Early European View
During the Middle Ages, the few Europeans who saw the Egyptian pyramids struggled to fathom what they were or what their function might have been. Around the sixth century, Christian monks thought that pyramids were used to store crops and that the biblical Joseph built them for the pharaoh. Even today, there are cathedrals in Italy with murals depicting the narrative of Joseph and people storing grains in the pyramids. Unlike the mind-boggling finding that was to follow, this notion was not universally embraced.
Early European View
The Ayyubid Dynasty
In the 12th century AD, Al-Malik al-Aziz Uthman succeeded his father Saladin as the second Ayyubid Sultan of Egypt. Al-Aziz was not interested in discovering the secrets of the pyramids’ construction; rather, he wanted to entirely destroy them as a display of Islamic supremacy. However, the creation of these magnificent monuments was so strong that his efforts were ineffective. He did create a considerable damage in one of the lesser pyramids, the Menkaure pyramid, but the constructions held up well overall. The pyramids still stand, as do many of the unsolved issues about their genesis.
The Ayyubid Dynasty
