Were Egypt's pyramids built using a hydraulic lift system ?

[UM-Bot]

Archaeologists have found evidence to suggest that a primitive hydraulic lift might have been used to move heavy stones.

https://www.unexplained-mysteries.com/news/379359/were-egypts-pyramids-built-using-a-hydraulic-lift-system

[Piney]

@Thanos5150 @Antigonos

This is a perfect thread for you both. 

[+OverSword]

The Daily Mail.  Seems like a legit source for archeology.

[Grim Reaper 6]

37 minutes ago, OverSword said:

The Daily Mail.  Seems like a legit source for archeology.

I agree with you  but the science of hydraulics used in the article is legitimate no matter the publication.

[Thanos5150]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

@Thanos5150 @Antigonos

This is a perfect thread for you both. 

At least you did not mention the one-who-shall-not-be-named.

I saw it elsewhere. On the possible use of hydraulic force to assist with building the Step Pyramid of Saqqara

The notion the interior was used as a hydraulic lift is retarded on multiple levels. 

See #127

Case in point the main "hydraulic" shaft terminates at ground level and other than the core structures it was built using the accretion layer method. 

Meaning other than the core(s) it was vertically built from the outside of the structure. 

Edited August 1 by Thanos5150

[Piney]

20 minutes ago, Thanos5150 said:

At least you did not mention the one-who-shall-not-be-named.

You had to recite the mystic formula, didn't you..

If they show up it's all your fault. 🙄

[Piney]

1 hour ago, Piney said:

You had to recite the mystic formula, didn't you..

If they show up it's all your fault. 🙄

Speaking of "they" we now have the wispy dippy Southerner on board.

@Tom1200

[Antigonos]

6 hours ago, Piney said:

@Thanos5150 @Antigonos

This is a perfect thread for you both. 

Blech.

I think Lee was being kind by using the word retarded.

[Thanos5150]

1 hour ago, Antigonos said:

Blech.

I think Lee was being kind by using the word retarded.

I'm trying to be more politically correct. A kinder gentler Thanos if you will. 

[Tom1200]

9 hours ago, Piney said:

Speaking of "they" we now have the wispy dippy Southerner on board.

This is my 1200th post on UM.  I was going to save it for something more erudite - a topic of scientific or political intrigue that actually interests me.  But you've gone and dragged me into this thread so I'll try to be fair and not to imply the authors are namby-pamby Northerners, stunted and diseased from centuries of in-breeding and still harping on about the Harrying of the North as though that was a bad thing.

The font-of-all-knowledge The Daily Mail offers this graphic to support this "let's float multi-tonne blocks on a watertight shaft to save the effort of building ramps" hypothesis:

You can see the shaft extends up through successive layers, carrying stones to where they're needed, even as high as Nelson's Column. 

But, as @Thanos5150 points out above, the shaft is dug downwards from ground level and does not extend upwards into the superstructure.  It takes maybe eight seconds on Google to confirm this.  So the entire theory falls apart at the first hurdle and deserves no further investment of time or effort to dismiss it entirely. 

In fact the only discussion necessary is whether the theory is silly (my preferred descriptive for this kind of moronic idea) or retarded (Thanos's choice of adjective).  Was this idea made-up as a spoof or does anyone genuinely believe in it?

[Piney]

10 hours ago, Thanos5150 said:

I'm trying to be more politically correct. A kinder gentler Thanos if you will. 

🥰

[Thanos5150]

20 hours ago, Thanos5150 said:

At least you did not mention the one-who-shall-not-be-named.

I saw it elsewhere. On the possible use of hydraulic force to assist with building the Step Pyramid of Saqqara

The notion the interior was used as a hydraulic lift is retarded on multiple levels. 

See #127

Case in point the main "hydraulic" shaft terminates at ground level and other than the core structures it was built using the accretion layer method. 

Meaning other than the core(s) it was vertically built from the outside of the structure. 

And the sad thing is once again there will be a generation of click-bait educated mouth breathers that will think this is true because the internet said so. 

Reminds me of this one: #168. 

Edited August 2 by Thanos5150

[Thanos5150]

9 hours ago, Tom1200 said:

In fact the only discussion necessary is whether the theory is silly (my preferred descriptive for this kind of moronic idea) or retarded (Thanos's choice of adjective).  

Why can't it be both? 

Unrelated, but some might find this interesting: It Took A Eugenicist To Come Up With 'Moron'

"The idiot is not our greatest problem. He is indeed loathsome. ... Nevertheless, he lives his life and is done. He does not continue the race with a line of children like himself. ... It is the moron type that makes for us our great problem."

Henry H. Goddard, 1912

 

Edited August 2 by Thanos5150

[Antigonos]

3 hours ago, Thanos5150 said:

Why can't it be both? 

Unrelated, but some might find this interesting: It Took A Eugenicist To Come Up With 'Moron'

"The idiot is not our greatest problem. He is indeed loathsome. ... Nevertheless, he lives his life and is done. He does not continue the race with a line of children like himself. ... It is the moron type that makes for us our great problem."

Henry H. Goddard, 1912

 

I like how “feeble-minded” was considered less severe than “idiot” and “imbecile”.
 

“Today, none of these words are appropriate as medical terms”. 

😂

[qxcontinuum]

I still don't understand how feeding water from a bazin through a pipe, had created so much pressure, enough to lift up stones that heavy.  Even with snails like hydro accelerators in modern times, designed for energy production, the water power and pressure delivered can't provide too much lift

Edited August 4 by qxcontinuum

[qxcontinuum]

and I am unsure why all theories involve the transportation of limestone large blocks that many deem impossible due to weight, logistics etc... what if the limestones were made right there on the spot using the water pipes discovered. It is in fact easy to build artificial limestone , the receipt is there online free to all and surely known to Egyptions since. 

Limestone synthesis. Here are the basic steps involved in making synthetic limestone:

Carbonation Method: Method involving bubbling carbon dioxide (CO₂) through a calcium hydroxide (Ca(OH)₂) solution, forming calcium carbonate precipitate. 

Ca(OH)2+CO2→CaCO3↓+H2O

1. Formation of Limestone:

   • The precipitated calcium carbonate can be collected and allowed to dry.
   • This material can then be compacted under high pressure to form a solid mass.
   • To enhance the process, the material can be subjected to heat, mimicking natural diagenesis.

[jmccr8]

I'm sticking with giant rock eating horses with square a$$holes just dropped a pile

[Grim Reaper 6]

1 minute ago, jmccr8 said:

I'm sticking with giant rock eating horses with square a$$holes just dropped a pile

🤣

[cladking]

From the author;

"Moreover, a second question accentuates the enigma: the Pharaohs who built these pyramids are missing. Until now, neither written record nor physical evidence reports the discovery of one of the III^rd and IV^th Dynasties’ Pharaohs. Old Kingdom’s ‘big’ pyramids’ rooms were allegedly plundered [13–15] during the millennia that followed the construction of the pyramids, leaving little evidence behind [12]. The III^rd and IV^th Dynasties’ rooms present little or no funerary attributes, such as those observed in other high-dignitary figures’ tombs contemporary to the period [16, 17], with no King’s remains found inside. In addition, the walls of the pyramids’ chambers do not exhibit any hieroglyphs, paintings, engravings, or drawings, which would allow us to qualify them as funerary with certainty. Despite this lack of evidence, many authors [18] still support that these rooms can be attributed to Pharaohs’ burials mainly based on royal cartouches or Kings’ names found elsewhere within the pyramid or nearby temples."

Today the last of the "evidence" tying these to being tombs is being or in need of reinterpretation.  As has been pointed out for many years now the so called "valley temples" form a line along the old course of the Nile and are obviously actually ports that were used to receive supplies and material from across Egypt and especially from the Turah Mines across the river. This would make the so called "mortuary temple" merely infrastructure used to shape and or transport stone straight up the stepped sides of these step pyramids and the walkway in between a "ramp" to move stone  from the river to the very bottom of the pyramid.  

Simply stated the ancients have been maligned and underestimated for over two centuries as the author also suggests.  

[cladking]

I haven't had time to study this yet but am confident it better reflects reality than anything ever written since Budge;

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306690

[Antigonos]

1 hour ago, cladking said:

I haven't had time to study this yet but am confident it better reflects reality than anything ever written since Budge;

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0306690

Really… which works of Budge have you actually read? Let’s discuss them.

He wrote quite a few of those “dusty old tomes” you’ve gone on record multiple times expressing outright contempt for. He’s also one of those Egyptologists you’re always complaining have all gotten everything wrong about ancient Egypt. It’s always revealing how you choose when you rely on them and when you don’t. Pick a lane already, it’s been eighteen years. This is just one reason why everyone thinks you know damn well that you’re full of bs.
 

We’re all already familiar with your own personal brand of reality. Saying this counts for precisely zero.

Goddard Exhibit A.

Edited August 7 by Antigonos

[cladking]

How about this.  There's even a smoking gun;

According to the Saqqara topography (Fig 3), the Abusir wadi flowed through the Gisr el-Mudir enclosure before heading north towards the Nile floodplain, where it used to feed an oxbow lake, the Abusir Lake [51]. With such a localization, the Gisr el-Mudir walls literally dam the Abusir wadi valley’s entire width. The sparse vegetation only growing in the valley bottom upstream of Gisr el-Mudir and not elsewhere in the area evidences this damming and interception of surface and subsurface flows (Fig 4A, green line). This slight moist area is dominated by plants commonly found in desert margins and wadis, such as Panicum thurgidum and Alhagi graecorum [56], and is typical of hypodermal flows.

[cladking]

I've been saying this for many years now.  i have been saying it's obnvious it was filled with water and there is even an overflow from inside the complex.

 In 2020, Wong concluded that the ‘intriguing possibility that the Great Trench that surrounds the Djoser complex may have been filled with water’ during Djoser’s reign [37]. If so, this might explain why tombs were built on the northern part of the Saqqara plateau which has a higher altitude [45] and nothing was constructed inside the Trench until the reign of Userkaf and Unas (V^th Dynasty).

[cladking]

It's also interesting the author shows a river running through the "hypostyle hall" as I have suggested as well.  

Edited August 8 by cladking

[cladking]

12 hours ago, Antigonos said:

He wrote quite a few of those “dusty old tomes” you’ve gone on record multiple times expressing outright contempt for. He’s also one of those Egyptologists you’re always complaining have all gotten everything wrong about ancient Egypt. It’s always revealing how you choose when you rely on them and when you don’t. Pick a lane already, it’s been eighteen years. This is just one reason why everyone thinks you know damn well that you’re full of bs.

Mostly I've just seen quotes attributed to him but have read a few things including "the book of the dead".  I find many of the things he believed to be highly insightful with the most important being that the ancients practiced regicide.  When the king got weak, old, or senile they prepared his body to be cremated on the iskn which was a funeral pyre on the east side of the pyramid.  This really wasn't much "funeral" about this however as they considered a mere transmogrification from a dead and mummified man to his ka called a "pyramid".   A few wept but this was a five day celebration of life and afterlife.  A few got over their tears as the king ascended to heaven on the smoke of incense but the rest of the w3g-festival was pure celebration. 

Edited August 8 by cladking