The horizon of Khufu: inside the Great Pyramid

It is not unknown for children to try to outdo their parents. When it comes to tombs, though, pharaoh Khufu must have thought he was on safe ground. Everything about the vital statistics of the funerary monument he raised at Giza in the 3rd millennium BC is awesome. It had a footprint of 5.3ha, an original height of roughly 146.6m, and contained approximately 2.3 million stone blocks. The result was the largest standing pyramid ever raised, which we know appropriately enough as the Great Pyramid. To the ancient Egyptians, this soaring edifice was the Akhet Khufu or ‘horizon of Khufu’. It proved a prophetic name for a monument that over 4,000 years later forms part of one of the most reco