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| The Great Pyramids of Egypt |
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Historical Notes
There are, of course, many pyramids in Egypt, but the uncontested great one is the Pyramid of Khufu (also known as Cheops) at Giza, where it stands today beside the pyramid of Khafre (also known as Chephren) and the smaller pyramid of Mykerinus. The pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) is the tallest of the three and generally regarded as the biggest single structure ever built by human endeavor.
Each pyramid actually includes numerous related structures, smaller pyramids for wives or honored members of the Pharaoh's court, the boat pits that held the boats that would (theoretically) carry the Pharaoh to his destination in the afterlife, the mortuary temple close to the pyramid base, a long causeway (a passageway, essentially) and the Valley Temple on the banks of the Nile where boats could dock when the Nile was at high water.
The great Pyramid of Khufu (Cheops) stood 481 feet high, measured 756 feet square at its base, and has been calculated to have been built with 5.4 million tons of stone. It was built over a twenty year period ending in 2570 BC.
It stands today essentially intact (the only one of the Seven that does), lacking it's smoothed limestone face stones, which is why today its stonework looks like many steps or plateaus. In its glory, it was smooth-faced.
Beside it is the Great Pyramid of Khafre, Khufu's son. Khafre chose to build his own pyramid ten feet smaller in height (out of respect for his father) but built it on ground twenty feet higher (out of respect to himself). So while the father's pyramid is bigger, the son's looks down on it still. The fabled Sphinx of Egypt is sitting beside the Valley Temple leading to Khafre's pyramid. From the view I chose, looking past the Valley Temple of Khufu to the three Pyramids, the Sphinx is far to the left and out of view.
The third Pyramid belongs to Khufu's grandson, Mykerinus, and is much smaller than the other two.
The pyramid complex has been measured and surveyed extensively, and I tried to build my scene faithfully to those dimensions. The Valley Temple of Khufu's Pyramid has never been fully excavated, so my design of it is pure speculation. The other structures in the image are all correct in size, position, and appearance.
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Construction Notes
To begin, I took a survey map of the complex and assigned it a scale in feet (based on the scale bars in the map) and then rescaled it in Bryce Units (at the ratio of 4 Bryce Units equals one foot). I put the center of the great Pyramid of Khufu in a position of 1440 (X) and -1440 (Z). Everything else was then proportionately positioned.
I knew from the beginning that the Pyramids were so big, and their textural qualities so small by comparison, that I'd never get a great image of the pyramids alone. I knew I needed a smaller foreground structure so the giant pyramids could "loom" in the background. The Valley Temple of Khufu proved to be the perfect foreground piece, so I immediately locked onto that view and never significantly varied it throughout the time I was building this scene.
That decided, I started looking for ways to give the Valley Temple as much textural and architectural detail as possible. The Egyptian columns were very distinctive and so I set out to create one master column with hieroglyphics on it (done with an Image Map), and the palm leaf ornaments at the top (created with symmetrical lattices). And in a bit of whimsy, I put "Bryce 3D" in the hieroglyphics, although you can't read it unless you get "real" close.
Once the column master was created. I duplicated it on the site of the Valley Temple and began detailing it. The stonework textures are Image Maps I made in another Bryce file.
The surface of the Great Pyramid is a single 1200x1200 resolution Image Map applied to the pyramid from an Object Top mapping mode. The single Image map has the lower blocks of darker stone, the lighter face stones of the main body of the pyramid, the gilded top stones, and the actual entry to the pyramid, midway up the North Face (we mainly see the East Face, and a bit of the North Face). It also has the variations in stone block color, since the spaces between the stones are far too fine to be seen.
The Palm trees in the scene were created with a terrain for the base of the trunk, about a dozen spheres for the ribbed tree trunk higher parts, and groups of symmetrical lattices for the palm fronds (each frond having three or four lattices, which allowed me to bend the fronds). There are probably 60 lattices in each palm tree.
The crouching Jackals, symbols of the God Anubis and the House of the Dead, are a combination of terrains (the crouching bodies) and lattices (for the neck, head, and ears). The red collar around the neck is a torus.
The reeds in the water by the banks are symmetrical lattices, each lattice having 3 to 5 reeds.
But even with this myth discounted, the Colossus of Rhodes easily remains one of history's most famous and fascinating sculptures of a human figure.
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