Pyramids of Giza in Egyptian history

Many remains of primitive civilizations are to be met with in Egypt. Stone tools found in the region of the Nile give us grounds for believing that from the time when man used a stone axe, roughly hewn, to the time when he had learned to make the fine flint daggers of the Neolithic period, this country was continuously inhabited. It is impossible to specify the exact proportions African and Asiatic elements contributed to the population which developed the Egyptian race.

It would appear that after along period during which various tribes, differing in origin, language and religion, and often at feud with each other, divided up the country, there remained only two states: one north, the other south of a frontier south of Cairo. This union was brought about under Menes, who was regarded as the founder of the Egyptian monarchy.

This event seems to have taken place not long after the invention of writing. There are not many monuments of the first two dynasties, the kings of which came from Thinis (El-Birba, near Girga). The tombs of some of the earliest kings, probably including Menes, were found at Alydos. They were built of unbaked birches. Under the Memphite dynasties the development of civilization was rapid marked by constant industrial and artistic progress.

The kings of the First Dynasty already occupied Sinai for the purpose of working the turquoise and copper mines, and under King Djoser, of the Third Dynasty, fine stone masonry on a large scale seems to have been introduced. Khufu (Cheops) Kha'fre (Chehren) and Menkaure' (Mycerinus) of the Fourth Dynasty, built the great monuments called the pyramids of Giza, which are simply their tombs. Their successors the Fifth and Sixth Dynasties built pyramids at Abusiz and Saqqara, where lay the Necropolis of Memphis, and all the important people of that time built their tombs and mastabas (tombs in the form of an oblong mass) of their sovereigns, decorating them with very fine sculpture.