Recent Pyramid Calculations: Manpower Estimates for Khufu's Pyramid
by Stuart Wier

For reference:http://home.earthlink.net/~swier/pyramid.html

According to this Study it would cost around 7 billion in todays dollars if you consider paying the workers 6$ an hour , that does not account for the enginers, craftsmen,artists, the accomodations, the food, the tools. It does not account for delays it does not account for bad weather(sand storms). So given our knowledge of how goverment projects work and the amount of waste and bearocrasy which would have been immence given the lack of communication also thats just for the manpower that does not account for recruitment(assembly areas,recruiters and soldiers to enforce the recruitment I am sure most man would leave on their on accord some would, loss of income generated by these man and women leaving home and farms and trades would have been immence. I estimate given all this points that the actual cost to be in the area of 300 billion dollars. Thats close to the budget of the US military or around 40% of our national budget. Given that Khufu (supposedly built Great Pyramid)himself died in battle in the Sinai, so it is a given that Egypt had threats from outside, so how could Egypt which is supported by the Nile river flooding to make fertile land, have som much resources to build such a Monument and up keep a powerfull army and Navy, as well as build palaces Giant Oblesiks. The construction of such a Pyramid and others that followed would have bancrupted the Egyptians and led to immediate distruction of the Empire. I didnt even mention that it is almost impossible to raise the cut stones some wieghing in excess of 50 tons into place, also the pyramids were covered with a white lime stone finish and a gold top, that I didnt account for as well. Also we are assuming the Pharoah got a good deal at the Stone retailer

He paid them in beer
It was a seasonal job for most of the labour force, otherwize they would have been sitting around on their buts. or causing trouble.

congratulations
you just worked out what it would cost to build a pyramid at todays prices using an american workforce
now do the estimate again taking into account that the majority of the workers weren't paid and that all the raw materials were free
also you might want to check your details as to building Obelisks and running a navy
actually no that would be a waste of your time
you might want to actually study Egypt before you start theorizing

n.b. how many stones weighing in excess of 50 tonnes ?



and onions

It would cost about 20% of GNP if it was built with muscle power.

It would cost about 3% of GNP if they didn't need muscle power.

This would be trillions of todays dollars if you could actually translate
this to currency. Since they didn't have money any such translation
is nearly meaningless.

This is a staggering sum when you consider that in those days almost
all wealth was expressed in food and food increases would quickly re-
sult in population increases.

Well if you read the site I gave their was figures I based it on. Another thing I know that the Pharoah did not have dollars or day laborers next to 7-11, I was trying to show what resources where needed to pull something like that of. If he paid them in food and they were hard labour that must of been even worse since the pharoah couldnt just print more money food was a limited commodity like with oil if for instance the US or China started buying up all the oil the prices would skyrocket the same situation would happen in Egypt with food becoming more and more expensive and thus prohibitive of maintaining a civilazation. As to the Navy point your saying the Egyptians had no Navy????? How did they trade in the Meditarenean??? their is no proof they used slaves, and even if they did slaves still have to be fed and trained and housed!!! ALso the slaves might slow down the construction or run away or die from stress or a number of things that can happen to a non volunteer work force.

you're talking about 2500bce
Navies didn't exist then as there was no one for them to fight and because ship technology wasn't up to much, imagine a few canoes being the equivalent of the USS Nimitz

and no they didn't use slaves
you have to remember that Pharoah was God (bit like Bush is to republicans) and that working on his monument was a privelidge which would get you extra credit in the afterlife
all the evidence shows that the workers were very well treated, they were well fed and they had medical care.
and they didn't need insurance to be able to claim it


anyway
all this is a bit pointless, if youre claiming that it wasn't possible for the Egyptians to build pyramids (despite all the overwhelming evidence that they did) then who do you think did build it

Actually it was garlic. The smelliest workforce ever.

this is not debatable
this is Zahi speaking
http://www.guardians.net/hawass/articles/D...Builders_II.htm
aha finally a flaw in your knowledge

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minoan_Civilization
Minoan civilazation the contemporary to Egypt was based on a strong Navy to be able to trade and make war, so Egypt needed a navy to trade and defend their trade routes they needed a military navy which they had.
I understand they were privileged but like you said they were treated very well fed=more workers as food prepares, storage for food, medical doctors as you said they had medical care. you only added to the cost of construction.

Egyptians would not be able to afford the monument given other prioreties I dont think the Pharoah had so many resources and technology to build on that scale, yes the Egyptians built knock of much smaller pyramids close by sorth of like bootleg DVD they look similar but the quality is lacking. Scientist still didnt show how the Egyptians moved the Largest stones into place, the NOVA team moved a much smaller Stone. The Graffiti found inside the Pyramids that claimed they were built by the Pharoah were a Hoax.
In my opinion a older much more sofisticated and richer civilazation built them and the Egyptians inherited them and tried to copy them in vein.

Slaves didn't cost much.

so who do you think made them ?

well you are right about the larger stones, we still dont fully understand the techniques the egyptians developed to cut carve and shift them although it appears that they simply used brute force and stones of a harder composition that the stone they were cutting. Hard to believe though it may be. But again, time didnt mean much to the egyptians.
We still dont really know how long it took for the egyptians to build the great pyramids. As for the cost of building the pyramids, well we cannot measure their construction in terms of money as the egyptians did not live within a capitalist society. Labour for the construction would have been donated from within the youngest and healthiest of egyptian society. They would have worked for a part of the year and in exchange the 'government' would have supported their families and farms thru a welfare system of food distribution and shared or collective labour. This labour for pyramid construction would have been given during the period of the Nile floods. I have no doubt that particular key workers would have received some forms of reward probably thru a favour and privilige system and perhaps land allocation.
So far as the age of the pyramids are concerned: we can age them thru the C14 process thanks to the egyptian practice of using cement to bond the infill used behind the casing stones of the pyramids. This cement contains bits of organic fibre that had been mixed in with the lime etc and it is from this material that we can now date the pyramids. Of course there are some perplexing questions still to be asked particularly about the internal spaces in the great pyramid. Many of the features found within are most odd.
but little by little we are solving the mystery of the pyramids.

Sorry bro but they must have put oxy in front of your name by accident. firstoff.the AquarI races are real. Aquari being 'dragons. Then theres blue. gold, red etc... so not only do they exist did they exist and are closer to you than you think, but there are myriads of different dragon races. and about the cost a Pharoah had to put up to fund the building of the pyramids. ya might as well throw that brain fart out the window because by the time any pharoah was in power the pyramid(Great) was already over 47000 years old. lets take the exit door from linear stagnance. Lets wave ride to synchronicity.
Ps. spiritual maturity, eternal responsibility
Uma AtrA Ena A Eckasha

sorry lil gremlin, I meant to reply to oxymoron and his 'thoughts' (or lack there of).
But while I'm here I wanted to share sumpin I just remembered. beer was given to english sailors as a ration cause it made up a majority of their diet. Beeris rich in many nutrients and doesn'tgo bad as quick as most foods.
That all for now.
Sa DA Un et Jeshwa DE

...and another, very important reason, it was safer to drink than the water.

Well your saying for a person whos life expectancy was no more then 40 years cared less about time then modern man who lives until 80 interesting!
I was using terms of money to bring the idea of resources into modern concept, yes the Pharoah could order the construction and he had unlimited natuaral resources. But the time to build the pyramid to bury the Pharoah was not much mor then his very lifetime at that time I dont think they lived over 40-50 years. As far as labour as I mentioned the egyptians did not have unlimited manpower, since they had not developed advanced farming techinques so their would be a huge strain on the whole economy even if it wasnt Capitalist. First of all the Egyptians had no cement which was developed later by the Romans and then modern Europeans.
We are going in the wrong directions about solving the pyramids cause no way in hell did the primitive Egyptians had the ability or resources to accomplish this feat.

What????
What exactly are you talking about???
Are you smoking something???

how many times have I got to ask you this question
who do you think built the pyramids ?

Just because I believe Egyptians did not build them , does not mean I know who did. I think it was a older civilazation that was far more advanced and had many more resources. That civilazation had since disintegrated due too cathastrophies (floods etc).

so you haven't heard of the step pyramid of Djoser or the red pyramid or the bent pyramid or the Maidum Pyramid which were built by the father of Khufu called Sneferu, which in all contain more mass than any buildings by any king that followed
and which are all well attested to being constructed by the king
as is the great pyramid of Khufu
the pyramid of Khafre
the pyramid of Menkaure
all three of which have temples outside dedicated to the builders of each pyramid where prayers were said to their memories
but you know all this huh, so whats your theory on why this isn't true

The temples could have been contructed latter at the site, as far as the pyramids you mentioned they are far less sophisticated then the great pyramids and as I mentioned where copies very bad ones of the original.

they predate the giza pyramids
which obviously means they would be less sophisticated
it was a learning process
the first pyramid (djoser) was constructed by building a mastaba and then adding the rest of the structure
something which just wouldn't be neccesary if as you say the Giza pyramids were built first
the Temples on the Giza plateau are contemporary with the pyramids and both the pyramids and the temples contain dedications to the Pharoahs who built them

The 'beer' the egyptians brewed was quite different to that of today. It was quite still, cloudy and had a low alcohol content estimated to be less than 4% but as another commentator noted it had a high nutritional value. It would have been consumed in large quantities with an unleavened bread that, due to its fat content, also had a high nutritional value. An almost identical type of bread is still produced in Egypt today.
These two items would have formed the base staples of the worker's diet but it does not mean to say that they didnt have a varied diet as the residue of a wide variety of food items have been found in the 'middens' of worker camps around the Pyramids. It is believed that meat from goats sheep and cattle was provided to the workers perhaps twice a week along with a variety of vegetables and fruits.They would also have eaten prodigeous amounts of dates both fresh and dried as they are sugar rich and an ideal high energy snack.
My own personal opinion is that with a diet like this and with a regulated and planned labour operation the turnover of workers would have been very low and their productivity maintained at a consistently high level so a small experienced workforce could easily have accomplished the tasks set before it.
Again my own opinion, but I doubt that the labour force would have been permitted to drink their beer whilst working as it would have dehydrated them and of course reduced efficiency not to mention increase the incidents of accidents. They would instead have required huge quantities of water which raises an interesting question - did the Egyptians understand the danger from water taken from the Nile? I suspect they did and took some form of precaution against it. Though what I dont know.

Let's go with the "more advanced" predecessors. They would have more advanced temples, houses and metals, which would be excavated today. The pyramid materials specification-list would have more than the Egyptian list . 1. Stone. That is, there would be machined metal for door-hinges or ladders. It's possible they could manage without a Pyramid.com Forum, but, well..
On the other hand: You could run an elephant hire-company on Nile garden-trash. Put 4 elephants harnessed to a rope, to pulling a sled up a ramp, with them walking down-hill on the opposite side of the work-site. Give them beer and they'll do it all day.

Ya they don't work during the winter right? (sarcasm)

Wow so the secret to the pyramids is BEER wow I wished I lived back then free beer for life working in the sun HEAVEN. Unfortuanetly that never happend

In Mesopotamia beer was free as well and was dispensed from state run taverns
however the sentence for public drunkeness was death
so alcoholism wasn't hereditary

Actually, it may have been. One of the major work gangs that built his pyramid humorously called themselves "Khufu's Drunks". And yes, during much of the year the farmer class were idle, so were induced to work on building projects. There was also spiritual incentive, for the people wanted their pharoah to enter into the Godhead to look after their still mortal lives. It seems virtually everyone in those times believed in gods and the supernatural, becasue they did not have the religion of science to explain the unknown as we have today.

There is really no evidence that the pyramids predate the Egyptian culture. In fact it required the Egyptian culture to make them.

Hmmmmm, the Egyptians believed in dragons like every other human culture, but this is the first I've heard of them being responsible for making the pyramids, and 47,000 years earlier than the actual event. Did they have Neanderthal slaves? I have been inside the pyramid, and can say from experience that the average dragon is not going to fit inside.

The Egyptian dragon was called the Seraph, exactly like the Hebrew one, and hymns to them are found among the Pyramid Texts, though none imply that they made the made them. Construction teams with colorful names like "Khufus's drunks" are recorded to have made them.

no it was called the Uraeus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uraeus
and in English the word means "rearing cobra" and all depictions of it are in snake form
it like many of your other claims does not have anything to do with dragons
the only animal even remotely similar to a dragon in egyptian mythology was Apep
which again was snake shaped



the Egyptian story about him can be found here
http://www.touregypt.net/creationhistory.htm
how you love to twist the facts DC, you're quite a story teller really
if you market your book as fiction I'd buy it

You dont believe that the Pyramids are older then Egypt but you believe in Dragons OKKKKKKKKKKKK, I am missing something Dragons Really? Really?

Do you really, really, want me to show everyone AGAIN how little you know about any of this?
Apep is simply a giant snake. The Egyptian Serrif/Sraph, is a four footed, winged dragon just like the hebrew Seraph and the Mesopotamian Mushrushu.
In fact, it is highly probable that the Hebrews took the name from the Egyptian one for the similarity cannot be a coincidence. It has its own hieroglyph that looks like a mushrushu dragon, and its reptilian features are described in the pyramid hymns.

There other other gods and creatures that also parallel dragons in other cultures. There is the crocodile headed lion-hippo Amut who swallows sinners, just as dragons in Christian theology. And Set is sometimes considered a "dragon", and no one is still sure what the animal his head represents. Possibly it is the head of the Seraph-dragon, but he has a human body like the other Gods. . Many of the serpents who guard the pharoah and gods thrones have wings and sometiems arms and legs too.

You'll never win a single argument about these things because you possess no more than a basic high school education about them, as you have just revealed for the umpteenth time. Feel free to try again, and prepare to be publicly humiliated as on all previous occasions when you have tried to prove me wrong..

Dragons are a part of the theologies of virtually every human belief system except atheism. Therefore the dragon "believers" far outnumber the unbelievers by perhaps 5 to 1.

I see. And thats why their are so many fossil remains of dragons.

I find that sort of odd, consiodering that everything I can find on this combination indicates a sepent, which last I looked has no legs, much less feet.

Harte

Any good book on Egyptian hieroglyphics should have the Serrif/Seraph and you will see that it has four legs, wings , and tail,, though like many quadrepedal dragons, it is sometimes called a serpent, just like the Seraph dragons of the bible, with arms and legs but still called serpents.Serpent is often used as another word for dragon in literature.

Like Angels and other supernatural entities, they do not seem to die, hence, no fossils, though believed in everywhere for thousands of years and countless reports of sightings.

Alrighty then. You sir are in need of medication unless your four then its ok. Thats why we cant find the fossil remains of santa claus too. profound!!

No oxymoron, whereas dragons have been reported by some of the greatest men of history, and sometimes sighted by hundreds of people at a time as the ancient and medieval accounts attest, the mythic Santa is not acknowledged as real by anyone. People still see dragons all the time, only now we call them lake monsters, sea serpents, plesiosaurs, dinosaurs, pterosaurs, thunderbirds, etc, for anything sounds better than dragons, becasue we have made so many silly stories about them.

Oh so they found fossils of Dinos why didnt they put them up in their castles?

I have sometimes wondered if the 'Dragon' legends could have started when people found the fossilised remains of Dinosaurs. There are many reports of people digging up huge bones and skulls from around the world that became part of their folklore.

Actually they did put fossils of prehisotoric animals in their churches, mistaking them for "dragons", the most famous I know of is the dragon of Klagenfurt, which is actually the skull of a wooly rhino.

But why call these dragon bones? Probably because people back then reported seeing dragons all the time, sometimes a whole town claiming to have seen the same creature. People constantly reported dragons stealing their cattle and sometimes missing people. So if any large, unusal bones were found, it is natural they would think they were dragons, even though they did know there were other large creatures in far away lands. But they saw dragons in their own back yards, so they thought the locally found bones came from their dragons.

agreed...and of course superstition and ignorance took over and the dragon myth was born. It can be the only logical explanation.

Now if we calculate the inflation since then, even if he only paid a dollar for the whole pyramid it would amount to several billion by now. And, even if the workforce would have been free (which it was not) he still would have to feed them, house them and dress them. Besides there were architects, overseers and civil servants that had to be paid.

By the way ... paying in beer (or wine) was very common before money was invented. Archeologists discovered a bronze age boat off the coast of France that was transporting wine from southern Italy. And the explanation for the long travel was quite simple... you could get all the workers you needed for a major project as long as you could feed them well and they could have a good party after work. So wine and beer were major trading commodities.

well he paid them somehow. bet i cost watevr the amount is for building of the effiel tower

Thank you.