A new theory of pyramid construction

[SHaYap]

6 hours ago, Hanslune said:

They were probably moving to a schedule which is why there were quarry marks - they may have been keeping track of how much stone was moved. My point was that they would not have stop activity at one point to prevent an accident affecting others.

Okay ... perhaps I should have said it and had put it words like that ...

~

[Windowpane]

6 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

What we can say, from later records, is that there were punishments for graft and corruption on the part of the officials and foremen who were in charge of state work projects; we also know from later records that individual workmen were responsible for the tools they were issued and were charged for those tools if they were lost.

Apparently, people could be punished if they tried to escape their conscription obligations (Kemp, 2006, 181).

[Kenemet]

On 12/14/2016 at 2:45 PM, back to earth said:

Not sure exactly what you mean .  Most non-Egyptologists can read books  ( written by Egyptologists )  and references about materials available in ancient Egypt .    Are you saying the lack of hard wood  makes the '  tilt/ leverage ' method invalid as the  pieces of wood being put under the block  ( eg. @ 3 .10 in the video )  would need to be hardwood ?   Is the 'odd idea'  that the wood available is unsuitable ? 

Palm wood (the wood available) crushes easily.  It's like balsa wood.   It doesn't behave like oak or cedar or ash (etc)

Anyone who works with wood can tell you that the type of wood is very important - they're all very different.  You can use (for example) dogwood for wagon wheels (which is why they became scarce across the southern states of America) but you can't use cottonwood.

The lack of stronger wood was one limit for the Egyptian civilization.

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The ' box frame work' seems to support no weight . Are you suggesting that needs to be hardwood too ?   If a large ship could be made from cedar  (an imported wood )  I dint see why it could not be used for this method .

Wood was extremely expensive and reused (until it was unusable and then they burned it for charcoal.)

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 Do you think softwood would crush under the weight ... actually, I would not  be surprised if someone could do it by stacking flat newspapers  under the block as it tilted . Or is it that not enough of any type of wood  could have been available ? 

The physics of a sheet of newspaper or stacks of newspapers is VERY different than balsa, palm dogwood, cedar, etc, etc, etc.

 

[Kenemet]

On 12/14/2016 at 4:00 PM, third_eye said:

totally different as one is wide spread across an area while Giza is vertical and progressively decreasing area of work space ... anyhow what I mean is that whenever some 2 ton block is being maneuvered up high you clear everything that is below it ... whether its 10ft or 100ft  because you don't know where and how its gonna fall if it falls ...

Yes, but on any area below the very topmost section, you could have multiple work teams working on the same side.  That's why they could construct it in 20 years.  The diagrams of teams of Egyptians dragging blocks up one stone at a time isn't very realistic.

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my suspicion and personal opinion is that these sites were used for a much long period and underwent 'renovations' and reconstructions till they ended up looking like the way we see them today.

Heavily used around the 4th Dynasty.  Before then, not so much, and not much after that.

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I am much more curious as to why these sites were so important or sacred in that sense ...

Giza wasn't THAT sacred.  Oh, the Victorian mystics certainly said it was.  But in the millions of hieroglyphic texts we have, almost none refer to Giza. 

They do refer to Abydos, however.  Many of the kings were buried there, and the (cenotaph) "Tomb of Osiris" was there.  Huge festivals were there and images of the gods were taken to Abydos.

Not to Giza.

[Kenemet]

On 12/14/2016 at 6:03 PM, third_eye said:

Not true if I remember correctly ... AE architects were held to the strictest code of conduct and its capital punishment for transgressions

There wasn't a "code of conduct" for architects.  There was the "Negative Confession" (that you may be thinking of) but that held true for everyone.  Same with the law of Ma'at.  The only architects they had were those for the royal family and the highest nobles... everyone else built their houses themselves or had their family help build them.  Royal architects planned temples and tombs and royal buildings (made, alas, of mud brick so they don't survive.)

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If you treated the lives of those people cheaply how long do you think they will keep working on the site ? By force ? They're not enslaved as you among many had made that clear ..

It was "corvee labor."  Not slavery, but they were obligated to go (it was their form of paying taxes.)  You could pay for someone to take your place, but you had to go or have a representative.  And they were fed well and treated well.  Occasionally you got runaways.

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. too many accidents and the work site would be 'cursed' ...

They didn't seem to have a notion of "cursed places."  They believed in "unlucky days" and luck and so forth.  But I've never seen anything about "unlucky/cursed sites."

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As for a holy site ... any death on the site would result with a thorough and elaborate 'cleansing' ritual ... regardless of the Religion or beliefs ...

They had no such rituals.  They had spells for driving demons away from people and for getting their deceased loved ones to help them.  They had sympathetic magic similar to voodoo.  Purification rituals were for entering into the presence of gods. 

[back to earth]

15 hours ago, Kenemet said:

Palm wood (the wood available) crushes easily.  It's like balsa wood.   It doesn't behave like oak or cedar or ash (etc)

Anyone who works with wood can tell you that the type of wood is very important - they're all very different.  You can use (for example) dogwood for wagon wheels (which is why they became scarce across the southern states of America) but you can't use cottonwood.

The lack of stronger wood was one limit for the Egyptian civilization.

Wood was extremely expensive and reused (until it was unusable and then they burned it for charcoal.)

The physics of a sheet of newspaper or stacks of newspapers is VERY different than balsa, palm dogwood, cedar, etc, etc, etc.

 

 

Okay, thanks. I realised it was rare ..... but not that rare ... it seems almost sacred .  If it appears that only palm wood was available, I can see how that would not work.  They did use  a fair bit of ceder for the big boat buried outside ... but I am guessing, since it was  an 'object for the afterlife process', it had much more import than a tool or 'machine'  so the use of the wood was justified  ? 

[Kenemet]

On 12/16/2016 at 0:55 PM, back to earth said:

 

Okay, thanks. I realised it was rare ..... but not that rare ... it seems almost sacred .  If it appears that only palm wood was available, I can see how that would not work.  They did use  a fair bit of ceder for the big boat buried outside ... but I am guessing, since it was  an 'object for the afterlife process', it had much more import than a tool or 'machine'  so the use of the wood was justified  ? 

Yes... and besides, it was for the king.  

The elites DID have imported woods (like Tutankhamun's chair and beds and other furniture) but given the expense to fetch even something like a log of oak wood they don't seem to have used it for cranes, carts, and other mundane things.  They did use softer woods but good wood was expensive.

[steve wright]

couple of websites - I believe Giza was built way before the Egyptians were around - and the Sphinx also - with water erosion around the compound where the Sphinx is - but anyway one point is that people saw a watermark at 240 ft up the side of the pyramid...way back before a 1300 earthquake knocked a lot of limestone off - and also was being taken anyway to build other things  - my thought is that the Giza pyramid was built way before the Egyptians were around  - couple of websites if anyone i interested  - not saying how Giza was built - but maybe not by normal methods - ok the egyptians could cut limestone and say 200,000 workers - but could they cut granite with copper tools and putting sand into the saw blades? anyway - how Giza was built ? not sure  - but pretty sure not as a burial chamber 

also the Sarapeum huge granite blocks 50-100 tons with block and lids ?  

http://www.reformation.org/secrets-of-the-great-pyramid-revealed.html

http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/Ghizawhen.htm

some good pics here by Jim Alison site of different areas  - big details on dimensions 

http://home.hiwaay.net/~jalison/gp-pics.html

 

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/eg-vonk.htm the Nile is now 16 kms from Giza - maybe it was right close to giza when the pyramids were built 

          "It is food for thought that salt encrustation was discovered in the Queen's Chamber when it was first opened:

One of the greatest mysteries of this chamber has been the salt encrustation on the walls. It was up to one-half-inch thick in places, and Petrie took it into account when he made measurements of the chamber. The salt also was found along the Horizontal Passage and in the lower portion of the Grand Gallery. How did salt come to build up on the walls?

Those who have seen some significance in the presence of the salt have speculated that it could have been deposited on the walls as the water of the biblical Great Flood receded. Others have speculated that the Great Pyramid and its neighbours were surrounded by water at one time. -- Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant, p. 193"

Serapeum - next to giza with the huge granite "coffins for royal bulls"  yah right 

 

 

 

 

[steve wright]

one more vid 

[cormac mac airt]

3 hours ago, steve wright said:

couple of websites - I believe Giza was built way before the Egyptians were around - and the Sphinx also - with water erosion around the compound where the Sphinx is - but anyway one point is that people saw a watermark at 240 ft up the side of the pyramid...way back before a 1300 earthquake knocked a lot of limestone off - and also was being taken anyway to build other things  - my thought is that the Giza pyramid was built way before the Egyptians were around  - couple of websites if anyone i interested  - not saying how Giza was built - but maybe not by normal methods - ok the egyptians could cut limestone and say 200,000 workers - but could they cut granite with copper tools and putting sand into the saw blades? anyway - how Giza was built ? not sure  - but pretty sure not as a burial chamber 

~SNIP~

Your belief is invalidated by both the 14C dates taken from mortar used in the Great Pyramids construction as well as the Diary of Merrer which details construction on the GP still taking place during the 27th year of Khufu's reign.

cormac

Edited December 20, 2016 by cormac mac airt

[stereologist]

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the Nile is now 16 kms from Giza

Not sure where you are getting this info, but the Nile is only 8km from the pyramids today. Remember that the Nile used to have yearly floods and floods do change the course of a river.

[back to earth]

1 hour ago, cormac mac airt said:

Your belief is invalidated by both the 14C dates taken from mortar used in the Great Pyramids construction as well as the Diary of Merrer which details construction on the GP still taking place during the 27th year of Khufu's reign.

cormac

Ooooo !  Thanks for that !  Diary of Merrer is a new one for me . Fascinating ! 

 

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ancient-egypt-shipping-mining-farming-economy-pyramids-180956619/

[Harte]

7 hours ago, steve wright said:

couple of websites - I believe Giza was built way before the Egyptians were around - and the Sphinx also - with water erosion around the compound where the Sphinx is - but anyway one point is that people saw a watermark at 240 ft up the side of the pyramid...way back before a 1300 earthquake knocked a lot of limestone off - and also was being taken anyway to build other things

Stories in support of the Biblical Flood were in continuous manufacture then.

7 hours ago, steve wright said:

  - my thought is that the Giza pyramid was built way before the Egyptians were around  - couple of websites if anyone i interested  - not saying how Giza was built - but maybe not by normal methods - ok the egyptians could cut limestone and say 200,000 workers - but could they cut granite with copper tools and putting sand into the saw blades? anyway - how Giza was built ? not sure  - but pretty sure not as a burial chamber 

The Great Pyramid probably utilized no more than 20,000 workers, and not all of those throughout the entire project. 

And given that Denys Stocks has used copper blades and dry sand to cut granite (and there's not that much granite in the GP compared to other sites) the answer to your question has to be yes. However, how much granite had to be "cut" for the GP? That is, they could quarry, shape and smooth granite with other stones, no need for saws.

7 hours ago, steve wright said:

http://www.theosophy-nw.org/theosnw/world/med/eg-vonk.htm the Nile is now 16 kms from Giza - maybe it was right close to giza when the pyramids were built 

          "It is food for thought that salt encrustation was discovered in the Queen's Chamber when it was first opened:

One of the greatest mysteries of this chamber has been the salt encrustation on the walls. It was up to one-half-inch thick in places, and Petrie took it into account when he made measurements of the chamber. The salt also was found along the Horizontal Passage and in the lower portion of the Grand Gallery. How did salt come to build up on the walls?

Those who have seen some significance in the presence of the salt have speculated that it could have been deposited on the walls as the water of the biblical Great Flood receded. Others have speculated that the Great Pyramid and its neighbours were surrounded by water at one time. -- Christopher Dunn, The Giza Power Plant, p. 193"

Limestone quite naturally contains loads of salt. If you stop for just a second and think about how limestone forms, you'll understand this and possibly you'll then see that this salt encrustation is hardly remarkable.

Harte

[docyabut2]

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Gee been through all that, the Egyptians did  build the pyramids

 

[Kenemet]

10 hours ago, steve wright said:

one more vid 

And this is a problem that many people have...

You've done research on "ancient Egypt" but failed to realize that the data you're getting is out of whack.  The pyramids were constructed about 2400 BC.  The Serapeum was constructed by the Ptolemies in 300 BC - two thousand years later: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serapeum

It is more Greek than Egyptian.

[steve wright]

ok good points - will do some more research on the Serapeum if only 300 BC. and yes the NIle did come right up to the GP area before I think - could have used lots of boats for floating stones I guess.Will go over the comments - and the Dairy of Merrer also. Hard to believe they could cut that granite like that tho - even in 300 bc

cool

[Hanslune]

17 minutes ago, steve wright said:

ok good points - will do some more research on the Serapeum if only 300 BC. and yes the NIle did come right up to the GP area before I think - could have used lots of boats for floating stones I guess.Will go over the comments - and the Dairy of Merrer also. Hard to believe they could cut that granite like that tho - even in 300 bc

cool

Yet they did sand and elbow grease will cut granite - lots of elbow grease. Oh the flood marks on the pyramid story I believe this comes from a true statement made by Kramer on a Sumerian ziggurat where a TE flood left a mark on one of these mud brick buildings. Ziggurat when translated out of German is often taken as Pyramid and that story was then transferred to the Great Pyramid.

[Hanslune]

11 hours ago, Hanslune said:

Yet they did sand and elbow grease will cut granite - lots of elbow grease. Oh the flood marks on the pyramid story I believe this comes from a true statement made by Kramer on a Sumerian ziggurat where a TE flood left a mark on one of these mud brick buildings. Ziggurat when translated out of German is often taken as Pyramid and that story was then transferred to the Great Pyramid.

Oops wrong Archaeologist: Not Kramer (who remarked on it) but It was found by  Leonard Woolley I believe.

 

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In later years, Woolley focused on Ur’s prehistory. Digging deep below the Royal Cemetery, he discovered a thick layer of silt above Ur’s earliest occupation layers. Citing Gilgamish and the Bible (Gen. 6-9), Woolley claimed to have found the great “world-wide” flood.

 

 

[Kenemet]

21 hours ago, steve wright said:

ok good points - will do some more research on the Serapeum if only 300 BC. and yes the NIle did come right up to the GP area before I think - could have used lots of boats for floating stones I guess.Will go over the comments - and the Dairy of Merrer also. Hard to believe they could cut that granite like that tho - even in 300 bc

I think that some of the sites you've been getting information from were written by people who actually didn't know much about the subject.

The pyramids (the whole plan at Giza... a fairly complex one) was built during a period of around 100 years, so they continually built on the site.  There are lots of tombs of officials that refer to their titles and prove that they did indeed build the pyramids.  The dating's pretty solid as well (both by text and by carbon dating as well)

Only the chamber walls are of granite - the rest of it is limestone and rubble/sand filling.  They transported only the granite by boat.  The limestone was simply quarried there at Giza (the Sphinx is part of an old quarry.)

They created many wonderful things in granite and granadorite, including bowls, vases, temples, and statues that were 20-40 feet tall and inscribed with hieroglyphs.  While we use high speed machines and diamond grit, they used sand... and a LOT of people.  

 

[Kenemet]

21 hours ago, Hanslune said:

Yet they did sand and elbow grease will cut granite - lots of elbow grease. Oh the flood marks on the pyramid story I believe this comes from a true statement made by Kramer on a Sumerian ziggurat where a TE flood left a mark on one of these mud brick buildings. Ziggurat when translated out of German is often taken as Pyramid and that story was then transferred to the Great Pyramid.

The source is often given as "ancient legends"... when "ancient" isn't specified.  Of course, the Egyptians had no such legend nor was Giza a major site for them.  As far as I can tell, it 's of recent origin.

[Harte]

1 hour ago, Kenemet said:

I think that some of the sites you've been getting information from were written by people who actually didn't know much about the subject.

The pyramids (the whole plan at Giza... a fairly complex one) was built during a period of around 100 years, so they continually built on the site.  There are lots of tombs of officials that refer to their titles and prove that they did indeed build the pyramids.  The dating's pretty solid as well (both by text and by carbon dating as well)

Only the chamber walls are of granite - the rest of it is limestone and rubble/sand filling.  They transported only the granite by boat.  The limestone was simply quarried there at Giza (the Sphinx is part of an old quarry.)

They created many wonderful things in granite and granadorite, including bowls, vases, temples, and statues that were 20-40 feet tall and inscribed with hieroglyphs.  While we use high speed machines and diamond grit, they used sand... and a LOT of people.  

 

There are also a series of fairly large granite blocks that make up the ceiling of the King's chamber and the ceilings of the relieving chambers above it. In addition, several plugs are made of granite, but those aren't nearly as huge as the ceiling ones, which are 50 to 80 tons each, the largest stones known in the Great Pyramid, IIRC.

Harte

[kmt_sesh]

Damn, you all stole my thunder. What am I supposed to say now? I am sorely tempted, of course, but for the time being...what cormac, stereologist, Kenemet, Hanslune, and Harte said. And docyabut2, for that matter.

In the old days this wouldn't have stopped me. I would've plowed into a long, painful, detailed diatribe to defend legitimate research. I guess I'm becoming jaded and weary, like Harte.

[Kenemet]

4 hours ago, Harte said:

There are also a series of fairly large granite blocks that make up the ceiling of the King's chamber and the ceilings of the relieving chambers above it. In addition, several plugs are made of granite, but those aren't nearly as huge as the ceiling ones, which are 50 to 80 tons each, the largest stones known in the Great Pyramid, IIRC.

Harte

I stand corrected.  You can tell that I'm not majoring in The Great Pyramid....

(tisk on me because I saw them with my own eyes.)

Edited December 22, 2016 by Kenemet

[Hanslune]

3 hours ago, kmt_sesh said:

Damn, you all stole my thunder. What am I supposed to say now? I am sorely tempted, of course, but for the time being...what cormac, stereologist, Kenemet, Hanslune, and Harte said. And docyabut2, for that matter.

In the old days this wouldn't have stopped me. I would've plowed into a long, painful, detailed diatribe to defend legitimate research. I guess I'm becoming jaded and weary, like Harte.

We've formed a cabal to replace you with Kenemet. Not only is she much better looking but she's promising we can black ball REALLY moronic posters if we support her bid to overthrow the regime here and pronounce her Goddess-in-residence.

[jaylemurph]

Seems like one or both of them need to rustle up some sacrificial hams to appease the forum's tutelary basset dieties. I just hope Kmt's pro-feline remarks won't damage his chances.

--Jaylemurph