97 replies to this topic

[Eldorado]

cormac mac airt, on 10 December 2012 - 09:52 PM, said:

Agreed. But again, you're talking about the way things are done in the 21st century AD. NOT 4500 years ago.

cormac

Granted.   I can't help it. I started my trade at 16 when apprenticeships lasted between 4 and 7 years and not 3 months like we have today...  so was brainwashed and stuck with this plumber head for life.  And I find it hard to imagine a construction site with no foremen, supervisors and managers rushing about telling workers to hurry the hell up already, or else.

[cormac mac airt]

Eldorado, on 10 December 2012 - 10:02 PM, said:

Granted.   I can't help it. I started my trade at 16 when apprenticeships lasted between 4 and 7 years and not 3 months like we have today...  so was brainwashed and stuck with this plumber head for life.  And I find it hard to imagine a construction site with no foremen, supervisors and managers rushing about telling workers to hurry the hell up already, or else.

Oh, I'm sure they did. But they really had no expectation as to a specific "when" the construction needed to be complete. That's the snag.

cormac

[cladking]

Djedi, on 10 December 2012 - 09:17 PM, said:

No partially finished "great pyramids"??? And what of Sekhemkhet's and Baka's then?

These are pyramids that were hardly begun.

The odds of an individual dying increases with age so one would expect to see pyramids
nearly complete rather than hardly begun if they stopped building when someone died.  The
only alternative to this scenario besides the two already stated is if the pyramids took mere
weeks or months to build.

In any case though the evidence is not consistent with the concept that these were built for
an individual and construction stopped when he died.  It would take many years to build these
with ramps so something has to give to fit the evidence.

[kampz]

Money and the Pyramids was a great point. The cost of the Pyramids was time. Time is the most precious thing we have. You can never get it back and you only get so much. Time is money and money is time. Other cost was supporting a giant work force with proper medical care and food which is only ideal if the Pyramids were built like quick like there already being proposed.

The King didn't force anyone to be apart of the major work force. The people who helped build chose too. But what kmt_sesh said was right. The people back then are the same as the majority of us today. The King and his guys would ask you usually if you want to help and I'm sure he did with the Pyramids of Giza but you had a choice to say no, but you better have a reasonable excuse. I thought I learned that there were certain people with the specific skill of a mason and there happened to be a lot. You don't want some guy who can't carve a lick making your monuments. If your solely a rock pusher, your a slave in my eyes. Most people were farmers and masons. Then the towns folk at the market trading and selling.

The King wasn't just building Pyramids just for himself and his country, a group of other "people" gave him the idea and said you know if you want we can do this project together.. It kinda was for bragging rights but I don't think Egypt knew other continents were going to do it after. These people taught them how to construct monuments to a scale that never existed again, before and after.

Luckily, Atlantis or nobody else was around invading Northern Egypt. That's if you place the construction at around 10,000 BC. Egyptologists date the construction of Khufus Pyramid lasting over a 10 - 20 year period at around 2560 BCE. If you use 2560 BCE, Teotihuacan advancing because of the same thing doesn't seen to far out of the realm of possibility. Forgot Teotihuacan, what about the Old Wonders of the World?

[kmt_sesh]

kampz, on 10 December 2012 - 11:30 PM, said:

Money and the Pyramids was a great point. The cost of the Pyramids was time. Time is the most precious thing we have. You can never get it back and you only get so much. Time is money and money is time. Other cost was supporting a giant work force with proper medical care and food which is only ideal if the Pyramids were built like quick like there already being proposed.

The King didn't force anyone to be apart of the major work force. The people who helped build chose too. But what kmt_sesh said was right. The people back then are the same as the majority of us today. The King and his guys would ask you usually if you want to help and I'm sure he did with the Pyramids of Giza but you had a choice to say no, but you better have a reasonable excuse. I thought I learned that there were certain people with the specific skill of a mason and there happened to be a lot. You don't want some guy who can't carve a lick making your monuments. If your solely a rock pusher, your a slave in my eyes. Most people were farmers and masons. Then the towns folk at the market trading and selling.

The King wasn't just building Pyramids just for himself and his country, a group of other "people" gave him the idea and said you know if you want we can do this project together.. It kinda was for bragging rights but I don't think Egypt knew other continents were going to do it after. These people taught them how to construct monuments to a scale that never existed again, before and after.

Luckily, Atlantis or nobody else was around invading Northern Egypt. That's if you place the construction at around 10,000 BC. Egyptologists date the construction of Khufus Pyramid lasting over a 10 - 20 year period at around 2560 BCE. If you use 2560 BCE, Teotihuacan advancing because of the same thing doesn't seen to far out of the realm of possibility. Forgot Teotihuacan, what about the Old Wonders of the World?

LOL I think you might want to reread my post. What we understand of corvée labor tells us the workers had no choice. As I mentioned earlier, it was about the same as a draft: you were called to work, and that was that. You worked for the state for three months or so, and then you went back home. Corvée labor or a military draft—or military conscription, as is done in numerous countries today—allows for no personal choice. You are obligated to serve and have no say in the matter.

For some of the work force it would've been a plumb job. The work was still hard, but higher-status workers like foremen and scribes would've been subjected to less physical labor and would've enjoyed greater perks and recognition. There was always room for advancement, no doubt. A regular worker who showed particular skill and determination might become a foreman, and spend a longer stint at the site.

But for the average laborer who cut and hauled stones, there was no choice in the matter.

[kampz]

Corvée labor tells us the workers had no choice in helping build the Great Pyramid not the other two in 10 to 20 years? I thought Zahi Hawass said different. No slaves. Again why have the guy be mason when he can't be a mason? He's farming instead having sex with his wife once a night while 10 other kids are running around or hopefully sleeping/away. Sure other people could of came and gone if they pleased as long as they had enough people. They left to see there family. I bet there were new people helping build at the very end of the construction too and I bet a good majority stayed the entire time. These Pyramids are being constructed in around 20 years.

You're not going to have the Pyramids only get build half way. I could see the civilians living in the area be afraid of the consequences if they all left half way through. That's pretty mean leaving your Gods behind to finish.. They thought these guys are Gods. Don't start something you can't/don't finish.

If you were called to the draft you must pass an exam. Say, can you do something else other then pushing/pulling like carve? If you can't no thanks. But I'm sure just pushers existed just because they wanted to be apart of something special and you had these people moving stones with there eyes it would seem. Pretty interesting.

"But for the average laborer who cut and hauled stones, there was no choice in the matter." - That's slavery. I know slavery existed in Egypt. but I'm talking about the Pyramids of Giza only.

Edited by kampz, 11 December 2012 - 01:15 AM.

[kmt_sesh]

kampz, on 11 December 2012 - 01:01 AM, said:

Corvée labor tells us the workers had no choice in helping build the Great Pyramid not the other two in 10 to 20 years? I thought Zahi Hawass said different. No slaves. Again why have the guy be mason when he can't be a mason? He's farming instead having sex with his wife once a night while 10 other kids are running around or hopefully sleeping/away. Sure other people could of came and gone if they pleased as long as they had enough people. They left to see there family. I bet there were new people helping build at the very end of the construction too and I bet a good majority stayed the entire time. These Pyramids are being constructed in around 20 years.

You're not going to have the Pyramids only get build half way. I could see the civilians living in the area be afraid of the consequences if they all left half way through. That's pretty mean leaving your Gods behind to finish.. They thought these guys are Gods.

If you were called to the draft you must pass an exam. Say, can you do something else other then pushing like carve? If you can't no thanks. But I'm sure just pushers existed just because they wanted to be apart of something special and you had these people moving stones with there eyes it would seem. Pretty interesting.

"But for the average laborer who cut and hauled stones, there was no choice in the matter." - That's slavery.

There's no chance the same workmen were on-site, building the Great Pyramid for the 20 or so years the project required. That would've taxed the work force too much, and resulted in loss of revenues from a great many farms and herds. Corvée labor didn't work that way. And without a doubt, forcing the same 20,000 men to work on the project from start to finish certainly would've resulted in an untenable loss of life.

Zahi Hawass is correct about slaves but corvée laborers were not slaves. True, they were compelled to work for the state, but they were paid for their labor and were there for only around three months. They were common, free citizens of the Egyptian state, and the state needed them to be able to return to their farms and herds to maintain the revenue stream.

Slaves, on the other hand, were considered property. They did not have rights and they rarely owned their own property (at least in terms of ancient Egypt). Slaves were not in the primary work force because the king wouldn't have wanted slaves to build his eternal home (i.e., tomb). Only in certain narrow, rare ways were some slaves granted freedom, whereas corvée laborers were free citizens of the state.

Editing to add: Look at it this way. If you live in a modern country which uses conscription for its military, are the soldiers of that country its slaves? Of course not. They serve their term in the military and go home, although in most cases they're entered into reserve forces that can be called up at any time. Corvée labor was essentially the same thing, only you labored instead of fought.

Edited by kmt_sesh, 11 December 2012 - 01:17 AM.

[kampz]

True they were there for money but also because these "Gods that look like us" are moving granite stones with there eyes and mind, but as I said they weren't really. They just gave off the impression. There's noway with a workforce containing all Corvee workers could complete the project with the evidence they gave us. You need around 10 extremely intelligent people that can teach them how to do it and those 10 people need to appear to be manifesting/moving granite slabs of rock that are transformed into blocks at the Pyramid site from the granite quarry site. Like the granite quarry sight was full of granite then disappeared to the Pyramid sight already in the form of a perfect block. Time is a very important part. Probably not every block was created intelligently in that way. I'm sure these "Gods" taught them how to do it with every day things found on Earth and we put that block into the Pyramid.

Edited by kampz, 11 December 2012 - 02:11 AM.

[kmt_sesh]

kampz, on 11 December 2012 - 01:28 AM, said:

True they were there for money but also because these "Gods that look like us" are moving granite stones with there eyes and mind, but as I said they weren't really. They just gave off the impression. There's noway with a workforce containing all Corvee workers could complete the project with the evidence they gave us. You need around 10 extremely intelligent people that can teach them how to do it and those 10 people need to appear to be manifesting/moving granite slabs of rock that are transformed into blocks at the Pyramid site from the granite quarry site. Like the granite quarry sight was full of granite then disappeared to the Pyramid sight already in the form of a perfect block. Time is a very important part. Probably not every block was created intelligently in that way. I'm sure these "Gods" taught them how to do it with every day things found on Earth and we put that block into the Pyramid.

A picky point, probably, but you keep referring to the stones as granite. Nearly all of the Great Pyramid and other pyramids are composed of limestone, quarried and dressed right there on-site. The Great Pyramid does contain some very large slabs of granite, quarried at the south end of Egypt and brought to Giza on barges, but all told the granite must represent less than 1% of the mass of the Great Pyramid.

It's a common misconception that we could not reproduce the Great Pyramid today. Of course we could. There's no logical reason to doubt it. Were we especially to use modern machinery and technology, we could certainly do it even better and quicker. But for the sake of accuracy in experimental archaeology it would need to be done with the technology of the Early Bronze Age in Egypt, meaning primarily stone and copper tools.

That presents problems, however. First, no modern country, not even the United States, could afford the expense it would take to build a Great Pyramid. Economists who've done the math figure it would cost more than $2 billion, so clearly it would be an unreasonable and wasteful expense to any modern country. Add to this the fact that no modern government of an enlightened, developed country could use a system like corvée labor—workers would have to apply for the job, and would have to be paid fair salaries, which means the overall expense for the project would increase exponentially.

Second, pretty much all modern countries have become extremely litigious, so no country would risk the cost in human lives such a project might require. This means everything from governments to wealthy corporations would avoid the project at all costs.

Third, and very important, no one has attempted a monument quite like the Great Pyramid since...well, the Great Pyramid, and that was 4,500 years ago. No one today possesses the practical experience to do the job in one shot. Nor did the Egyptians before the Great Pyramid. It didn't just pop up without precedent. The Egyptians had already been building pyramids for more than a century before the first stone was cut for the Great Pyramid, so in all reality we would have to do the same. We would have to start over and achieve the project through practical, experiential efforts—just like the Egyptians did in the Early Bronze Age.

So it might take a century of building pyramids, give or take, but it certainly could be done.

[DieChecker]

cladking, on 10 December 2012 - 08:52 PM, said:

This is an assumption not bourne out by the evidence.  If it were necessary to complete
it before the king died then there should be some partially finished great pyramids. There
aren't any so either they could probably either finish it after he died or his death wasn't an
issue for some other reason.

Or they were built faster then we suspected.

[kampz]

Thanks for the reminder about the different types of stones used to build them. Good points again.

I would think we could replicate it. We have no reason too. If some "Gods" showed up maybe we would again or build something different. But nobody ever replicated it before or after accept at Teotihuacan. The Pyramids of Giza are at a much grander scale. Why did Khufus get this? Nobody cares about Khufus. It's clear since everything else looks like crap compared to the Pyramids of Giza. Is it because they got paid for around 20 years? Didn't they always get paid except for some slave here and there? What about before or after? People were coming and going during the construction. Mostly coming.

Another way to think of it is that the civilians livings in the general area saw it was an opportunity to go to school.

A couple or few centuries ago before the The Pyramids of Giza, Egyptians were building crap. They were cool but nothing compared to the scale and the time it took to complete. Stepped Pyramids look like a creepy old stone house to me. Snofru's Red Pyramid is the only thing resembling the Pyramids of Giza. It's nowhere the size of the Great Pyramid of Giza.

Edited by kampz, 11 December 2012 - 05:47 AM.

[DieChecker]

kmt_sesh, on 10 December 2012 - 09:38 PM, said:

I would have to agree with cormac on this. One cannot apply modern construction criteria to the ancient world. There is simply no sense on the royal level that budgetary concerns were considered: all that mattered was the completion of the project, at all costs (pun intended).

Of much greater concern was the efficiency with which construction procedures carried on. This meant the timely delivery of raw materials, adequate recruitment of workers, the supplies to equip and maintain the builders, among other things. There was definitely a sophisticated bureaucracy in place just for the building of a pyramid, but we get no sense at all of budgets.

I'm going to agree with Kmt. Sure, they would have inventoried everything and they would have demanded more of whatever they were low on, missing, or otherwise needed. But fulfilling demand does not imply a budget. Pharoah said, "Make it happen." and his engineers said, "Yes Pharoah.". They did not argue that there was not enough grain in the budget to work in December, they simply demanded more grain.

[DieChecker]

kampz, on 11 December 2012 - 01:01 AM, said:

Again why have the guy be mason when he can't be a mason?

Have you actually looked at the blocks used in the Giza pyramids. They look like they were knocked off using sledge hammers, not so much with mason chisels. And the way they did most of the quarrying was using pounding stones, and there is not a lot of skill needed for that. Sure they needed many good masons for the outer cladding, but that was like 1% of the blocks. The majority of the millions of blocks were very rough cut.

[kampz]

Weathering impacted the Pyramids greatly. Basically causing all of the casing stones to disappear.

Maybe the Nile flooded before and they opened it up.

If they were all cut rough then the Pyramid would look like a ripple of water. Maybe, I'm thinking about that one still.

Edited by kampz, 11 December 2012 - 05:57 AM.

[cormac mac airt]

kampz, on 11 December 2012 - 05:55 AM, said:

Weathering impacted the Pyramids greatly. Basically causing all of the casing stones to disappear.

Maybe the Nile flooded before and they opened it up.

If they were all cut rough then the Pyramid would look like a ripple of water. Maybe, I'm thinking about that one still.

No, the casing stones that are missing were used by the Arabs in earlier times to build much of Cairo. This we already know. It has nothing to do with weathering.

cormac