Speech Class

Can somebody look this over its my friends and shes doing it for speech class.

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What you did not know about pyramids.

He walked up the stairs slowly, hesitantly; knowing he would not walk down them again. He was a prisoner of war and he was to be a sacrifice to the Mayan gods. The Mayan’s built pyramids, also known as temples, so that they could perform human sacrifices. When thinking of pyramids most people think of them as solely Egyptian buildings. However, this is not true; they were used in many different ways by many ancient cultures. Pyramids were used of course for burial, and also as a sacrifice alter.
The Encyclopedia states that the word “pyramid” comes from the Greek word pyramides which means “wheaten cakes.” Each Pharaoh wanted his own pyramid, better then the king’s before him. As most people know, the Egyptian pyramids were built to hold the King’s dead body as well as his riches to insure a more pleasant afterlife. It took thousands of workers and many years to build the great pyramids of Egypt. These pyramids reach miles into the sky and some even contained over a million stone blocks. Hieroglyphs and pictures were painted on the walls to show the everyday life of the Pharaoh and how his life would be when he reached the other side. The Hieroglyphs also stated all the good things the Pharaoh accomplished. Workers of that day did not have the tools we use today; they would pull stones that weighted over a ton, miles across the hot desert.
Some scientists believe that the Egyptian pyramid’s are shaped the way they are to represent a ray of light. The Egyptian god Ra was the god of the sun and the Kings were thought to be the living form of him. So it is possible, that that is the reason the pyramids are in a triangular shape. However, the Egyptian pyramids also have another characteristic most people are unaware of; they roughly correlate with stars in the night sky. This means that they are in almost the same alignment as the most popular stars of today. The Giza pyramids closely align with the belt of Orion.
At the same time the Egyptian’s were building their pyramids there was another civilization developing the same kind of idea. The Mayan’s were an ancient culture that lived in the Yucatan peninsula, which is in Mexico. However, the Mayan buildings, which are shaped in kind of the same fashion as the Egyptian’s pyramids, were called temples. These temples were also made of heavy stone like that of the Egyptian pyramids but that is where the comparison ends. The temples had stairways leading up to the top, which lead to many rooms. The rooms were used by priests to appease the gods. These temples were a place of worship and religious relief. The Mayan people had many gods to worship and so they needed many temples.
The Mayan people went to war a great number of times. They had many enemies and a good deal of land they wanted. They had a mighty army and took over a lot of smaller cultures. The prisoners captured were taken as sacrifices to the Mayan gods. The male sacrifices were led up the stairs and in some cases tortured before they were finally executed. A show on the Learning Channel said that sometimes the blood from the sacrifices was drunk by the king at the time. As in the Egyptian culture, the Mayan kings were also thought of as a kind of walking, talking, breathing god. There was also a game played by Mayan’s where the loser would become a sacrifice. There was a huge ball court with round holes placed high up on the walls. Men would have to hit a ball off of their hips and try and get it through the hole. Whoever lost the game would become a sacrifice and had to climb the seemingly unending stairs to their death.
Sacrifice and death seem to go hand in hand with pyramids. Pyramids and temples were a way to show respect to the many gods. People during ancient times did not have the kind of science we have now; they had no idea why things really happened they way they did. So, to make their gods happy they built temples and pyramids for them. What the sacrifices must have thought as they climbed those steps, knowing that at the top of the temple was the end of the road?
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Thanks
-Ezekiel