Course thicknesses of the Great Pyramid

[Thanos5150]

14 hours ago, Hanslune said:

During Petrie's time the base was obscured. They didn't find Pyramid G1-d right next to the GP until they further cleaned up the area around the base in the 1990's

The base was not cleared for some time.

 

This picture has been mislabeled/misquoted. It is G2, not G1. Note the granite casing stone debris.   

Regardless, G1 as reported by Vyse:

Edited February 25, 2021 by Thanos5150

[Aus Der Box Skeptisch]

4 hours ago, cladking said:

  Congratulations!  Babies are the best.  College is a good way to use time.  

If you must live in interesting times it is always best to be young.  

Sure, if 40 is still young lol. Its the new 20s, right?

Edited February 25, 2021 by Aus Der Box Skeptisch

[DougMcK]

The purpose of this post is 3 fold:

1--  Suggest that the wedge notion of the courses is not real. 

2--  Establish that the course thicknesses were intended to be multiples of cubits, hands and fingers with just a few exceptions which follow other patterns.

3-- Delineate other pyramids whose courses have been measured and describe how well the follow the patterns found for the Great Pyramid.

 

1--  The wedge notion arises from the differences in thickness that Petrie measured at the NE and SW corners.  In the other forum on this topic I recently posted a description of why I believe this difference is actually the result of a systematic error in the surveying measurements at one of the corners (I don't remember which corner because I'm moving and don't have access to any of my materials).  This conclusion is based on extensive data analysis involving the comparison of all data sources.  This work is described in an unpublished sort of appendix to the paper cited by aarvai above.

2-- By working with 5 sets of measurements of all the known courses as well as 3 additional sets for the lowest 25 courses (I think) we can perform statistical tests that show that the alignment with cubits, hands and fingers is very statistically significant.  The reason that we can make this statement is that we make estimates of the course thicknesses which are considerably more accurate than any of the individual sets.  In addition, with these more accurate estimates the patterns described in the paper are very clearly evident.  Both the massaged thickness values and the existence of the patterns independently support this conclusion.  In addition, these two aspects allow us to say what thickness we think the Egyptians wanted each course to be.  This is important because the Intended Course Thicknesses have no error in them just like saying a ruler is intended to be 12" long has no error in it even if the ruler is 12 1/8" long - The intended length is nonetheless 12" exactly.  These error free values allow interesting tests to be be performed for example the heights of the thick courses producing areas that follow a pattern (Petrie).  Incidently it's appropriate to point out that in most of the architectural work that the Egyptians did, they usually tried to use dimensions of integral cubits, hands or fingers.  In other words, their use for the course thicknesses isn't even unexpected.

3-- Kafre's pyramid had about 50 courses measured by Petrie (if I remember correctly).  Similarly, Menkauer's pyramid had maybe 20 courses measured (again I hope I am remembering reasonably correctly)  I never found any measurements of other pyramids and this is probably the result of most of the other pyramids being in much worse shape than the 3 main Giza pyramids and the course thicknesses therefore are much less well defined.  The measurements of the two other major Giza pyramids display none of the regularities that Khufu's display.  Further there are more subtle patterns that Khufu's pyramid shows described in the unpublished paper.  The two smaller Giza patterns do not follow these more subtle patterns at all.

For clarity sake, I list the various 'papers' mentioned above and what they cover:

There is a published paper that describes the patterns that the course thicknesses follow.  The two other major pyramids at Giza do not display these patterns at all.

There is an unpublished appendix of that paper which describes how the different sources of data were combined into a single set of more accurate thicknesses along with estimates of the standard error in each courses thickness estimate.

There is an unpublished paper that describes more subtle patterns.  This paper is pretty mathematical.  One of the remarkable results of this paper is that we can estimate the size of the pyramidion as well as the thicknesses of the missing courses at the top of the pyramid.  Sounds like magic but it is actually pretty straight forward.  The two other major pyramids at Giza do not display these more subtle patterns at all.