rue smooth-sided pyramid. Tragically, his first attempt collapsed, so his architects modified their building methods and eventually built a successful pyramid, the bent pyramid at Dashur (Fakhre 3-6). Sneferu's successor, Khufu, a great sponsor of Egyptian art and architecture, oversaw the construction of the greatest pyramid ever to be built, the Great Pyramid (Fakhre 103). This history clearly shows the indebtedness of the Great Pyramid to develop-ments in tomb design. (See figure 1)
Some pyramid scholars, however, believe that the history of tomb building does not adequately explain the splendor of the Great Pyramid. One of them, Mendelssohn, argues that such a theory assumes "that this early civilization had mobilized all its resources and directed its entire labor force to produce nothing better than a gigantic royal tomb" (9). Some of these scholars believe that the pyramid had some scientific purpose--that it was either a storehouse of ancient Egyptian knowledge or some sort of astronomical instrument.
In support of this, from Greek times, scholars have re
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