Withstanding the Test of Time

This past week I decided that my life travels would henceforth be dedicated to knocking off the wonders of the world. Why? Because the pyramids literally took my breath away. My pilgrimage to the oldest standing monument was about so much more than just upping my elder brother whose lifelong dream it has been, something I now understand in its entirety. The pyramids, physically, are inspiring; an engineering marvel that modern society can still not replicate, art and creativity representative of the very cradle of civilization. The out of body experience of visiting the pyramids is about more than just the physical wonder though. They are a testament to what the human mind is capable of. They represent, to me at least, indestructibility, resilience of the human spirit and immortality. Pharaoh Khufu created a legacy that has withstood the test of time like nothing else can. The Pyramids at Giza are the only ancient wonder still standing. The others succumbed to natural causes such as earthquakes, man made causes like fires and for some just the test of time finally wore them down. The pyramids though, stood strong through everything. And its not that they were lucky or forgotten about. Human societies love destroying art almost as much as they love creating it. The empires who have come and gone in Egypt have all tried to bring to the knees this culture that preceded them and was a mockery of everything they stood for. The Greeks and Romans thought them uncivilized and backward, the Coptec Christians were vengeful and the Islamic dynasties thought they undermined everything that Islam stood for. Mohammed Ali Pasha for instance, the first ruler of Modern Egypt, wanted to deconstruct the Pyramids and use the stones to build his citadel now built in Old Cairo. What made him change this initial plan? The religious leaders of the day felt it would be sacrilegious to use the stones from a pagan monument to build the Salah-uddin Mosque. Thank the Lord that Anubis is a pagan god, not worthy of even being destroyed. Human scavengers lost their way inside and died in their attempts to plunder the oldest testaments to time. What did they think? Their individual human frailty and ignorance would survive the wonder of the ages? Who did they think would win? How could they possibly conceive it a fair fight? Actual human destruction was either too daunting a task or previous civilizations just didn’t care enough, ignorance that we should be grateful for.

The tectonic plates the pyramids stand upon are mostly free of faults and thus earthquakes. The fertile Nile river basin ensures the land doesn’t dry up enough to cause the ground to crack. Floods and other such disturbances disturb the structure but the stones aren’t held together with mortar. Structural disturbances therefore don’t impact the strength of the design. The stones shift a little but then resettle. They don’t impact the overall composure. The surrounding sand keeps fire away and the pyramids therefore even withstand the forces of Nature, something modern technology and engineering is still trying to wrap its head around.

The pyramids were built as monuments to the dead. It was a way of ensuring that they were not forgotten. Such a basic human need, isn’t it? The knowledge that you were loved enough to be thought of even after you aren’t physically there anymore. I once read somewhere that a person truly dies when the last person to remember them dies. When the memory of them dies, a person is truly gone. The pyramids keep an entire civilization alive. The Pharaonic Age passed over 3000 years ago, Pharaoh Khufu even before that and yet, he is remembered. The Egyptians, the Pharaohs did what every human wishes they could do, be remembered, become immortal, die knowing they have left a mark upon this world. The Pharaohs left their marks and oh what splendorous marks! May we never forget them, the lessons they taught us, the sheer magnificence of the pyramids and everything they represent. Oh Osiris, Smite us the day we dare to forget you, because that day we would have lost our right to marvel and create and be human. That day our souls would have turned to stone.