I think there was carbon dioxide in the underground aquifer from the mountain north of Lake Kivu.

This was the first place on it's path to the sea where it reached atmospheric pressure. Once relieved of the weight of the rock atop it the surface of the liquid would "fizz up" lightening the weight on the water below causing it to fizz as well. This is a cascade event known as a cold water geyser. These geysers spray vast amounts of water to great altitude.

The geyser was funneled through a djed and an opening above known as an Eye of Horus. It was channeled into the counterweight boat.

fizzed up? from where? are you saying that it entered the Great pyramid from the well inside...then up through the inside?

what about the other pyramids elsewhere? or is this theory specific to Kufu's pyramid?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdxpPxu9RhA

...or if a link ain't that bad check out this less than 3 minute video.

About half way through you can see a djed pillar in operation.

Osiris stood just to the left of the opening to Khufu's Horizon and
about fifteen feet away. Isis was a small geyser almost 200' north
where the grotto is. There is a large natural fissure about 75' long
running E/ W which has never been excavated to the bottom. This
is the fissure at the entrance (Osiris).

Petrie said that it appears there was additional structure of the py-
ramid in this area at one time. This would be the support for the
Eye of Horus where the water from the geyser was collected at its
apex.

I believe all the great pyramids were built using water collected from
geysers. These geysers failed around 2400 BC and the building of
large pyramids was stopped right in the middle of the last one. All
subsequent pyramids are a small fraction of the size of the early ones.

good link thanks....

would the pressure be constant and strong enough to raise the volume of water required to the top layer of the pyramid?
is the carbonated water still present at Giza?

What about other sites like saqqara and Medium, and Sinki and the others?

the pressure would have to be constant and immense for this to be possible. The nature of geysers is that the pressure builds up then is released. How high can we expect a spout to reach?


water collected at its apex? please explain. the apex of the eye of horus? or the water spout? If the eye, then the Eye would have to extend to a great height....or another way of getting the water up there would be required.

Good questions but the answers can't be brief.

As briefly as possible the "Land of Horus" included the entire region from
Giza (Abu Rawash) to the Fayuum Depression. This was the area where
all the pyramids were built and is geologically distinct. This was the land
of the "sky arcs" (rainbows).

Cold water geysers can spray nearly continuously and spray to 180-200'.
Evidence suggests they were less high. Some of these geysers are high-
ly erratic and some are fairly stable. These appear to have been extreme-
ly stable and irregularities could usually be controlled with the djed pillar.
If it got out of control it might "swallow" the Eye of horus.

Manetho implied that these geysers ran only during the inundation. The
Pyramid Texts support this.

Osiris stood "with his face behind him" right in front of the pyramid.

He stood around 80' tall. At the '75' level in "the hidden place" was
built a simple hole. The water shot up from the djed below and went
through it Above this hole the water was diverted to var-
ious uses. Half (or more) went straight to the north side of the py-
ramid where Osiris (in his name of Seker) (meaning "come to me")
would be ferried into the []nw-boat (one of the boats of m[][]t.).
(meaning balance)

The water would first be treated with natron in the nurse canal to re-
move most of the carbonation.

Osiris was the Lord of Caverns and swam on the back of his brother
Set. He came from Nun (the primeval waters) and stood when the
sky was ripped from the earth.

D'oh. i missed a couple questions.

Osiris was born in no year at the ruling of Atum. The year started at the inundation
so Osiris probably usually preceeded it by a few days in their 360 day year. Five days
were considered to be between the years. This was caused by having each month the
same lenght (30 days).

They wouldn't need the geyser to spray to the top of the pyramid. They could simply
lift stone toward the top 75' at a time. Water has about a quarter of the density of stone.
So to lift the weight of the pyramid (6 1/2 million tons) an average of a couple hundred
feet they'd only need about twelve times the volume of the pyramid of water at 75'. Ov-
er a thirty year period with this spraying for five or six months per year they would have
had ample amounts of water, or at least, there are cold water geysers which spray far
more.

That's a pretty neat thing that I learned only recently. There's no carbonation any long-
er of course since the aquifer would have been tipped even before the geysers ended
but there is a fresh water cavern under the pyramid. This means there has to be a flow
of a natural aquifer still to this day under here. If that isn't convincing enough then note
that between this cavern of fresh water and a man-made ancient passage is evidence of
extreme water erosion. In other words at some point in the past there is no doubt that
vast amounts of water flowed up under Giza through man-made passages.

Thanks for your reply, cladking. I have a couple of more questions and/or observations.



You're right, something that massive would still be in evidence. But a ramp requiring several times the volume of the pyramid would fit only the category of the old single ramp theory, and I don't know of any modern historian who still holds to that (there may be a few, mind you, but they'd be in the extreme minority nowadays). Multiple ramps would've been used, no doubt approaching the pyramid from multiple sides and spiraling around it as the monument rose. Naturally even this would've resulted in a great deal of refuse to remove when the pyramid was completed, and the gravel, sand, stone fragments, and other materials used to build ramps was excavated from the adjacent quarries. This is where all of it was dumped, many, many tons of it. Today what you see is this, all nice and clean, but even as recently as 100 years ago the floors of the quarries where not visible. The many centuries of sand had to be cleared away, and underneath was the aggregate that had once been ramps.

Here's a schematic from the website of the Oriental Institute that shows the present geomorphology of the Giza Plateau:



The main quarry for the Great Pyramid is immediately to the south, next to the later causeway of Khafre's pyramid complex. It took many years of digging and excavating to remove the vast amounts of fill, and to explore the tombs that later people had dug into the northern escarpment. This same quarry was used for limestone for many of the mastabas erected in the cemeteries around the Great Pyramid. It was conveniently located and a short haul to the building sites.



We can't be sure that it was only one-wide, although that's possible. Toward the top that certainly would've been the case, but then the stones would've been smaller and lighter--much easier to haul and maneuver. When you see a picture like this one, and can compare the scale of the average stone to the size of a man, you can imagine how for much of the process during the construction of any single level, the outermost stones would've been the last to go on. Ramps could've been deeper, accommodating more room for workers to move around and maneuver stones. When it was time to place the outermost stones, fewer men must've been in presence on any one side. Then the process could begin anew. I grant you that corners could've been a problem. We've all read theories about how the corners were handled, some of the theories quite convincing and others perplexing. But ultimately I don't see much problem with the ramps working their way up the pyramid as construction progressed. They wouldn't have extended all the way to the ground but would've been compacted and anchored into the sides of the pyramid for several levels. That's why the materials that went into the ramps were primarily gravel and stone fragments, and only a minimal amount of sand.



I remember your bringing this up in past discussions but I admit I can't remember what you mean by the grooves. Could you elaborate a bit? If you're sick to death of repeating yourself (I know the feeling), never mind.



Here's one point where your and my approach to the Pyramid Texts differs. My explanation is quite dull, I'm afraid. To me this merely emphasizes the original role of Osiris as a fertility god and his close associations from the beginning with the annual inundation. We have no direct evidence for the god Osiris until he appears in the Pyramid Texts at the end of Dynasty 5, but his role as fertility god seems very pronounced from the beginning, until he became the primary lord of the dead and supplanted gods like Anubis, Wepwawet, and Sokar in that guise. Still, he always remained an important figure of fertility and was always tied to the Nile's inundation.

I have to agree with lil gremlin that your own theory seems very complicated, and I confess I still have a hard time grasping it. Call me dense, I can't help it. Would you happen to have any diagrams or illustrations you could share? If you've done so in the past, I missed them.

Thanks, cladking.

Heck. A few people have suggested it's complicated but it seems simple to
me since I've built it up a piece at a time. I'm horribly computer illiterate and
even if my artistic skills were sufficient to the task I just couldn't get them
posted. It would be a very complicated drawing to get all in the same place
(maybe part of the reason the Egyptians didn't). First let me try answering
your comments and questions and I'll try the very briefest explanation at
the end.

Thanks for the picture of the quarry, it is invaluable to me. I use the map a
lot.

The grooves in the bifurcations can be seen in one of the photos here;
http://www.catchpenny.org/concave.html

I'm well aware that egyptologist believe Osiris was the inundation. But this is
insufficient to explain what the inundation is doing in the uplands. Water can't
flow up hill so Osiris is necessarily a water source other than the Nile. There are
a very limited number of mechanisms that can bring water uphill.

I don't and never believed ramps are an impossibility. They seem exceedingly
improbable because the scope of the work was so vast it would be difficult to
find even two men who'd be willing to try it, much less thousands upon thousands.
The biggest problem with ramps is configuring them so that you can get enough
manpower actually working to maintain a reasonable delivery rate. Workers who
placed stone at the top would be so tired after the long climb up they wouldn't
want to work. If they brought a stone with them they'd be even more worn out.
Just the aggregate amount of work expended to get everyone on the job site over
the course of the project would far exceed the human exertion to build the Panama
Canal.





As briefly as possible;

A structure was built to collect the water from near the top of a cold water geyser.

This water was channeled into a "boat" at the top of the geyser which was connected
to stones on the other side of the structure with a rope. When the boat at the top had
enough water it would be heavier than the stones and fall down pulling the stones up.

Natural and artificial holes through which the water passed were called eyes of Horus.

All these geysers were drilled by the ancients. When they came to this land they found
conically shaped "stalagmites" that spit some water sometimes. These stalagmites were
formed from the stone precipitating from the acidic and carbonated water. The stones
literally fell from the sky and were called ben ben stones. They were removed and the
openings were drilled to create the geysers.

Im not sure that that it is being suggested that the inundation went uphill. The pharoah's association also with the inundation, and with Osiris, particularly post mortem is perhaps what was meant.

Perhaps if we accept for the moment that a geyser next to the great pyramid site existed, wouldnt the egyptian priesthood et al have a religious problem (it being associated with Osiris) with it being turned to manual labour?

I cant get my head around what happened after the stone was lifted and the ballast boat hit the floor. It would need to be lifted back into position by hand....the effort, given the number of loads required, would be comparible to running the stones up lubricated ramps. ???
Might these ramps have had wooden tracks...easier to oil and 'faster'.

The rubble in the quarry appears to support that ramps were used, It may be that other methods were used either in conjunction or at different stages.

Without run-off channels for waste water, i can imagine that the method your proposing would turn the site into a very messy and dangerous place to be lugging heavy weights around. Is there any evidence of some?

Since "the inundation came to the uplands" this literally means that
high elevations were flooded. Certainly the Pyramid Texts can be
taken figuratively but I don't believe they are meant this way. What
is truly ironic is that utterance 272-4 are often called the "cannible
hymms" and this is the only part that most people take literally. The
ironic part is that this is the only PT meant figuratively. The king isn't
really eating the Gods and men; he's simply "borrowing" the water of
the other Gods and consuming the effort and lives of men.



I don't know why. The Pyramid Texts frequently say that Osiris is
most divine when he stands. He is still turning green the herb hill
and assuring that the king has a place to ascend to the afterlife. It
should be obvious that Osiris didn't work any harder by going through
a second Eye of Horus and having his sandals upon his feet. He was
long of stride anyway why not stand in the hidden place equipped
with a bow, an eye and a face?



The stone could be deposited on "high ground" on top of the pyramid
and just shoved in the proper direction. Small maneuvering counter-
weights might have sometimes been used on the top of the unfinished
structure.



No. Not at all. The effort and work required to move loads on level
ground is insignificant. It's raising weights that requires work, not mov-
ing them. A slippery surface also helps the load fall back down the hill
you're pulling it up. There is no way around this.

If the choice were to pull ten stones ten times up a ramp to the top of
the pyramid or stand and direct cool water in its name of Seker into a
boat in the desert sun, everyone would opt for the latter.



There isn't nearly enough rubble in the quarry to build the pyramid. It
is a question of how they got stone to the higher reaches and there's sim-
ply no doubt that it was not with the use of tafla ramps. It's not imposs-
ible that they used spiral stone or wood ramps but again there's the pro-
blem of achieving a sufficient delivery rate.



Yes. Petrie excavated some water channels but had little interest in them
so didn't pursue them all. Also don't forget that the pyramids are surrounded
by high walls that might have acted as dams to channel the water to the de-
sired areas. The region is paved with close fitting stone which was probably
to prevent it running right back down into caverns and passages.

The boat pits are found in two conditions; the boats are nearly pristine or
they are entirely rotted away. This is a desert so the implication is that some
pits had pin hole leaks.

hi cladking, sorry i should have explained myself better....what i meant by 'lifting it back into position by hand' was the water boat, it would need to be raised again as the other side was lowered.

ill get on with reading the rest of your post now....

Sorry. My fault. That's what I thought you meant and I omitted that part.

The two boats are very well matched in weight when empty so they just need
a small bladder to fill on the ascender to pull the empty counterweight back up.

It's even possible that the ascender was made heavy enough that it would pull
the empty counterweight up by itself, but I doubt it.

Here's a little more insight into what happens at the top from #257:

304d. The lords of form serve him,
304e. the Two Enneads entire serve him,

Men and the Gods serve N.

305a. as he sits in place of the All-lord. N. wins heaven, he cleaves its firmness.
305b. N. is led along the ways of Khepri;

The M[][]t-boat has a braking mechanism at the top which halts it immediately. Perhaps
double ropes in its path so that they are separated as they stop the boat. The boat "clkeaves
the firmness". Khepri merely represents the morning sun which shone when this ceremony
always occurred.

306a. N. rests from life in the West, the dwellers in the Dȝ.t following him.
306b. (Then) N. rises renewed in the East,

The D[].t is the geyser. The dweller follows N to the top of the pyramid. N always rises from
the iskn on the east side of the pyramid.


From utterance #310 is:

494a. bring this (boat) to N. Which boat shall I bring to thee, O N.?
494b. Bring to N. that which flies up and alights.

The boat obviously actually rests on top of the pyramid after it has alighted.


Empty the boat might have weighed as little as a couple tons. On a slick and possibly tilted
surface it would be easy enough for the men who distributed the stones to push it back over
the edge.

Sorry I disappeared like I did. I've been otherwise engaged the past several evenings...but you can't get rid of me that easily!

And thanks for your reply, cladking.



LOL Aw, come on. Not even a sketch on a cocktail napkin? Just hand it off to the average eight-year-old kid and he'll put it on the forum for you. It's devious how computer-savvy those little kids are these days. I understand, though. I'm just one of those who is able to understand something like this best if I have both text and illustrations. It's my own failing.



Now I see what you mean. It jogged my memory because either you or someone else at UM has brought this up before. I'm no engineer to be sure but as people much smarter than I have explained it, this "concave" shape was deliberate on the part of the builders. This feature makes such a massive construct much sturdier and the chances of collapse are significantly less. It's similar to how the builders of the Acropolis of Athens erected the walls at a slight slant--or is it the columns? I can never remember which. This is how the experts explain it. In your theory do these grooves act as a channel for water transport, or something like that?



The Nile doesn't flow uphill, though. From its sources beyond Egypt's southern borders it is at a higher elevation and gravity for the most part brings it all the way to the Mediterranean. Parts of the quays to the east of the three pyramids of Giza have been excavated, showing that the Egyptians dug canals to bring the Nile to the pyramids. I am not well versed on how exactly this affected the geology of the strata below the Plateau, which is why I've been turning to this material on the website of the Oriental Institute to try to get better informed. I have a long way to go, yet. However, I'm quite familiar with the fluctuating water table of the Plateau, mostly from what Egyptologists have described in lectures I've attended and of finds like the "Osiris tomb" that has been much discussed at UM (only in recent years have archaeologists been able to go to the bottom of the tomb because of the lowering of the water table). Anyway, I've just never come across geological reports expressing that cold-water geysers were present on the Plateau, at least within the period of human occupation of that area.



This is a very valid argument, and I think it can be answered by the fact that there were plenty of workers present on the rising faces of the pyramid to spell the crews coming up, if necessary. Although most of the workforce would've been in the adjacent quarries and down on the Plateau, there had to have been large numbers of men on the pyramid itself. Additionally, it's only the lower courses that would've been the most physically taxing. The higher the pyramid went, the smaller the stones got. As you know the average stone on the Great Pyramid weighs around two tons, and it took only around twenty men to maneuver a stone of that size with relative ease on an inclined plain (it would've taken only around ten to haul it across a flat surface). This is not to say that I could've been one of them because I'm a big wimp, but the average worker was a healthy, strong young man very much accustomed to hours of hard labor back home with his fields or herds.



I'm starting to get the basic idea, I think. Basically, a water-filled boat filled by a geyser grew heavy enough to sink, and as it sank, the stones to which it was attached on the other side would rise. I know your theory is much more complex than this but I'm just trying to work it out in my head, since you won't draw it on a cocktail napkin for me. I would have some questions, then.

1. If these cold-water sources were near enough to the ground's surface for the workers to drill to them, wouldn't the substrata of limestone be riddled with cavities and pools? This would make the Great Pyramid much too huge of a structure to build on such a friable surface.

2. How could the workers regulate the eruptions of the geysers? More important, how many stones could be lifted at a time? This sounds like almost a slower process than to have men using ramps from all four sides of the monument.

3. How about the highest parts of the Great Pyramid? It's about 481 feet up there. How could they construct something so tall as to lift the boat (as a counter-weight) that high? Or do I have this wrong in my head?

I'll leave it at that. You're probably tired of repeating your explanations.

I'll see if I can get a buddy to post something for me. It may take some time though.



The inclined sides are a separate issue. They may be related in that they
would serve to help keep the boat in a straight line.

But I'm referring to the "grooves" that run directly down the center where
the two faces of each side join. It's the 2nd or 3rd picture down in the link
above.



Exactly. The pyramid is at far too high an elevation for water from the Nile
to have reached it during the time man has been on the planet. There is no
doubt that if these are the uplands being referred to in the Pyramid Texts
that there was some unusual or man made means to get water to this altitude.

The grotto of the Great Pyramid is about 225' above sea level. It's very im-
probable that there were canals bringing it from the west or south because
no such ruins are in evidence. I'm proposing that the geysers lifted the wa-
ter another 80' beyond this.



So far as I know, no one has ever expressed the idea that there were cold
water geysers on the plateau. I've made this up out of the evidence.

Are you aware that there is a fresh water cavern under the pyramid? This
water has a flow in and out and is said to be crystal clear. There is a man-
made passage above it AND EVIDENCE OF WATER EROSION BETWEEN THE
TWO!!!!! In other words there is no doubt that in the time the plateau has been
occupied by man that there has been a great upwelling of water to higher lev-
els. This alone virtually constitutes proof of some non-normal and not present-
ly understood process having gone on. This is entirely consistent with geysers
and the other evidence. IT IS NOT CONSISTENT WITH ANY OTHER THEORY
OF WHICH I AM AWARE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



If a mason is walking to work on the top of the pyramid how can he be spelled?
He'd have to live up there to avoid the walk. Again, without considering one erg
of work, there was more human effort expended by the workers just reporting
to the job site than was required to build the Panama Canal if ramps were used.

I don't understand how you can suggest that the lower courses were more phys-
ically taxing. Lifting a stone 480' is ten times more work than lifting a stone twice
as large to 24'. I've still seen no proof that the stones at the top are smaller. It
has been stated here repeatedly but Petrie's measurements of the courses show
that the typical course is only slightly thinner at the top and the thickest courses
are actually thicker than some at the bottom. Obviously the stones can be nar-
rower and hence lighter but thety aren't really thinner except on average.



When man came to the plateau there were conically shaped stones through which
small amounts of water would spurt out from time to time. These were natually
occuring and had been deposited by the mineral rich water when it fell back down.
These stones were not only the basis of the legend of Gods which created them-
selves but were known as ben ben stones. They were removed at ground level
and the opening was drilled to create an eye for the geyser.



Indeed. One of the largest sinkholes in the world is in the "Land of Horus just a
few miles north of the Fayuum Depression. The pyramid still stands. There are
natural cavern WITHIN, under, and around the pyramids of the Giza Plateau. The
strenght of the ground was likely a consideration for where to place these but they
didn't have the fancy math and computers we have now. Let's just say they got
lucky.



Funny you should ask. I'll probably come back later and describe the many words
and utterances in the Pyramid Texts which describe exactly how these eruptions
and geysers were controlled but for now suffice to say that in the early days when
Gods were still young and vigorous they pretty much just started in early July and
went nearly continuously for months.



I don't really know how tall these were. It's one of the few things they didn't put
in the Pyramid Texts (at least I've not found it yet). The evidence suggests they
were about 75'. This means that the stones had to be lifted 75' at a time until they
got up unless there is a further motive power which I've yet to rule out. What's rea-
lly needed are some smart people working on this because it's going to take me
about a thousand years to get it all figured out.

The height of the geyser which built the step pyramid was probably just a little
higher than each of the steps. Eventually they figured out how to fill these gaps
in to build a smooth sided pyramid.