* Astronomy

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Pyramids

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RE: Great Pyramid

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Egypt has erected a 12-mile security fence around the Pyramids site at Giza in a bid to rid the site of hawkers.
The authorities have made the move to stop vendors selling trinkets and camel rides to visitors to the site. Its also designed to stop visitors from climbing the pyramids.

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Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops pyramid at Giza, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, according to a new study.
Most of the fossils are intact and preserved in the monument walls, giving clues to how the monuments were built.

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A new study by Italian researchers has determined that two of the pyramids of Giza in Egypt, were conceived as a single project.
According to a report in Discovery News, it is widely believed that the pharaohs Khufu, his son Khafre and grandson Menkaure built their pyramids on the edge of a desert plateau at Giza between 2600 and 2450 BC.
But, according to Giulio Magli of the mathematics department at Milan's Polytechnic University, astronomical alignments and the landscape indicate that the two main pyramids, those identified with the tombs of Khufu and Khafre, were not built in different stages.

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In a potential blow to themed resorts from Vegas to Tokyo, Egypt is to pass a law requiring payment of royalties whenever its ancient monuments, from the pyramids to the sphinx, are reproduced.
Zahi Hawass, the charismatic and controversial head of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities, told AFP on Tuesday that the move was necessary to pay for the upkeep of the country's thousands of pharaonic sites.

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Egypt has refused to allow images of its Pyramids to be used on a Portuguese postal stamp featuring sites in a competition to name the new seven wonders of the world.

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Pyramid builders

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RE: Great Pyramid

Blobrana · L

It was one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, and the only one of them to remain standing today.
Yet the story of how the Great Pyramid of Giza was actually built has remained a mystery for more than four millennia - until, perhaps, now.
A French architect believes he has finally solved one of the most puzzling construction problems in history by working out how the ancient Egyptians built such a massive structure without the benefit of iron tools, pulleys or wheels.
In Paris tomorrow, Jean-Pierre Houdin will unveil the fruits of eight years' work by describing at a conference how the pyramid of the pharaoh Khufu was built from the inside out. He will propose that the Egyptians carried the building blocks up an internal ramp that formed a spiral tunnel within the structure's outer wall. These tunnels, he believes, must still exist today.
With the help of sophisticated computer software developed by the French company Dassault Systemes, M. Houdin has been able to reconstruct a three-dimensional simulation of how the great limestone and granite blocks of the pyramid were put together stone by stone.
The simulation shows the logic behind building such a pyramid from the inside out. M. Houdin even believes he has solved the mystery of the king's chamber - why it had five granite ceilings instead of one, and how these great granite blocks were lifted to such a height.

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