1627 Rise of the South China Sea

Chapter 3710

In the dust ahead, the outline of a huge object slowly emerged. Even though Li Yuande and Dong Shangyi had traveled to many countries and witnessed countless wonders, they were still shocked by the scene before them and were speechless for a moment.

It was a giant building several dozen feet high, wide at the bottom and pointed at the top, shaped like a triangle, standing in the desert like a small hill.

Walking closer, you can see two smaller spires of the same shape in the southwest of this giant building. The shape is actually a square-bottomed spire, a very standard four-sided pyramid, and its four faces are facing the four directions of east, south, west and north.

The three towers are all built of rectangular boulders that fit tightly together and have no gaps at the joints. Li Yuande noticed that the surface of these boulders has been severely weathered, indicating that they must have been built a long time ago.

"Sir, what... is this thing? Is it some kind of altar?" Li Yuande, who had just recovered from his shock after a long time, immediately asked Qian Tiandun about the origin of this giant building.

Qian Tiandun said: "This thing is called a pyramid. As for why it is called this name, look at its shape. Doesn't it look very similar to the Chinese character for 'gold'?"

Mr. Li and the other two nodded repeatedly after hearing this, both thinking that this name was very descriptive.

Qian Tiandun went on to say: "These pyramids are actually tombs built by the former kings of Egypt for themselves during their reign. The three pyramids we see in front of us actually belong to three generations of kings."

Li Yuande said: "That makes sense. Most of the ancient Chinese emperors used mountains as their mausoleums and built tombs in the mountains. However, this Egyptian emperor did the opposite and simply built a stone mountain as his mausoleum."

Dong Shangyi said: "To build such a large-scale wonder, at least tens of thousands of people must be mobilized. It can be seen that Egypt was quite powerful at that time and was able to build such a large project!"

Qian Tiandun said: "These three pyramids were probably built four thousand years ago..."

"How many? Four thousand years?" Li Yuande was shocked again: "At that early time, the Egyptians had such strong engineering capabilities?"

Dong Shangyi also sighed: "It was less than 2,000 years ago when Qin Shihuang built the Great Wall, but the pyramids were actually built 4,000 years ago. These Egyptians were really amazing!"

Qian Tiandun said: "It is unknown how the Egyptians organized and built such a huge project at that time, but it can be inferred from this that Egypt's national strength in its heyday may be even stronger than it is now."

Li Yuande said: "I have an opposite idea. It is precisely because of the construction of these huge tombs, which consumed a lot of labor and wealth, that Egypt went from prosperity to decline."

Qian Tiandun's judgment was obvious. Even if Egypt today had more manpower, better engineering technology and tools, it no longer had the super organizational capabilities required to build such a large-scale project. Otherwise, it would have become an ignored territory under the rule of the Ottoman Empire.

Qian Tiandun thought that Li Yuande's statement made sense. In the late Egyptian period, the pyramids of the pharaohs became smaller and smaller, and their structures became simpler. Finally, they simply stopped building pyramids and began to return to basics, digging secret tombs in the mountains. This can also be seen as a manifestation of the decline of national strength.

The three of them walked and talked, and unknowingly came close to the pyramid. After getting off the horse, the three of them realized the huge size of the huge stones that made up the pyramid. Any one of them was estimated to weigh two or three thousand kilograms.

Dong Shangyi stepped forward and pulled out his dagger, trying to insert it into the gap between the stones, but it really couldn't be inserted at all. The contact surface between the stones must have been polished more carefully to achieve such a dense fit. Considering the number of huge stones used to build such a large pyramid, if all surfaces of each stone were to be polished flat, this would be an extremely terrifying amount of processing.

Moreover, Qian Tiandun said that the pyramid was built four thousand years ago. The tools available at that time must have been very primitive, and it was even more difficult to trim these huge stones into a flat surface.

The three of them walked slowly along the base of the pyramid, talking about this rare engineering miracle in the world and imagining the scene of Egypt's heyday thousands of years ago.

Suddenly Li Yuande asked in surprise: "Sir, what do you see in the sand dunes over there?"

Dong Shangyi also noticed what Li Yuande said, frowned and said: "Why does it look like... like a big head!"

The thing is located one mile east of the three pyramids, about several feet high, and looks like a huge human sculpture. But this thing doesn't even have a neck, just a big head sticking out in the desert, the scene is really a bit weird.

Qian Tiandun said: "You are not mistaken, it is a big head. But this head is not the whole sculpture. What we see is only a small part of the sculpture exposed outside the sand dunes."

Li Yuande said: "The head alone is several feet high. If it is a whole statue, it must be more than a hundred feet high. The sand here is so deep!"

Qian Tiandun said: "The sand is not that deep... The posture of this statue is not standing in the sand, but lying down."

"Lie...lie down?" Li Yuande suddenly felt a little confused in his brain.

He traveled far and wide and saw all kinds of sculptures in different countries. He saw a lot of strange things, but he had never seen a sculpture of a person in a prone position.

What's more, judging from the big head sticking out from the sand dune, its body hidden in the sand must be very large. It was really difficult for him to imagine what kind of weird posture it was.

Dong Shangyi was obviously troubled by the same question: "Sir, why are the Egyptians so weird that they would build a giant statue lying prone in the desert?"

Qian Tiandun knew that the two people were thinking in the wrong way, so he explained with a smile: "This sculpture is not what you imagined. In fact, it is a sphinx. The body buried under the sand is actually the body of a lion. Think about it, isn't this more reasonable?"

"Sphinx?"

The two of them immediately replaced the body of the crouching sculpture in their minds with a lion, and it really seemed to become much more pleasing to the eye.

However, they immediately raised a new question: "Sir, this should be the first time for us to come here, why are you so familiar with this place, even knowing exactly what is buried in the sand?"

Qian Tiandun said, “This is indeed my first time here, but all the information about this place has been recorded by our predecessors in the Hai Han country’s database. For our country, there may still be many unknown places in this world, but there are not many secrets about the history and culture of various countries.”