A pyramid is not a pyramid is not a pyramid, to paraphrase Gertrude Stein. Even monumental pyramids vary greatly one from the other, as we can see if we compare the grand pyramid that I.M. Pei created to serve as an entrance to the Louvre Museum in Paris and the Great Pyramid at Giza. It is not only that the materials of these pyramids are different from each other - the one glass, the other stone - but that the reason that each was built is fundamentally different, and these differing raisons d'etre can be seen from even a fairly casual inspection of the two. This paper compares and contrasts the two in terms of both their formal and cultural dimensions.
We begin with a description of the two pyramids. The Great Pyramid at Giza, the only survivor of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Built over a number of years, the pyramid was constricted of large, cut stone blocks covered with an outer casing (that has fallen away in the intervening millennia) that created a smooth appearance for the monument. The pyramid was thus probably even more impressive in appearance when it was constructed, for the covering would have helped to disguise the way in which the pyramid was constructed. It would have seemed less a work of human hands and almost the result of divine inspiration (http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/pyramid.html).
The pyramid, which was built in the middle of the third millennium before the Christian era, was over 481 feet in height, although now it is about 30 feet shorter. Each side of the pyramid is precisely oriented to one of the cardinal points of the compass. Each side of the pyramid's base is 751 feet. The structure (which was only surpassed in height by a human construction in the 19th century) was built from about 2 million blocks of stone, the smallest of which weighed more than two tons (http://ce.eng.usf.edu/pharos/wonders/pyramid.html).
The pyramid is not solid but contains a red-granite chamber with a ...