"Dr Edwards draws both on his research and on the work of many archaeologists who have dug in Egypt. Surveying 1000 years of pyramid-building, he charts the rise and decline of the pyramids as funerary monuments, from the mastabas of the first and second dynasties and the step pyramids to the archaic and backward-looking efforts of the Middle Kingdom, and discusses the famous group at Giza. His final chapter, dealing with their construction and purpose,...