 4, Egypt's first great period of civilization. The tombs around the pyramids date from Dynasty 4 to Dynasty 5 (2575-2150 B.C.). The entrances to the pyramids, masked by their outer stone casing, are on the northern sides. The pyramid temples are on the eastern sides of the pyramids. Long causeways, which were walled and roofed at the Khufu and Khafre pyramids, ran from the upper Mortuary Temple to the Valley Temple near the eastern edge of a harbor at the level of the Nile Valley floor. The outlines of the ancient harbors, land areas, and settlement at the eastern base of the Giza Plateau are based on discoveries of the last few years. |
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| For many years it was hard to get a sense of the layout of the Giza Pyramids as a whole because of the lack of good maps, and because most traffic at Giza is channeled along modern roads and tourist paths. Building the pyramids was a colossal landscaping project. The traces that the builders left in the landscape tell the story of how they were organized, how they built the pyramids, and how they lived. The isometric drawings are a model of this organization toward the end of Khufu's reign. The major elements: building ramp to the south, quarry, supply routes, harbor at the mouth of the valley and workers settlement to the south and east are accurate. But since these drawings were made, we have learned that most of the area east of the plateau was covered by settlements that surround the harbors for each of the pyramids. The plaster model and drawings were handmade from maps and survey data. Now models of ancient sites can be made with computers, allowing us to view them from any angle, to try out different reconstructions, and to fly through in animated sequences or real time. | |||||
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The pyramid plateau slopes from northwest to southeast. Khufu's builders changed the landscape, excavating a quarry in the softer rock for stone to build the pyramid up the slope. They added mastaba tombs flanking the pyramid, a long causeway to a valley temple near the Nile flood plain, and a colossal wall that marks the location of the harbor for delivering supplies. These changes are still obvious at Giza. This isometric drawing is a model of how the Giza Plateau was organized when the great Pyramid was nearly complete, but before the building of the Second and Third Pyramids and the Sphinx. A town for workmen and support staff grew up to the southeast of the plateau. |
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