The overwhelming majority of archaeological data about life in ancient Egypt comes not from the remains of daily living quarters, but from the burial chambers of the dead, and associated objects, such as writings on burial chamber walls and the preserved corpses found within. This provenance is rather appropriate as, from what scholars can ascertain, life in ancient Egypt was all but completely focused on preparation for death and the afterlife. This paper will discuss how the religious, symbolic, and sociocultural role of pyramids and funeral rituals were of importance to Old Kingdom Egypt, and to the civilizationÆs conception of immortality.
Immortality was the most important goal in oneÆs life, especially the immortality of the king or pharaoh. The well-being of all his people depended upon the careful administration of funeral rites for the dead pharaoh, and upon the careful arrangement of his resting place. Royal burials took place in pyramids, structures which achieved the height of their development during the Old Kingdom, 2658 B.C. û 2135 B.C, or the Third through Sixth Dynasties.
The pyramid and its associated industries accounted for the single largest sector of the ancient Egyptian economy. The building of the pyramid itself was a prodigious undertaking in a time when neither the wheel nor the iron chisel was known. The Great Pyramid at Giza, covering 13.1 acres, is made up of more than 2 million blocks of stone, each weighing an average of two tons. Not all of these blocks were quarried in the immediate vicinity of Giza: some of the stone came from Tura, across the Nile, and some from as far away as Aswan, a distance of four hundred miles. The number of people and the amount of time it took to complete such a project are unknown, but even Egyptologists are amazed by the estimates regarding KhufuÆs Great Pyramid complex:
[Assuming] a reign of 30 to 32 years [for Khufu], the estimated combined mass of 95,350...