Green Life

Boats unloaded at a landing space connected to the site of the pyramid by a stone road. The blocks, weighing about 2 tonnes each, were then pulled up the road on sledges by gangs of men. Stone blocks pulled up the roads were laid out in neat rows and then pulled to the site by other gangs of men. The numbers of blocks in the Great Pyramid have been estimated at 2,300,000. As the pyramid rose, a huge ramp was built up get the materials to higher levels. Gangs of men pulled the blocks up the ramp. Each layer of the pyramid was made of blocks of limestone set side by side. Mortar was used to slide the stones, rather than to cement them together. Blocks in the center were rough, but those on the outside were cut more carefully. The final surface was made of very smooth limestone with almost invisible joints. The pyramid has three inside chambers with connecting passages.

The building of such a tremendous structure was a marvelous engineering feat. It is said that it took 100,000 men working for twenty years to build the Great Pyramid! Each block of stone is 7 meters high. Some are 5.5 meters wide. Let’s see if we trace the story of the building of this particular pyramid. The blocks of limestone and granite used in building the pyramid were brought by boat from quarries across the Nile and to the south. This could be done for only three months each spring when the Nile was flooded. So it took twenty years and some 500,000 trips to bring all the stone needed!

There are many kinds of puppets, as you know. There are hand puppets, rod puppets, shadow figures, and marionettes. They are little figures operated by strings and wires from above, rod, or by hands from below. Puppets are as old as the theater itself. The first puppets were probably made in India or Egypt. Puppet theatres thousands of years old have been found in both of these countries. Marionettes, which are puppets animated by strings from above, got their name in Italy. During the early Christmas celebrations, small, jointed nativity figures including the Christ Child and the Virgin Mary were made to move by strings. This kind of puppet became known as a marionette, or little Mary.

No one knows exactly how old the pyramids are. A thousand years before Christ, they were already old and mysterious. The Great Pyramid at Giza has been attributed to King Cheops of the fourth dynasty (about 2900 B.C). The pyramids are tombs. The ancient Egyptian kings believed that their future lives depended upon the perfect preservation of their bodies. The dead were therefore embalmed, and the mummies were hidden below the level of the ground in the interior of these great masses of stone. Even the inner passages were blocked and concealed from possible robbers. Food and other necessities were put in the tombs for the kings to eat in their future lives.

When the Romans came to these circuses, it was much like arriving at a modern circus or fair grounds. There were vendors of pastry, wine (like our soft drink sellers), and various other merchandise. Admission was free, because the government used these circuses as a way of keeping the masses content. Meanwhile, in Rome there were all sorts of other entertainment going on which eventually became part of what we call the circus. Some theaters had jugglers, acrobats, rope walkers and animal trainers. Some of them even had boxing bears! And at the race courses, they had people performing such tricks as riding two horses at once, riders jumping from one running horse to another, and riders jumping their teams over chariots, all of which we have in the modern circus.

When the persecutions of the Christians ended under Constantine, the catacombs were visited by many pilgrims. When the Goths conquered and sacked Rome in A.D, the entrances of the catacombs were filled up in order to protect them. By the twelfth century, the existence of the catacombs was forgotten. They were so well hidden that it was not until 1578 that one was accidentally found. Passages in the catacombs are usually straight and from 3 to 4 meters deep. They were dug just wide enough for two gravediggers, one behind another, to pass along them with a bier. The stairs that let down were often 12 meters underground. At the bottom, galleries branch off in all directions. Some of the catacombs have two or more levels. One, the catacomb of St. Sebastian, has four. The walls of the galleries were cut into niches for the bodies of the dead. Originally, they were walled up with tiles or stone. Many of these partitions have given way, and present-day visitors to the tombs must walk between long rows of skeletons.

The catacombs were underground tombs near Rome where the early Christians were buried. These tombs were cut in soft rock in a sacred area surrounding the city or Rome. When Emperor Nero began his persecutions of the Christians, they gathered in the tombs to worship. This was because every citizen was safe from attack in the burial grounds. Later, in the middle of the third century, even the burial grounds were not safe. The Christians then blocked up the regular and made secret ones. They extended for miles in the underground galleries. It is said that the catacombs would be longer that the peninsula of Italy if the passages were in a straight line!