Mug Shot — «Cairo - Pyramid of Chefren»

City: Cairo Country: Egypt Edition: 2008 Icon Edition Belongs to: 437 users (26 trading, 246 seeking)

Cairo is the capital of Egypt and the largest city in the Arab world and Africa, and the 16th largest metropolitan area in the world. Located near the Nile Delta, it was founded in the year 969 A.D. making it 1,043 years old. Nicknamed "The City of a Thousand Minarets" for its preponderance of Islamic architecture, Cairo has long been a centre of the region's political and cultural life. Cairo was founded by the Fatimid dynasty in the 10th century AD.; but the land composing the present-day city was the site of national capitals whose remnants remain visible in parts of Old Cairo. Cairo is also associated with Ancient Egypt due to its proximity to the ancient cities of Memphis, Giza and Fustat which are nearby to the Great Sphinx and the pyramids of Giza. Cairo has the oldest and largest film and music industries in the Arab World, as well as the world's second-oldest institution of higher learning, al-Azhar University. Many international media, businesses, and organizations have regional headquarters in the city, and the Arab League has had its headquarters in Cairo for most of its existence. With a population of 6.76 million spread over 453 square kilometers, Cairo is by far the largest city in Egypt. With an additional ten million inhabitants just outside the city, Cairo resides at the centre of the largest metropolitan area in Africa and the eleventh-largest urban area in the world. Cairo, like many other mega-cities, suffers from high levels of pollution and traffic, but its metro – the only one on the African continent until the Algiers Metro began service in 2011 – also ranks among the fifteen busiest in the world, with over 700 million passenger rides annually. The economy of Cairo was ranked first in the Middle East, and 43rd globally by Foreign Policy's 2010 Global Cities Index.

Pyramid of Chefren - is the second-largest of the ancient Egyptian Pyramids of Giza and the tomb of the fourth-dynasty pharaon Chefren. The pyramid has a base length of 215.5 m and rises to a height of 136.4 metres (originally 143.5 m). The Pyramid is made of limestone blocks (weighing more than 2 tons each). The slope of the pyramid rises at an 53° 10' angle, steeper than its neighbor, the Pyramid of Khufu. The pyramid sits on bedrock 10 m higher than Khufu’s pyramid which makes it appear to be taller. The pyramid was likely opened and robbed during the First Intermediate Period. During the 18th dynasty the overseer of temple construction robbed casing stone from it to build a temple in Heliopolis on Rameses II’s orders. Arab historian Ibn Abd as-Salaam recorded that the pyramid was opened in 1372. It was first explored in modern time by Giovanni Belzoni on March 2, 1818 and the first complete exploration was conducted by John Perring in 1837. The most remarkable thing associated with Chefren's pyramid is not a part of the pyramid at all, but part of the temple complex, the Sphinx. The Sphinx was cut directly from the bedrock at the base of the pyramid. The stones that were removed were probably used to build the pyramid itself.


photo by lucky
edited by mobydick74

  Egypt, Cairo, MIT

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