Pyramids, Awesome or awful?

 

Pyramids

Awesome or Awful ?

Without question pyramids are awesome, especially the Great Pyramid at Giza. Not only because of its enormous size, six and a half million tons of rock, (enough to build almost 18 Empire State Buildings) - but by its very existence.

If it was built today using state of the art equipment and technology it would still be considered quite a feat; that it was built where it was built, when it was, and by the people who built it, is bordering on the miraculous. So much so that a lot of people view it in just that light; as though it is more of a mystical entity than a physical one.

My own introduction to the pyramids was as a child. They were included amongst the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World which were held up to us as examples of civilization at its peak. An example of what can be achieved if people have, not only a vision, but the dedication and discipline to carry it out. That it survived as it has done down through the ages being a powerful vindication of their efforts. Or, to put it another way, ‘hard work pays off’, as it might be put in an inspirational seminar in today’s world of the ‘sound-bite’ and inspirational seminars.

The fact that the pyramids are impressive is, of course, no accident. The Great Pyramid of Giza was conceived as having to be ‘Great’ as a quality onto itself. The EmpireStateBuilding, on the other hand, was conceived as a great amount of wealth generating real estate built on a tiny amount of available ground. The fact that this resulted in it being the tallest building in the world was an aside, albeit a very welcome aside; a bonus rather than a requirement. Do you think that if the architect who designed the EmpireStateBuilding had told the developers that it could be built half as tall again, as long as it was maintained as an empty shell, they would have been interested?

When it comes to discussing them another important difference between the Great Pyramid and the Empire State Building is that with the first, the word ‘civilization’ has become almost inextricably linked, and in the case of the latter the somewhat less than awe-inspiring word ‘tallest’ is all that is linked to it. Even if it is only to state that it, ‘used to be’ the tallest building in the world.

There is no question of the Great Pyramid at Giza ever, ever, being referred to as ‘used to be’Great; even if someone like Donald Trump built an identical building, only twice the size, as a casino in Las Vegas.

At this point you have likely discerned that I have some sort of beef with the pyramids; that my attitude is considerably short on reverence. And you’d be right. To cut to the chase I’ll put it as succulently as I can. The Great Pyramid at Giza is a frigging headstone!

The biggest headstone in the world, I’ll grant you, but still a headstone. Or, as Shakespeare might have put it, “ … a headstone by any other name is still a headstone.”

It is the apparently 'lock-stepping' the idea of civilization with the society which created pyramids that annoys me. What really annoys me about this is that it was done deliberately in the name of educating me. I had a teacher who, using beautifully illustrated books, took me to a Godforsaken desert and showed me this great, big headstone and told me that it was evidence of a Great Civilization.

We were taught about what went into creating a pyramid – which amounted to a huge amount of material and a mind-boggling amount of backbreaking, soul destroying labor. Some people devoting their whole lives to it, not to mention the poor souls who were killed to prevent them giving away the secret of its secret passages. (How civilized can you get?)

In case it’s gargantuan physical presence wasn’t enough to impress us, as to just how awesome an achievement the Great Pyramid is, we were further taught about why they were built. Apparently they were not merely tombs; they were intended to be a contradictory mix of preservation chamber and portal to eternity. I say contradictory because to preserve implies keeping whatever it is that is preserved 'as it is' and where it is (in this World) - while portal to eternity implies moving endlessly forward into another, elevated state of being or the next World. Most cultures who believe in this accept that the first step in achieving it is to relinquish one’s grip on this World. But not King Khufu. This is an example of the cliché (no less true for being a cliché) – used to express total and utter selfishness, ‘having your cake and eating it’.

To make sure that we got just how civilized and advanced these people were we were told that they had mastered the art of mummification. And this, thousands of years before ICI, Merck and the rest of the Petro-Chemical industry was even dreamt of. Wow!

Of course, being something of a sore-head, I have a quibble here. Have you ever seen a mummy?

In the unlikely event that you haven’t, I have included a picture of the one I was fascinated by as a young boy in Belfast (Ireland) where it was the biggest draw in the Museum.

Why don't you take a moment or two to take a look at th photograph at the top of this article - Have you done that? Well, that was what our teacher dragged us up to the museum to behold. Apparently being able to do this to a corpse is considered quite an accomplishment. Had the teacher told us that this mummification business was an early effort at making leather I might have been a little bit impressed.

I remember, as a normal, bloodthirsty boy of eight who was a big fan of Hammer Horror Movies, thinking, as I stared wide-eyed into that scary face, 'Wow ... if that's what the highly civilized people did to bodies I can't wait to see what the savages do.

Bear in mind that when I was being taught all this about the people who created the pyramids I was still grappling with elementary reading and writing, a part of which involved the use of illustrated dictionaries. If I had happened to look up the word, preservation, and was presented with the picture at the bottom of this page as an example of it, and I accepted it as accurate, can you imagine what my grasp of the English language would be?. Interesting, then, isn't it, that a lot of people would have a problem with my rejection of the word civilization being applied to the society which created that appalling artifact. And 'artifact' is all that it is. All the supposedly advanced treatment it was subjected to succeeded only in robbing it of it's humanity, which is why no-one finds it a problem to put it into a glass case and charge a 'penny-a-peep'.

As far as I’m concerned that society was about as civilized as the lady in the photograph is preserved. Technically, a tiny little bit; philosophically, abysmally far short of it.

Show me a pyramid and I’ll show you a monument to utter selfishness and terrible cruelty. The people who had them built sucked the life out of everyone and everything around them. And this with the intention of keeping on doing it forever and ever and ever.