Lower mortality rates, urbanization and mass immigration defined the era, as well as the construction of the Alexandria-Cairo Railroad and the Suez Canal , which accelerated movement.
Gamal Abdel Nasser instituted land reforms, urban development, nationalization of private concessions in utilities and transport, industrialization, and extensive public investment. Cairo was a major base for Third World and pan-Islamic groupings in this period. It is considered the commercial and industrial center of Egypt, the cultural capital of the Arab world, and a landmark of historical and cultural sites.
It also holds publishing houses, modern universities, a cultural industry, playhouses, and a new opera house. In January of , young residents of the city took over the downtown public squares in opposition to decades of poverty and oppression.
Appiah and Henry Louis Gates, eds. Q-How much does a trip to Cairo cost? Q-Where is best to stay in Egypt to see the pyramids? A -The Pyramids area is located in Giza — Cairo conurbation, where it features both luxurious hotels, such as the prominent Marriott Mena House Hotel for unforgettable pyramid views from your room, as well as budget-friendly hotels that can be found anywhere near the Giza Plateaue. Q-How should I dress in Cairo? The Ottomans conquered Cairo in and ruled there until when the area was captured during an expedition led by Napoleon I of France.
Ottoman rule was restored in , but by the middle of the 19th century, Egypt's foreign debt and the weakness of the Ottoman Empire invited greater European influence in Cairo. The Viceroy Ismail Pasha, who ruled from to , built many European-style structures in the city and used the occasion of the opening of the Suez Canal northeast of Cairo in to showcase the city for the European powers. However, much of the development that took place during this period was funded by foreign loans, which led to an increase in the national debt and left Cairo vulnerable to control by Great Britain.
The British effectively ruled Egypt from Cairo from the late 19th century through the period after World War I , when the foreign presence in Cairo began to diminish. Cairo's population grew rapidly during the war years, reaching 2 million by the outbreak of World War II in Since that time, the city has continued to boom in terms of both population and development. Some of this population growth resulted from the influx of refugees from cities along the Suez Canal that were damaged in the Arab-Israeli wars of the late s and early s.
Many new residential, commercial, and governmental structures have changed the city's landscape as well. Tourist attractions have proven an important source of foreign revenue for Egypt, and have thus drawn correspondingly heavy investment from the government. At a place called Meidum, about 75 miles southwest of Cairo, one of Sneferu's pyramids collapsed. Another, at a site near Sakkara called Dahshur, began to sag during construction, so the workers quickly changed the angle of the edges, giving this pyramid a "bent" appearance, which gave it the name that it has to this day: "The Bent Pyramid.
It was Sneferu's son who started the most famous pyramid complex in the world. The Pharaoh Khufu also called Cheops selected an imposing site above a rough escarpment in the desert, where the Nile plain rises to meet the Sahara.
The ancient name for this place is now lost, and the site is called by the name of the suburb of Cairo where the pyramids are located: Giza. When Khufu's pyramid was completed, it was simply the most exquisite, elegant and massive structure ever built. Over 2. The sides angle inwards at a precise measurement for their entire length to a carefully centered point.
The entire pyramid was covered in white limestone slabs so carefully fitted together that it appeared that the entire pyramid was one solid piece of stone. The limestone was so fine that the residents of medieval Cairo used it as building material for their lavish palaces, so that--of the three major pyramids at the site--only the limestone cap of the second great pyramid, that of Khufu's grandson Khafra , remains in place.
To the right are the funerary temples that once met canals coming from the Nile. It is believed that Khufu's son, Djedef-ra built the Sphinx, and Djedef-ra's son Khafra built the second pyramid, which is directly behind it. The third pyramid on the plateau, that of Khafre's son Menkaura , was covered in granite, which was a more expensive and harder-to-find material.
Although the pyramid may appear less impressive due to its smaller size, the granite coating would have made a statement of wealth equal to that of the pyramids built by Menkaura's father and great-grandfather.
Ever since the day that the finishing touches were put on the Great Pyramid at Giza, there has been all sorts of speculation about who really built the pyramids, and how they were built. The Greek historian Herodotus who, though very prolific and well respected, was also wrong about a lot of things was told on his visit to Egypt that it took , men working year round for twenty years to build his pyramid.
He was also told that Khufu was a horrible tyrant who saw to it that these workers were subjected to the most horrible conditions: they were beaten, not fed well, and many of them died while working on the pyramids. The real story, however, is probably a lot less interesting. Most modern archaeologists think that the real number of workers needed to build the pyramids was only around one third of the number given by Herodotus.
Most of the laborers were farmers, who were recruited to work during the annual flooding of the Nile, when their fields were underwater. During that time, it would have been easy to send the large limestone blocks across the Nile from the quarries on the east bank all the way to the construction site on the west by barge. Demonstrations have shown that it takes only one six-man team to move blocks even bigger than those used in the construction of the pyramids using technology that the Egyptians had available to them.
And, while the story that it was the Jewish slaves who built the pyramids seems plausible, the fact is that the pyramids were built about a thousand years too early for there to have been any Jews involved in the construction at all. Over time, Memphis fell from prominence. As the dynasties progressed, new capitals were built, and though Memphis remained important as a trade center almost until the time of the birth of Christ, it never regained its prominence as a political center.
The construction of pyramids was phased out in favor of vast temple complexes and tombs carved in the solid rock at a place called Thebes in Upper Egypt. Egypt's political power weakened as well.
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