What the Great Pyramids of Giza Originally Looked Like

Ask any­one who’s trav­eled to the Great Pyra­mids of Giza: no mat­ter how many times you’ve seen them in pho­tographs or on tele­vi­sion, you’re nev­er real­ly pre­pared to come face-to-face with them in real life. But you can get fair­ly close to at least the appear­ance of real life by see­ing the Pyra­mids in 4k res­o­lu­tion, as they’re pre­sent­ed in the video above from trav­el, archi­tec­ture, and his­to­ry Youtu­ber Manuel Bra­vo (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his expla­na­tion of Fil­ip­po Brunelleschi’s dome atop the Flo­rence Cathe­dral). This isn’t just vaca­tion footage: Bra­vo tells the sto­ry of the Pyra­mids, puts them in con­text, and even incor­po­rates vir­tu­al re-cre­ations of what they would have looked like in their hey­day.

We know the Pyra­mids as icon­ic ruins, undoubt­ed­ly mighty but also seri­ous­ly dilap­i­dat­ed. When they were built in the 26th cen­tu­ry BC, they were cov­ered in white lime­stone exte­ri­or shells, giv­ing them the strik­ing­ly smooth if chro­mat­i­cal­ly reversed appear­ance of a 2001-style mono­lith — a char­ac­ter­is­tic that no doubt encour­ages cer­tain the­o­rists who imag­ine the con­struc­tion process as hav­ing been exe­cut­ed by beings from out­er space.

The tech­ni­cal­ly inclined Bra­vo pre­sum­ably has lit­tle time for such notions, fill­ing the video as he does with details about the archi­tec­ture and engi­neer­ing of the Pyra­mids, many of them thor­ough­ly human in nature, such as the delib­er­ate­ly con­fus­ing pas­sage­ways meant to throw off plun­der­ers.

Along with high-res­o­lu­tion footage and ren­der­ings of what the Pyra­mids looked like then and look like now, Bra­vo also includes his own on-foot explo­rations, show­ing us cor­ners of the com­plex (and one espe­cial­ly claus­tro­phobe-unfriend­ly tun­nel) that we don’t nor­mal­ly see unless we take a tour our­selves. This close-up per­spec­tive gives him the oppor­tu­ni­ty to con­nect the mod­ern human expe­ri­ence of these ancient mon­u­ments to their vast scale and his­tor­i­cal­ly dis­tant con­cep­tion. To be awed and even over­whelmed is per­haps the most nat­ur­al response to the Pyra­mids, and for some, it’s worth the trip to expe­ri­ence that feel­ing alone. For oth­ers, answer­ing the ques­tion of exact­ly how and why they awe and over­whelm becomes the work of a life­time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Walk­ing Tour Around the Pyra­mids of Giza: 2 Hours in Hi Def

Take a 360° Inter­ac­tive Tour Inside the Great Pyra­mid of Giza

Take a 3D Tour Through Ancient Giza, Includ­ing the Great Pyra­mids, the Sphinx & More

What the Great Pyra­mid of Giza Would’ve Looked Like When First Built: It Was Gleam­ing, Reflec­tive White

Who Built the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids & How Did They Do It?: New Arche­o­log­i­cal Evi­dence Busts Ancient Myths

The Grate­ful Dead Play at the Egypt­ian Pyra­mids, in the Shad­ow of the Sphinx (1978)

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.