Essay Outline

Discussing the significance and role of ancient pyramids in Egypt

I. Introduction paragraph
II. Pyramids started as multi-stepped "mastaba", and were built as tombs for Kings in Egypt.
	A. This was already a thing in Egypt's ideology, but it had never been built in stone before
	B. Imhotep's pyramid started the "Pyramid Age"
		1. This pyramid was the first stone pyramid built. It had steps, and was made of many
			stone slabs built on top of each other in diminishing size as it went up.
III. Pyramids at Giza are the most well known Pyramids in the world
	A. The largest of the 3 built is the Great Pyramid of King Khufu
	B. Each of the 2,300,000 blocks used to create the pyramid weigh more than 1 ton.
	C. The Great Pyramid in total covers an area of 13 acres and is 481 feet high.
	D. It points towards true north, off by only 1/20th of a degree.
IV. The Bent Pyramid was a pyramid that had gone a bit wrong.
	A. Sneferu was half way through building it when cracks started to form around the outer casing.
	B. The rest of the pyramid was simply not strong enough to support the upper half.
	C. To fix this, they put extra blocks of stone around the base, giving it the appearance of bending.
	D. It didn't work, so they changed the upper half of the pyramid too via using smaller blocks,
		making it look bent.
	E. The arcitects where ashamed to build something that had failed so miserably, so they started again
		from scratch.
V. The workers who built the Great Pyramid were positioned in "Pyramid Towns" while they worked on it.
	A. These "pyramid towns" were essentially camps that the workers could stay at while they work
		on the pyramid, for months at a time.
VI. Why did the workers work for 20 years to build a pyramid?
	A. The position of King was, in Egyptian times, a mediator between the gods and the common people.
	B. No one wants to annoy the gods by refusing their mediator a temple in which to lie, so they built it.
	C. Realistically, the pyramid was a symbol of absolute power over the people.
VII. Pyramids were eventually replaced by smaller temples.
	A. This was due to the huge economic burden of pyramids.