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Question on construction of Pyramids of Giza


Dontlisten2me

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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
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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
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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
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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.

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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.

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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
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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.

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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.

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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
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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

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All of them?

Well you can't build a Pyramid like that with a bunch of uneven stones.

Edited by kampz
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All of them?

Well you can't build a Pyramid like that with a bunch of uneven stones.

With some small exception, the blocks one sees on the pyramids now are NOT casing stones, which again were used in the construction of much of Cairo. The actual casing stones were made specifically to fit the levels they were on.

cormac

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All of them?

Well you can't build a Pyramid like that with a bunch of uneven stones.

Look at this pic of the Great Pyramid. These blocks are not uniform in size, or arrangement. Look how many are fractured. The plaster in between the stones shows that these fractured and angle sided blocks are not recent, or accidental. They put them in that way.

The-Great-Pyramid-of-Giza.jpg

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Humans and weathering deformed the stones we can see on the very outside. I agree not all the blocks were perfect on the outside, but what about the inside?

They're better pictures close up of how precise they were placed next to each other and some of the blocks were pretty darn close to being perfect.

The blocks used to build the Pyramids on the outside were mostly around the same size. In the inside they're a lot bigger.

The original idea was to probably keep replacing casing stones that "broke"

Edited by kampz
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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.

"Hardly begun" or not these are valid examples, just because you "feel" they should be nearer to completion doesn't mean they don't count.

Besides we have two other examples that were nearer to completion, Djedefre's as kmt_sesh already mentioned and Khaba's.

The remains of Djedefre's pyramid we see today don't represent the state it was in when work ceased, it was used as a quarry in Roman times and a nearby Coptic monastery was built with blocks of this pyramid, the pyramid was probably near to completion.

Besides we have also examples where the pyramid was finished but other parts of the funerary complex weren't.

All this points out that they stopped working when the king died (exept for a few rush jobs in mud-brick like we see in Menkaure's complex).

Many of the granite casing blocks of Menkaure's pyramid weren't polished, so it wasn't completely finished, meaning one more for te list.

So your original statement: "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." is completely untrue since we have at least 4 examples, 5 if we include Menkaure's...

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"Hardly begun" or not these are valid examples, just because you "feel" they should be nearer to completion doesn't mean they don't count.

Besides we have two other examples that were nearer to completion, Djedefre's as kmt_sesh already mentioned and Khaba's.

The remains of Djedefre's pyramid we see today don't represent the state it was in when work ceased, it was used as a quarry in Roman times and a nearby Coptic monastery was built with blocks of this pyramid, the pyramid was probably near to completion.

Besides we have also examples where the pyramid was finished but other parts of the funerary complex weren't.

All this points out that they stopped working when the king died (exept for a few rush jobs in mud-brick like we see in Menkaure's complex).

Many of the granite casing blocks of Menkaure's pyramid weren't polished, so it wasn't completely finished, meaning one more for te list.

So your original statement: "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." is completely untrue since we have at least 4 examples, 5 if we include Menkaure's...

I "feel" logic and facts make a difference. I feel logic is the best way to understand

and learn about the world.

You could argue that the N is so small that it's mere coincidence that no king died.

The facts stand.

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I "feel" logic and facts make a difference. I feel logic is the best way to understand

and learn about the world.

You could argue that the N is so small that it's mere coincidence that no king died.

The facts stand.

No idea what you mean by all that but the FACT that we have (at least) FOUR partially finished pyramid stands.

No comments on Djedefre's and Khaba's? Maybe you still have to invent an excuse for not considering these two partially finished "great pyramids"?

Let logic and facts make a difference for once Cladking and admit you were wrong.

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No idea what you mean by all that but the FACT that we have (at least) FOUR partially finished pyramid stands.

No comments on Djedefre's and Khaba's? Maybe you still have to invent an excuse for not considering these two partially finished "great pyramids"?

Let logic and facts make a difference for once Cladking and admit you were wrong.

The odds that someone will die is higher with each year of life after infancy.

Logically if they built the pyramids over a long span of time for a particular person and stopped

if he died and did this repeatedly then it should follow that some great pyramids would be left in

a nearly completed state.

This is not what we actually see so you can say the evidence is not consistent with the theory.

This alone can't prove the theory wrong in this case but it still weighs against it.

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Humans and weathering deformed the stones we can see on the very outside. I agree not all the blocks were perfect on the outside, but what about the inside?

The outside layers had to be fairly even to support the cladding stones, but we can see that they are far from uniform and far from cut with square corners.

On the inside there is even less motivation to have square stones. They simply piled up roughly cubical boulders and applied lots of plaster. As much as 10% of the mass of the Great Pyramid is plaster.

The only place they Needed to be smoothly surfaced and flat sided was for the various halls and chambers.

They're better pictures close up of how precise they were placed next to each other and some of the blocks were pretty darn close to being perfect.

Sure, the occational spot shows very good fitting of the stones, but overall 99% of the pyramid is very loosely put together and shows horrendous bad masonry efforts. These people were in a Hurry after all. They needed to place a stone basically every couple minutes, right. No time for chiseling exact corners and flat sides.

The blocks used to build the Pyramids on the outside were mostly around the same size. In the inside they're a lot bigger.

Possibly, but unlikely. Most of the blocks are limestone quarried locally, and the block sizes were determined by the layering of the limestone. So the thickness of each stone was already determned by the thickness of the layer it came out of. Very much like taking pieces out of a slice of bread, rather then a loaf of bread. So, any giant limestone blocks would have had to come from somewhere else, and there is no evidence or records of anything like that. The local quarries also show that more then enough stone was taken out to build all the local pyramids and mastabas.

Edited by DieChecker
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The inside has the best work.

The Pyramids were put together pretty well. They just had to keep replacing stones over time to keep it perfect. Wait... How could you fix something at the top if the surface of the Pyramids are smooth? Were they smooth? And you mentioned time. Time is the most important part. What does everyone say if they added a 0 to 10 or 20 years? That would screw a lot of other evidence right?

Edited by kampz
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Add a zero at the end so 100 to 200 years for construction. Does the evidence already found disagree totally? What about the possibility of "manifesting or "creating" new fake but real evidence to say otherwise or to help persuade you into thinking different?

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Add a zero at the end so 100 to 200 years for construction. Does the evidence already found disagree totally? What about the possibility of "manifesting or "creating" new fake but real evidence to say otherwise or to help persuade you into thinking different?

No the evidence does not disagree. It is simply that the egypt experts know who the pyramid was being built for (There is lots of evidence for this) and they know when that pharoah was living (Roughly anyway) and they know the same about all the pyramids to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, they can guess (based on tons of evidence and very logical deductions) that the Great Pyramid was built over roughly 30 years. The degree of confidence is very high. Very few educated and/or knowledgable people dispute this. It is only a guess however, because we don't have time machines.

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The inside has the best work.

That is unproven, and from various non-invasive tests, probably not true. I think it was sonic testing that showed that the pyramd probably is actually filled with large voids that are probably filled with rubble and/or sand.

The Pyramids were put together pretty well. They just had to keep replacing stones over time to keep it perfect. Wait... How could you fix something at the top if the surface of the Pyramids are smooth? Were they smooth? And you mentioned time. Time is the most important part. What does everyone say if they added a 0 to 10 or 20 years? That would screw a lot of other evidence right?

I doubt much damage happened in the living memory of the pharoahs that built them. There was little rain and sand storms don't really tear into them that much. There was no flooding on this high plateau. If there was flooding, then all the Egyptians would have been drown and washed away anyway.

We have temples from the same period that have little damage. Most of the damages were done by follow on civilizations, like the arabs, and follow on dynastys that wanted to remove evidence of former pharoahs. The only structures, and pyramids, that really suffered over the millenia were those built of mud brick. Those built of stone lasted very well.

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No the evidence does not disagree. It is simply that the egypt experts know who the pyramid was being built for (There is lots of evidence for this) and they know when that pharoah was living (Roughly anyway) and they know the same about all the pyramids to a greater or lesser extent. Thus, they can guess (based on tons of evidence and very logical deductions) that the Great Pyramid was built over roughly 30 years. The degree of confidence is very high. Very few educated and/or knowledgable people dispute this. It is only a guess however, because we don't have time machines.

Who cares about there King because he's dead. Screw his sons I say. What made him so special? He's not lasting 100+ years. Life expectancy was short. Rebel easy fits there and it would be easy to rebel. There's lots of evidence for the Great Pyramids being built in around the time they say? Why is it being explained different a lot? I guess that's when they made it and there's more evidence for it being completed in 30 years? Then I see myself explaining this way still even if bogus real evidence is made up.

Maybe there King died during the construction and they decided to put him in it? Maybe it wasn't originally mean't for him. I would think the King and his men were the guys who gathered all the civilians to help these "Gods" he met. I'm sure whoever saw the "Gods" decided to follow them too. Maybe that's why the King has a name on it. The King you would think would be compared to everyday people mostly because of the "Gods" they met. Maybe that's why the King got put in it because he gained much respect for being the leader in the time of these "Gods".

If it's for Khufu or whoever I bet that King would go around explaining something along the lines like I did. Now were at 30+ years for construction. Not enough time for it. If it took 30+ years to make a perfect and smooth Great Pyramid then there should be 100 other Great Pyramids if it's that easy.

At least the inside looks the nicest nowadays. I probably wouldn't be able to say what looks nicer if I saw it the day it was 100% complete.

The Red Pyramid took approximately 17 years to complete according to Rainer Stadelmann and approximately 10 years and 7 months according to John Romer. Now I need to know how many guys. The Red Pyramid is a pyramid that resembles the Pyramids of Giza. I got this information on Wiki.

Edited by kampz
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