The invisible and the visible in the Egyptian pyramids

Several centuries separate the very first ziggurats in Lower Mesopotamia (Eridu) from the pyramids of Egypt. Around 2750 b.c., it became possible to construct these stone monuments whose present state, after five thousand years in the desert, still amazes us. The conditions were ripe: the powerful River Nile linked the East Bank quarries of Upper Egypt (Aswan granite) and Lower Egypt (Tura limestone) to the West Bank of Lower Egypt where, at the edge of the Libyan Desert, on a site with a good bearing capacity, the Pharaohs built the pyramids ( Figure 15 ), the discovery, in the third millennium b.c., of how to smelt copper made it possible to mould the copper saws used for cutting the stone, an autocratic regime in the service of a religion enabled the first Pharaohs to impose the extremely hard work involved on their people, lastly, the 3rd dynasty saw the birth of an architect of genius, Imhotep, who found effective solutions to the construction problems of the first great pyramid, that of Saqqarah.