The most wonderful part of all this huge area is a building in the middle ofour scan, one huge structure covering more than 41,000 square meters, thecenter of which is a building which shows a sequence of rooms. All of themwith symmetrically arranged columns. The function of this building is mostprobably a temple. Temples were central to life in ancient Egypt, their hugecolumned halls and cavernous interiors deliberately designed to inspire allas much as to intimidate.
This is the western part of our scan, a villa area with long stretching,straight-running streets, branching off at right angles, the estatesthemselves surrounded by white lines which are the surrounding walls. Thesouthern edge of this settlement in villa area is denoted by a black lineand giving the shoreline of the Pelusiac Nile branch.
Laid out along avenues in a distinctive grid, these were the homes of thewealthy. It is in this area of the site that large in stripes door in doorshave been found, bearing the names of Egyptian generals and royalty, andlooking out across the banks of the Nile.
The eastern part of our scan shows a much denser building area, also dividedby streets. But they are neither straight nor on a clear grid. This area ofvery small houses might be an area where not only socially lower rankingpeople (where) once living, but also workshops might have been in operation.
There is other sizable neighborhood, with its haphazard tightly packedlayout, has all the characteristics of a more workaday part of the city,both residential and trade. In contrast to the villa district, people herelived cheek by jowl, along packs twisting streets. ''So you have a cleardistinction between the west and the east.'' With the layout and style ofarchitecture forming a strong sense of the scale of Piramess, one structure,perhaps the most breath-taking of all, is out of the reach of even the mosthigh-tech scanning equipment. |