Pyramids

Pyramids were built in Ancient Egypt as tombs, or burial places, for Egyptian pharaohs, or kings. They believed that the pyramids made you immortal. The Ancient Egyptians believed in an afterlife, so it was very important to them to protect the bodies of their pharaohs.

In order to keep the body of the pharaoh safe, the insides of the pyramids were like mazes with secret doors and dead-end passages. The pharaoh would be near the bottom or even underground. Other rooms contained things like jewelry and furniture that the Pharaoh might want in his next life (or afterlife).
They built pyramids so that when they put the Mummies inside, they don't rot or get eaten by animals. They were also built so they could keep a lot more of the Mummie's treasure inside.
the ancient egyptians are believed to be religious and honored their dead. The pharohs were honored by a wonder today called pyramids. After a pharaohs death they were buried in the pyramids.
They were built to house their dead king's body with all his possessions including: his coffin, mummified pets, gold, jewelry, and any other items. Pyramids had many rooms, dead ends, and endless hallways built to confuse any grave robbers hoping to find the tomb of the deceased king and steal his riches.

The were built because in the afterlife, it made the deceased buried with it immortal.
tombs for royal pharaohs.
To symbolize Ra the sun god was born or created.

It depends on who built them. Some were built as burial chambers, some as temples and some just for decoration.

Pyramids were mostly built as tombs for the Egyptian Pharaohs because the Egyptians believed that there was an after life. In the pyramid's there were the belongings to the pharaoh.
It depends which civilisation you're referring to.

The Egyptians built pyramids mostly as tombs for the Pharaohs and their consorts during the Old and Middle Kingdom eras. The oldest Egyptian pyramid is the Pyramid of Djoser, constructed in 2630BC.

Pharaoh tombs were previously being raided by thieves, so Imhotep came up with the solution to build pyramids with confusing mazes, dead-ends, secret rooms and booby traps.

The Mayans are another great example of pyramid builders. Building a pyramid in the Mayan Empire was so much more difficult than building pyramids in Egypt, because the Mayans had to somehow travel with huge stones through deadly rainforests teeming with obstacles and predators. How they managed to do that is still a mystery to us.

The Mayan temples began to appear at the height of the Mayan Empire. The oldest Mayan pyramid according to archaeological carbon dating, dates back to around 3,000BC. Which is older than the Egyptian pyramids.

Aztec pyramids, also known as Mesoamerican pyramids, were built around 1100AD. Aztec pyramids were not only built for religious reasons, but they were also built to be the centre of their cities, symbolising the "mountain of the city" which, in Aztec belief, brings wealth and fertility to the citizens.

The Ancient Mesopotamians, Ancient Assyrians and Ancient Sumerians also built pyramid-like structures called Ziggurats.

Ziggurats were generally religious temples influenced by astronomy.

Ziggurats began to appear around 2,200BC.

Ancient Babylonians are also known to have built an incredible pyramid called Etemenankia. However this structure has become a victim of time and conflict, being reduced now to just a few columns and the multi-coloured base that the pyramid once stood on. Therefore we do not know much about the Babylonian pyramid or how old it is.

The Ancient Chinese also built pyramid mounds above burial chambers of their emperors, full of terracotta armies and treasures. The Ancient Chinese pyramids were mostly made from dirt, therefore carbon dating on the older Chinese pyramids is pretty much useless, since the dirt obviously existed before the pyramids did. Many of the Chinese pyramids were purposefully surrounded by trees and vegetation to camouflage them into their surroundings. Because of this, many hundreds of Chinese pyramids remain hidden today or even completely destroyed by nature itself. The oldest Chinese pyramid was built in around 1,050BC. However, as stated above, carbon dating on these pyramids are very difficult.
they built them to represent the tombs ,that is the pyramids.

Pharoahs and others believed that they could take their bodies and worldly possessions to the next world. Usually, they started construction on their pyramid many years before their death. The internal rooms and routes were closely held secrets. Quite possibly, there was a desire to leave evidence of the strength of their power for posterity.
it was for keemstar
for when the most powerful people died
So the dead pharoah had somewhere to "rest" and to contain all his treasures. Also pharoahs may have had them built as a sign of greatness.
Many Egyptologists have somewhat different views on exactly why the ancient Egyptian kings built Pyramids as their tombs, but all of them seem to agree that it had to do with their worship of the sun god, Re (Ra). Most believe that the Pyramid was symbolic of the Benben, a mound that rose from the waters during the creation of the earth, in ancient Egyptian mythology, which was closely associated with Re as the creator god.
it is because they needed a place to bury the dead pharaohs.
The Pahroah's were buried
The pyramids were essentially used for burying chambers.
The reason that Egyptians started building pyramids is that they wanted to keep away the robbers and thieves from the the kings body,his jewels,and his internal organs.

A pyramid also marked where the person was buried (otherwise, it would be hard to spot their grave in the desert of Egypt).

Shortly after coming to the throne Pharaoh would command his overseer of public works and architects to prepare a burial place in keeping with his status as a god-king. The chosen site was usually one on the edge of the cultivated land in an already established pyramid field. The royal survey team set to work marking out the site. Great care was taken in orientating the site to the four points of the compass and in levelling the site to provide a foundation for the pyramid. When the slaves had cleared away the sand and rubble highly skilled masons were called in to level the foundations. This was done by cutting a grid of channels and filling them with water. The rock was then cut back to the water level to make it perfectly flat. Finally the water was drained away and the channels filled with rubble.

Some of them were free men doing particular tasks such as masons, tool makers, carpenters, scribes and supervisors. Many of course were unskilled slave labourers. The slaves could expect to be fed and watered but little else. They are naked, too low in status to wear clothes.

Through the Pharaoh's reign, the construction site teemed with workers of all kinds toiling in the hot sun to complete the monument before the king's death. Day after day, year after year, the quarries rang with the sound of hammer and chisel on stone. The sun baked bodies of the slaves stand out dark against the honey coloured stone. After they had cut deep enough to define a block, they packed the riven rock with pieces of porous wood. A slave boy pours water on the wood in the hole. The wood expands so fast that the block splits out with a crack. After the stone blocks are extracted from the quarry face they are lowered onto sledges. A mark is made on the stone by a scribe. This aided them to place the blocks in the pyramid just as they came out of the quarry ensuring a better fit than random blocks without further finishing.

From dawn to dusk, gangs of slaves drag the sledges loaded with stones each weighing about 2,500kg to staging areas at the base of the pyramid. Most of the stone blocks proceed up the ramp without future handling. Only a fraction of the stone blocks needed to be cut to precise dimensions by the masons. The slaves begin hauling the loaded sledges slowly up the clay and rubble ramp. Whether it was a single long or spiralling ramp depends on the size of pyramid. The noise on the ramp was one of chanting slaves and the rumble of heavy sledges. Water or oil is poured under the runners of the sledges to reduce friction to ease their passage up the ramp.

When the sledges reached the working level teams of slaves called setters shifted the blocks from the sledges into their designated positions using simple levers, brute force and experience gained from years of hard labour. Once the stones had been delivered the hauling gang would make their weary way down the ramp carrying their sledge, in order to make the same back breaking journey up as they would several times a day.

Other slaves are employed in maintaining and extending the ramps as the pyramid grew. These ramps are made of rubble, bound together with marl (a type of clay) and laid with planks to ease the passage of the sledges. Rows of slaves are seen breaking up waste material from the quarries, mixing them with the clay and loading the finished mixture into baskets. Individual baskets are loaded onto the shoulders of slaves for delivery to the ramp builders on the pyramid.

Granite came from Aswan located 640km to the south. Granite was used for the lining of the burial chamber and the internal passage leading to it or in some instances the lower courses of the pyramid. These blocks were the largest in size used on the structure, for example, some of the granite stones used on the Great Pyramid at Giza weighs in at 70 tonnes. Copper chisels used for quarrying limestone could not be used, a harder material was required. Balls of dolerite, a hard, black igneous rock, were used in the quarries of Aswan to extract the hard granite. This is a place of great heat, dust and noise a hellish place to be sent to work. These dolerite "pounders" were used to pulverize the stone around the edge of the granite block that needed to be extracted. Teams of naked slaves pound away in the blazing sun for weeks in order to expose enough stone for the block to be extracted from the quarry. At the bottom, they ram wooden pegs into slots they have cut, and fill the slots with water. The pegs will expand and split the rock with a resounding crack much more impressive than anything heard with the softer limestone. Long lines of slaves, their bare bodies covered in the dust of the quarry and gleaming with sweat, drag the loaded sledges along a causeway to the river. Here the great stones hewn with so much effort and suffering will be loaded onto barges and floated down the river.

At any one time as many as 30,000 workers may have been involved on this massive project. Some of them were professional craftsmen most however were slaves.

Many pyramids are in a poor state of preservation or buried by desert sands. If visible at all they may appear as little more than mounds of rubble. As archaeological techniques improve Egyptologists are continuing to identify and study previously unknown pyramid structures.

The most recent pyramid to be discovered is that of Queen Sesheshet, mother of 6th Dynasty Pharaoh Teti, located at Saqqara. The discovery was announced by the Egyptian Council of Antiquities, on 11 November 2008.

This data may now be out of date.

A sarcophagus is a stone container for a coffin or body. The word comes from Greek "sarx" meaning "flesh", and "phagein" meaning "to eat", so sarcophagus means "eater of flesh"....

Sarcophagi were usually made by being carved, decorated or built ornately. Some were built to be freestanding above ground, as a part of an elaborate tomb or tombs. Others were made for burial, or were placed in crypts. In Ancient Egypt, a sarcophagus was usually the external layer of protection for a royal mummy, with several layers of coffins nested within.
Sarcophagus: a coffin-like structure, hollow, used as a way to respect the dead by egyptians

Great Pyramid of Giza was the world's tallest building from c. 2570 BC to c. 1300 AD.*

(Or for 4,000 years the Great Pyramid was the tallest structure in Giza.)

For the source and more detailed information concerning this issue, click on the related links section indicated below.

The standard sign meaning pyramid is simply the drawing of a pyramid set on a foundation - but made rather taller and narrower than a genuine pyramid. This sign is pronounced mr - vowels were not written so we can never know how it was said.

Sometimes the word mr is spelled out in sound-signs: a vertical chisel, an owl and a mouth; the chisel has the sound value mr, the owl is m and the mouth is r - the second two simply confirm the value of the first, since a chisel can also have the value 3b. These signs are followed by the hieroglyph for pyramid as a "determinative" to clarify the meaning, since there are other words with the consonants mr.

The plural (pyramids) is formed by adding three short vertical strokes after these signs - the plural sound value would then be mrw.

All over. Most people think of Egypt, because that's where the most famous ones are, but there are lots of smaller (and a few larger) ones scattered around.Giza, Egypt is the location of the Pyramid of Khufu ... that's THE pyramid, to most people.

The first pyramid-like structures were the ziggurats of Mesopotamia.

There are a large number of pyramids in Sudan (even more than in Egypt); these tend to be steeper and smaller than Egyptian pyramids.

The largest pyramid in the world (by volume) is the Great Pyramid of Cholula in Mexico. Mesoamerican pyramids are "stepped pyramids", somewhere in between ziggurats and Egyptian pyramids.

The Romans built a few of them; one surviving example is the Pyramid of Cestius.

Quite a few modern buildings are pyramids; a couple of notable ones are the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas (which doesn't have elevators but "inclinators" that travel on a diagonal) and the Transamerica Building in San Francisco (very tall and narrow, but definitely pyramidal).

The Egyptian pyramids were built during the neolithic. The main tools used were stone hammers and copper chisels, Cutting of the blocks in the quarry was done by building fires over the part of the rock to be cut and when the rock got hot enough sweeping the fire away and pouring water on the hot rock to fracture it. Wooden wedges were driven into the cracks thus produced to make them expand and separate the rocks on either side.

No bronze or iron tools of any kind were available.