I know you'll find this hard to believe, but historians lie to you . . . Yes, it's true. Ancient historians are the worst. Modern historians try and tell the truth as they know it. But ancients worked for the government (that should give you some clue). They wrote the government's version of the truth which may have been a little biased. It had part of the truth but not necessarily the whole truth. For example: the History of the Victory of Ramses II. (First you must know that the Pharaoh always won every battle they fought.) Ramses was leading his great army when the low-life enemy snuck out from underneath rocks, behind bushes and trees and attacked the Pharaoh. (i.e. the dummy stumbled into an ambush.) Ramses calmed his troops, got down and prayed, climbed back on his chariot and made several passes at the enemy, killing several thousand each time. This rallied the troops who then won an astounding victory and ran home to tell the good news. (Huh? Since when do the winners go home and tell the news? As winners, they would march onward to greater victories. i.e. they were lucky to escape with their skins and make it home.)

Women had it good in Egyptian society. Early in Egypt, it may have been a matriarchal society (lead by women). They dominated society and government (not a bad idea). Property in Egypt went from mother to daughter. To keep property in the family, brothers married their sisters. It kept the bloodlines clean. For some reason, they didn't have the mutants, which normally happens with intermarriage. Sometimes fathers even married daughters.

Egyptian art looks different (have you noticed?). People are always shown with the side view of the feet, front of the shoulders, side of the head with an eye on the side of the head (try standing that way!). Ikhnaton the heretic changed the art to be more real with wrinkles, etc. He married Nefertiti (a good looker) whose pictures are done in the new art style. But after Ikhnaton, Egyptians went back to the old art.

The big building projects were done in the Old Kingdom when there was more time and money. The Sphinx was done then as well as the Pyramids. The Pyramids were not done by space people as supposed by Erich Von Daniken in Chariots of the Gods. Do you want to know how to build a pyramid? But, of course! First you start by making little ones and practicing up. The 1st ones were made out of sun-dried brick. But Egypt had the stone quarries and made the bricks out of stone eventually. Then they quit cutting the stones into bricks and just used big rocks. They were built around 2600 BC. After you've got the rock, you have to get level ground. Dig a trench around the area and fill it with water (which always seeks its level). Next, you play with some poles, string and sticks and level off the dirt. (See Stockmyer if you are dying to know how.) The limestone rocks for the pyramids was quarried 500 miles up south on the Nile away from the area. The rocks were 3-4 feet high and some weighed up to 15 tons. They were quarried at the site and numbered (#42 sits next to #43, etc.). Some were marked with "this side up" and had slogans from the work crews on them. The blocks were dragged down on wooden sleds. It took 23 years with 4,000 men working all year long to build the Great Pyramid. (The Egyptian tour guides will tell you it took 100,000 men but they're kidding you.) The biggest pyramid is 450 feet high (about a 40 story building). It took around 200 million blocks and weighs somewhere around 600,000,900 tons by the nearest guess. It was built with farmers paid with goods (potatoes, etc.). It was not built with slave labor cuz there were no slaves. (They weren't paid with money cuz it wasn't invented yet.)

Why would you want a pyramid? Egyptians believed when they died that they had 3 souls. One went to heaven for tingly bliss and the other 2 kind of wandered around. They thought that the soul liked to come back to the body and visit every so often (like we go to Granny's at Thanksgiving). The Pyramids were actually storehouses for the dead Pharaohs. Also, Egyptians thought they should be buried with everything they might want later on. So the Pharaohs had lots of nice gold vases and trinkets. They built small passages inside to try to stump grave robbers (didn't work). The tomb of King Tut is about the only one we've found with some of the goodies left inside.

Of course you didn't want your souls coming back to a cruddy old skeleton for a body. So they tried to preserve the body by mummifying. Embalmers would hollow out the insides and fill them up with secret formulas to preserve the body. Actually, it didn't work. The only reason mummies are still around is cuz of the dry climate of Egypt. Even paper was preserved in the Egyptian climate.