Built 4,000 years ago, the three great pyramids at Giza, in the Egyptian desert remain the most colossal1 buildings ever constructed. 矗立在埃及沙漠中吉萨的三座大金字塔建于4000年前,它们一直都是有史以来最宏大的建筑。
The pyramids were built by Egyptians under the orders of the Egyptian leader, whose title was Pharaoh2. There was a sequence of Pharaohs culminating3 around 2615 B.C., with the Pharaoh Cheops who built the biggest thing ever built, the Great Pyramid, also known as Khufu. Cheops built a pyramid 770 feet on one side and 481 feet tall. How ancient builders managed to build these massive structures has never been fully answered but the effort clearly required brains and brawn4. 金字塔是埃及人在他们的领袖名为法老的命令下建造的。在公元前2615年左右,几任法老相继统治埃及,基奥普斯法老建造了有史以来最大的金字塔大金字塔,也被称为胡夫金字塔。胡夫金字塔每边长770英尺,高481英尺。古代的建筑者是如何建造这些庞然大物的,这一直是个未解之谜,但很明显它需要付出大量的脑力和体力。
Was there engineering genius involved? Yes, there was. For example, when you're putting the block right at the top, how are you going to lug5 a block of stone that weighs several tons 480 feet up a structure? How are you going to do it, and how are you going to do it without leaving scratches6 on all the rest of the structure? And how many people does it take to drag a block weighing several tons 480 feet up into the sky? Approximately, 2.3 million blocks of stone were cut, transported and assembled to create the Great Pyramid.
The Pharaohs may have set out to build magnificent tombs for themselves, but in the end they created monuments to human potential. There's a universal message in the pyramids. The pyramids belong to Egypt, but the pyramids also belong to the world. That's why we can all identify the pyramids as an early monument of human greatness.