Located some 10 miles southwest of downtown Cairo , on the edge of a desert plateau, the three Great Pyramids of Giza rise up majestically. Shrouded in an aura of mystery, there are many myths surrounding them.

The Great Pyramids were built by pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty (Cheops, Chephrern and Mycerinus). The precise construction techniques used by the ancient builders of the pyramids are still much debated, and there are no documents to shed any light. One current theory is that they were built with overlapping ramps, that were extended and raised as the pyramid rose higher. Recent research suggests that the enormous limestone blocks of the body of the pyramid were quarried locally on the Giza plateau itself, and then dragged to the construction site by teams of laborers using huge wooden sledges. The blocks were subsequently covered with a casing ( long since lost) of harder limestone slabs, mostly taken from the quarry at Tura, on the opposite bank of the Nile .

The Great Pyramid of Cheops is the only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to have survived to the present day. It ranked as the tallest structure on earth for over 43 centuries. This pyramid, the most colossal ever built, is 460 feet in height, was built from 7.7 million tons of stone; it's base covers an area of 12 acres.

Not far from Cheops' Pyramid lies the mysterious Sun Boat, a cedar-wood craft built to take the pharaoh through the underworld. It is believed to have carried the body of Cheops on his last journey on Earth before he was buried inside the his pyramid.

Giza is also home to the mighty Sphinx, guardian of the necropolis of this city. The Sphinx wears the characteristic royal and divine headdress, known as the ames . Part of the nose, the uraeus (the sacred cobra) which adorned its forehead, and the ritual beard – a fragment of which is in the British Museum – are now missing. The Sphinx, like the gods and the pharaohs, fulfilled a protective function. The Sphinx was a masculine entity, a manifestation of the god and the depiction of the deified pharaoh. The Sphinx known as “Horus on the Horizon” from the eighteenth century onwards. The Sphinx is as mysterious as the Great Pyramids; its gaze stretches far into space and time.

To the south of Giza lies the immense necropolis of Saqqara, the largest of all the cemeteries linked to Memphis . Saqqara is dominated by the great step pyramid of Zoser, dating from the beginning of the third Dynasty, and is the first known example of a pyramid in Egypt . Zoser‘s pyramid was designed by the great architect Amenhotep, who was later deified as a magician and healer, and identified by the Greeks to be equal with their god of medicine, Asclepius. In the creation of this structure, Amenhotep first built a large mastaba, which he then raised by adding five superimposed levels, decreasing in size, until a pyramid of six steps was formed. In philosophical and religious terms, the step pyramid may have represented a stairway for the pharaoh to ascend to heaven.

Memphis , the first capital of Egypt , was founded by Narmer in the region known as Mekhattawi (that which binds the Two Lands), which at the time marked the boundary between Upper and Lower Egypt , right at the tip of the Nile Delta. The city became the great capital of Egypt during the Early Dynastic and Old Kingdom periods. In antiquity, Memphis was called Ineb-hedj (White Walls), referring - according to Herodotus – to the construction of a dam designed to protect the town from the Nile floods. It later took the name of Ankh-tawi (the Life of Two Lands). One of the temples of Memphis , dedicated to Hut-Ka-Ptah, may have been the origin of the word Aigyptos , which the Greeks used when referring to the country as a whole – Egypt .