Jump to content

Is this how the pyramids were built?!


Arugela

Recommended Posts

Well, hauling all that water up there would take more work (in terms of mass lifted) than lifting the stones. That would be a lot of water pressure at the lower gate, leakage would likely be immense.

I don't see why you can't just have a system of small levers/cranes on each level of blocks to lift block up to the next level (as has been proposed before).

That said, a canal to move the blocks to the site could be very benefical

Edited by KerikBalm
Link to comment
Share on other sites

And now how would they explain the Baalbek monoliths, up to 1000 t each?

And how did the Egyptians do that just once, with nothing comparable before and after?

And the Sphinx. Not that there is any comparable statue around.

And the main question: what for? It has nothing common with any temple, it wasn't used as a tomb until much later times.
Also why that blind 30 cm wide tunnel? It is definitely not a part of a water system, as it's blind, and how could they make it through the layers of 2..20 t stone blocks?

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

And the main question: what for? It has nothing common with any temple, it wasn't used as a tomb until much later times.

Are you talking about the pyramids? They were very definitely built as tombs right from the start. This is simple historical fact.

It's also obvious that there is no way they could have retroactively added burial chambers -- they had to have been built in from the start.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

33 minutes ago, mikegarrison said:

Are you talking about the pyramids? They were very definitely built as tombs right from the start. This is simple historical fact.

Just built a 150 m heap of stone and never used to bury?
It's not a fact, it's just a common archaelogists' name for any ancient building of unknown purpose.
If believe everything they tell, the ancient people daily routines consisted of burials and magic. While they were just peasants, with peasants' needs.

Afaik, a simple historical fact is that the Ancient Egyptians were rather practical, rational, predictable, and dull (in good sense) people and did everything practically and rationally.
When it was a tomb, it was just a crypt room with cell(s) for mummies, a corridor for visitors with gifts, and a table for those gifts.
A nice practice was to set a statue of the buried person against that table to let his soul get a temporary body, surround it with a wall to protect the statue from idiots, and the idiots from the soul-in-the-statue's rage, and to make a small window in the wall to let the soul see the table with gifts from the eyes of the statue.
No traps, no low ceilings, no floating stones, no pits with stakes, no tilted corridors, no secrets. Just exactly what people do for millenia.
In the best case there was a false wall and a secret room with real tomb, to protect some burial gifts.

They didn't know about Inidana Jones and Lara Croft, so they also didn't put gun shells, medkits, and batteries in the bronze pots.

In turn, the mummies were not a magic. Just any corpse turned into a dry mummy in their climate, so they just extracted most rottable parts and added some oils to make it smell less. They didn't have a lot of soil to dig it in or wood to burn.

The Pyramids have nothing common with that. They have nothing common with anything but a dull auxilliary technical building where the builders cared about anything but aesthetics or comfort.

P.S.
And of course we should remember the lists of goods captured by the Egyptian kings, like 5000 sheep, 200 cows, 1000 good shirts, 2 bronze armors, 2 wooden thrones, 150 prisoners, etc.
When one reads it, looking at the 150 m stone pyramids (they say, built by those kings) with another eye, and doesn't drop a tear, he is really heartless...

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Just built a 150 m heap of stone and never used to bury?
It's not a fact, it's just a common archaelogists' name for any ancient building of unknown purpose.
If believe everything they tell, the ancient people daily routines consisted of burials and magic. While they were just peasants, with peasants' needs.

Afaik, a simple historical fact is that the Ancient Egyptians were rather practical, rational, predictable, and dull (in good sense) people and did everything practically and rationally.
When it was a tomb, it was just a crypt room with cell(s) for mummies, a corridor for visitors with gifts, and a table for those gifts.
A nice practice was to set a statue of the buried person against that table to let his soul get a temporary body, surround it with a wall to protect the statue from idiots, and the idiots from the soul-in-the-statue's rage, and to make a small window in the wall to let the soul see the table with gifts from the eyes of the statue.
No traps, no low ceilings, no floating stones, no pits with stakes, no tilted corridors, no secrets. Just exactly what people do for millenia.
In the best case there was a false wall and a secret room with real tomb, to protect some burial gifts.

They didn't know about Inidana Jones and Lara Croft, so they also didn't put gun shells, medkits, and batteries in the bronze pots.

In turn, the mummies were not a magic. Just any corpse turned into a dry mummy in their climate, so they just extracted most rottable parts and added some oils to make it smell less. They didn't have a lot of soil to dig it in or wood to burn.

The Pyramids have nothing common with that. They have nothing common with anything but a dull auxilliary technical building where the builders cared about anything but aesthetics or comfort.

P.S.
And of course we should remember the lists of goods captured by the Egyptian kings, like 5000 sheep, 200 cows, 1000 good shirts, 2 bronze armors, 150 prisoners, etc.
When one reads it, looking at the pyramids with another eye, and doesn't drop a tear, he is really heartless...

Pyramids evolved, the can track the technological progress of this, with the step pyramid and the broken pyramid. 
Pyramids evolved from mastaba's who continued to be used to used to house nobility, and yes mastaba's had an chapel The pyramids had temples. 
However they learned that grave robbers was an serious issue so they started digging into the wally of the kings. 

And it was no traps in the pyramids, it was however lots of granitt plugs and other obstacles, at the time they would be pretty much like fort Knox. 
However it was many dangers fort Knox don't face. The new Pharaoh might see his hated father or grandfather tomb as an gold mine, you just has to make the guard force very corrupt. 
Egypt also had periods of breakdown. An tomb in the valley of the kings was easier to hide. 
But yes its plausible that some pyramids was just an front, Take an small lojal group and bury the king and in the desert. 
 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Pyramids evolved, the can track the technological progress of this, with the step pyramid and the broken pyramid. 

Exactly this evolution is not seen.
There is an obvious evolution of much smaller brick/stone pyramids, yes, but not an evolution of great-greater-the greatest pyramids.
A pyramid comparable to the Great ones in size is Joser's one, but it's a poor parody in building technics.

Like they had an example to follow and were trying to reproduce it in much smaller scales, mastaba-like. Like probably everybody was doing in that place.
But where are the earlier ones of intermediate size? Did people build Saturn V right after V-2?

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

However they learned that grave robbers was an serious issue so they started digging into the wally of the kings. 

Alas, we don't know what exactly have stolen those robbers. Maybe 2 shirts, 1 bronze armor, and 3 gems.
We tend to overestimate the Egyptian kings richness looking at the only safe tomb of Tut (a very unusual tomb from very unusual historical moment, when they probably buried all gold to save from the anti-Echnaton's party), and at the stone pyramids of unknown authors, presuming that these kings were their builders.
But the war prizes make to feel sorry for those poor kings, rather than admire their victories. (2 wooden thrones, a bronze armor, and good shirts, lolcry *) ).

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

And it was no traps in the pyramids, it was however lots of granitt plugs and other obstacles, at the time they would be pretty much like fort Knox. 

It looks like any quick-made structure, full of construction rubbish, with bare walls and temporary pass-ways to be used once per decade to service an equipment.

24 minutes ago, magnemoe said:

Egypt also had periods of breakdown.

In other places they just call it with its own name: various countries changed each other one by one.
Just in Ellinistic times they hired a Egyptian priest to write a chronology, and he numbered the dinasties calling all those countries "Ancient Egypt" of Old, Early, Middle, etc. periods.
People of course were more or less same, but those Egypts had very little common with each other. Even the "pharaoh" is a Greek slang name for the local kings who never called themselves so.

Also, Sphinx.
A huge statue with no altar, no obvious purpose, just a statue in a desert.

*) They should write "and 1000 clean shirts"

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

15855771_303.jpg

See this thing? It's an actual building. Ryugyong Hotel - 105 floors, 330 meters of height. It stands in the center of Pyongyang, capital city of poor North Korea. It cost approximately 750 millions of dollars to be built, starting wayyy back in 1987. But... it's still unfinished because lack of money :D This pyramid shaped tower is like old egg - pretty from the outside, empty on the inside. Can you see the similarities? Relatively poor countries ruled by egomaniacs believing themselves to be gods, wanting to affirm their divinity by erecting epic monuments to their hubris.

And i probably should stop here, before wrath of moderators comes down on me :D

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Exactly this evolution is not seen.
There is an obvious evolution of much smaller brick/stone pyramids, yes, but not an evolution of great-greater-the greatest pyramids.
A pyramid comparable to the Great ones in size is Joser's one, but it's a poor parody in building technics.

Like they had an example to follow and were trying to reproduce it in much smaller scales, mastaba-like. Like probably everybody was doing in that place.
But where are the earlier ones of intermediate size? Did people build Saturn V right after V-2?

Alas, we don't know what exactly have stolen those robbers. Maybe 2 shirts, 1 bronze armor, and 3 gems.
We tend to overestimate the Egyptian kings richness looking at the only safe tomb of Tut (a very unusual tomb from very unusual historical moment, when they probably buried all gold to save from the anti-Echnaton's party), and at the stone pyramids of unknown authors, presuming that these kings were their builders.
But the war prizes make to feel sorry for those poor kings, rather than admire their victories. (2 wooden thrones, a bronze armor, and good shirts, lolcry *) ).

It looks like any quick-made structure, full of construction rubbish, with bare walls and temporary pass-ways to be used once per decade to service an equipment.

In other places they just call it with its own name: various countries changed each other one by one.
Just in Ellinistic times they hired a Egyptian priest to write a chronology, and he numbered the dinasties calling all those countries "Ancient Egypt" of Old, Early, Middle, etc. periods.
People of course were more or less same, but those Egypts had very little common with each other. Even the "pharaoh" is a Greek slang name for the local kings who never called themselves so.

Also, Sphinx.
A huge statue with no altar, no obvious purpose, just a statue in a desert.

*) They should write "and 1000 clean shirts"

We have an good history of pyramid construction 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_pyramids

We probably have more paperwork left by the ancient Egyptians than the Roman empire as the desert conserve stuff. Yes the really important stuff like how to cut stone or make catapults kept getting copied, but lots of the literature got lost and Rome was way more literate than ancient Egypt, in Rome you was expected to be literate if upper class. 

Note that we have dug out the construction city in Giza, its match the logistic train expected, most was conscript labors moving stones 1-2 month each year with an core of say 2000 professionals with their families working full time. 
Yes we done mistakes in out chronology, but not major ones. 

Now the real question is the voids above the grand gallery in the great pyramid, I assume this for load balancing so you distributed force away from the gallery but might even contain cool stuff.
We might even find an manual for building pyramids :)

Note that we know multiple ways to do this with the technology they had, most go for an straight ramp 40-50 meter up, then an external or internal ramp going up. 
rest is lack of documentation. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

We have an good history of pyramid construction 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Egyptian_pyramids

Yes, and compare how do the actually Egyptian pyramids look, and how the Great ones do.
Heaps of clay rubbish vs strong stone triangles.

Where are the strong stone triangles of intermediate size built earlier?
Where is Saturn IB when we see Saturn V, V-2, and a metal scrap left from A-9/A-10.

 

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

We probably have more paperwork left by the ancient Egyptians than the Roman empire as the desert conserve stuff. Yes the really important stuff like how to cut stone or make catapults kept getting copied, but lots of the literature got lost and Rome was way more literate than ancient Egypt, in Rome you was expected to be literate if upper class. 

Yes, the Egyptians were in love with schoolbooks and liked to teach themselves maths and so on, there is a lot of paper texts.
So, where is at least one Egyptian text "How to build a great pyramid"? Why are we still guessing instead of reading?

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

We might even find an manual for building pyramids :)

Exactly. We might. But still didn't.

Also we should not overestimate their maths.
Due to the absense of positional number systems, their methods of multiplication and division were monstrous and definitely not fast.
Even a slide rule would make a revolution in their engineering.
Their astronomy was also far from Babylonian or Greek. They didn't use naval astronavigation.
They didn't have a proper calender, they used 360 d long year + 5 days of total drinking and hangover when they didn't care about the date.
Their Sirius studies are just a single fact of "when the brightest star gets visible, wait a little, and the river will get full".
Also they are near the equator, so their astronomy is a little simplified compred to higher latitudes.
Their ships were poor, often single-use, and were going along the coastline like along the river.
They didn't know metals except the softest ones. No iron to cut the stone, only copper.
Even the charriots were adopted millenia later.
They didn't have a phonetic writing, and their writing was a monstrous mess of pseudo-phonetics and ideograms. So, we don't ancest it.

They knew more than others, but because others still knew even less.
This was the elementary school of humanity, but definitely not a construction college.

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Note that we have dug out the construction city in Giza, its match the logistic train expected, most was conscript labors moving stones 1-2 month each year with an core of say 2000 professionals with their families working full time. 

We also know how was the Giza personnel organized (in paired brigades like oarsmen on ships), we have their allowance statements, and builders' marks on the stones.
Just we can't know if they were builders or restorers. but the proud and sensational texts about "1000 shirts, 150 cows", not just lost by an accountant, but engraved in stone, make to think that the kingdom unlikely had enough budget to just plaster the pyramid, let alone its building.

Of course, their propaganda declared the king its builder, and as we can see, it works.

Probably we could  think better about Hufu and his people. That's not the country was devastated by the personal Hufu pyramid building.
That's Hufu was a normal, successful king of a relatively rich Mid-East country who ordered to plaster the ancested Great Pyramid and rename it after him.
He already had an example of Joser's attempt to build his own one, and how it finished.
Probably, the restoration went happily, with no economic collapse, as his descendants did the same with others.

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Yes we done mistakes in out chronology, but not major ones. 

It's made of non-radioactive local stone. No wood, no ice.
Plus-minus several millenia (say 10ky BC +/- 5ky) look not that major error. Nobody tells they are 100ky old.

5 hours ago, magnemoe said:

Now the real question is the voids above the grand gallery in the great pyramid, I assume this for load balancing so you distributed force away from the gallery but might even contain cool stuff.

Looking at dam-like constructions and other monuments, I would presume a 150 m stone triangle is enough balanced itself, with no special measures.
And why make a corridor to the balancing bubble (and let somebody fill it and make the building unbalanced), but never use the room for anything?

***

And still the Sphinx. Where are comparable constructions?

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, kerbiloid said:

Where are the strong stone triangles of intermediate size built earlier?

Disassembled for their material? Potentially built over because Khufu really like that spot, but it was already taken by some long dead dude, so old Khufu brought in the bulldozers and cleared some space for himself.

Also, take a look at Tutankhamuns tomb, which was buried under rubble for long enough that the area on top of it became residential area for workers.

Perhaps your lost pyramids are still under the sand.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

18 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Disassembled for their material?

With no traces? Why the bigger ones aren't? Including the semi-destroyed ones, the obvious first candidates for disassembling.

18 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Also, take a look at Tutankhamuns tomb, which was buried under rubble for long enough that the area on top of it became residential area for workers.

It's not a great pyramid, it's just a secret room aside from another one.
And though Tutankhamun was a negligible historical person himself, but his death happened in a very specific moment of the Egyptian history, so it looks like all that gold was a golden deposit which they hid from the opposite party, and nobody really expected that such treasure can be put in just the Tut's tomb.

18 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

Perhaps your lost pyramids are still under the sand.

Not mine, as I believe they never existed in the Egyptian times.
But there is a lot of large and small pyramids, there is a quarry where they were mining that rock, unlikely some intermediate ones can just get lost.

P.S.
A Khufu Pyramid Overhaul mod.

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Yet another topic where a quick look on Wikipedia would usefully inform the discussion. 

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_pyramids

TL:DR version.

The Giza pyramids are not the only intact and well preserved ‘true pyramids’.

A true pyramid in this context is one that was designed and built as a pyramidal structure from the outset.

There’s a fairly clear archaeological record of pyramid development from stepped pyramids to stepped pyramids with filled in steps to smooth them out, to the so-called bent pyramid (intended as a true pyramid but with a flawed design, forcing the builders to give it a flattened shallower cap), to true pyramids.

Post-Giza pyramids often cheaped (cheoped? :) ) out on building materials, using a rubble core held in place with mud brick steps and finished with a limestone facing. Not difficult to imagine the limestone being stolen for other building works at which point the mud and rubble core would probably degrade relatively quickly.

Edited by KSK
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/10/2019 at 8:00 AM, magnemoe said:

Problem would be water pressure, how do you contain the water at the bottom. Here you pretty much need metal or concrete. 
Not even the romans use water under pressure much in their water supply network and they had iron and concrete. 

Could they use a large number of gates on the way up to manage the pressure in stages?

 

If it was for burial maybe it was for use with the latest king or ceremonially. Maybe they burried them for a time then moved them to the other area for a permanent burial at a later date. Then when the next king died they could be burried their temporarily until the next leader needed it. At which point it could have been like a viewing service of some sorts in that it was very temporary and fairly quickly afterwords moved to the valley of the kings. So, maybe just for the burial services.

 

As to locations, springs in the middle east were generally considered special and important. Maybe they used that spot because of the spring. It could help with construction and could provide water inside if needed for anything. Maybe it was also a safeguard of a water source in case of bad times. Maybe excessive in isolation, but in combination with other needs, not so much.

Edited by Arugela
Link to comment
Share on other sites

The video at the top is one of the least plausible theories for pyramid construction I've seen.  

The pyramid blocks are smaller and moved over less difficult terrain than some of the ancient monoliths.  A 3 ton block can be lifted with about a 1 inch thick rope and a wooden tripod.   I don't think Herodotus' description of the ramps was accurate.  The only ramps you need are wooden rails running directly up the pyramid at 51.5 degrees. 

 

 

The Incas moved some monoliths up ridiculous slopes.  I do not believe they used ramps or hoists for the most impressive lifting.  I think they used levers and cribbing.  The motion is similar to rowing a ship.  The levers lift the stone and can shift it forward a few inches at a time.  This allows cribbing to be added one board at a time.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 12/11/2019 at 12:45 AM, kerbiloid said:

Also we should not overestimate their maths.

Due to the absense of positional number systems, their methods of multiplication and division were monstrous and definitely not fast.
Even a slide rule would make a revolution in their engineering.

I've heard this a number of times about multiplication of Roman numerals and am shocked it is still repeated (I'm not sure how Egyptian multiplication worked).  But Roman multiplication is even easier to learn than with Arabic numbers:

n|  I  V   X  L     C

--------------------------------

I|  I  V   X  L     C

V|  V  XXV D  CCL   D*

X|  I  D   C     L*          M

L |      L     CCL   L*   MMD*  D**

C|      C     D        M   D*         M**

(tack on an extra order of magnitude [base 10] for "*" values.  In practice, it appears the Romans didn't need them). 

Just do multiplications on each number via the multiplication table for each roman numeral.  No need to worry about position, just group the whole batch up.  Then sort and reduce (by converting groups of numbers into larger ones, etc).  But still, you only need to remember a multiplication table 1/4 the size of our own.  And far easier I might add.

The only thing I know about Egyptian division was that they really only had "proper" fractions (that is 1/some denominator).  Possibly, they could figure out that 5/6 would give you 1/6+1/6+1/6+1/6+1/6, but they never had a good way to call it "5/6".  And simple tricks like that won't scale well when a scribe has to do some real accounting.  But multiplication was never as scary as historians say it was.   I won't say that division is even possible with roman numerals.

On 12/11/2019 at 12:45 AM, kerbiloid said:

They didn't have a phonetic writing, and their writing was a monstrous mess of pseudo-phonetics and ideograms. So, we don't ancest it.

What is psuedo-phonetics?  This sounds like the old "ideograms" bit that was an early published attempt to read hieroglyphics.  Once it was shown just how much it resembled the modern (might be dead now) Coptic language, it was pretty clear it was reasonably phonetic (Spanish is phonetic.  Can't say the same about English).

On 12/10/2019 at 2:29 PM, kerbiloid said:

And of course we should remember the lists of goods captured by the Egyptian kings, like 5000 sheep, 200 cows, 1000 good shirts, 2 bronze armors, 2 wooden thrones, 150 prisoners, etc.
When one reads it, looking at the 150 m stone pyramids (they say, built by those kings) with another eye, and doesn't drop a tear, he is really heartless...

There are something like 5 giant pyramids.  King Tut (and any other Pharoh within 1000 years or so of him) was buried in an underground chamber.  No "condo made of stona" for him.  So unless you are talking about Ramses II or similar Pharoh (I think he clobbered the Hittites at some point), the pyramids had nothing to do with it.  Also don't trust trust the hieroglypics painted on temple walls claiming they brought back those spoils of war.  They were probably started before the chariots left and finished before word of how the battle ended (or otherwise not changed to reflect reality).  They were meant to be impressive (and perhaps act as propaganda to anyone who could read them).  Trust the papyruses written in the scribes' shorthand.  That will tell you how many chariots came back without riders (of course the chance of finding both writings for number of chariots leaving and returning is almost zero, but sometimes you can get a good idea).

On 12/11/2019 at 12:45 AM, kerbiloid said:

They didn't know metals except the softest ones. No iron to cut the stone, only copper.

Pretty sure they had bronze (although they presumably had to trade/raid for it.  Thus Ramses II in the lands of the Hittites [who didn't invent iron smelting like I was taught in school]).  It really isn't clear at all if large scale iron production happened anywhere in the first bronze age in the ancient Middle East (the period that ended with the sea people and the fall of every civilization nearby.  Except Egypt). 

Lastly, my father is convinced of this "Egyptians made the pyramids via canals/locks" theory.  Without understanding that locks simply aren't ever used unless you have a supply of water higher than the object you want to move (moving the water yourself is far, far, heavier than anything you want to move.  Let alone all the water pressure issues).  Dear old dad believes strange things (dragged me at a young age to see Chariots of the Gods when I was 5 or so.  Found a paperback of the book it was based on while studying biology in high school and couldn't believe just how many trivial, show stopping errors it contained).  Still, he would take me to the Smithsonian and gawk with me at the mighty rockets.  That and a love of science that includes asking the questions needed to debunk some of his most cherished beliefs...

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Geez, nutty conspiracy theories here.

Step Pyramid (Djoser) built older than 2600 BC, 62.5 m high

Followed by:

Collapsed pyramid, flat pyramid build over a step one, about 2600 BC, originally 91 meters high (calculated)

Followed by:

Bent pyramid, bent to avoid a collapse, about 2600 BC, 101 meters high

Followed by:

Red/North pyramid, not bent, about 2580 BC, 104 meters high

Followed by:

Great pyramid, about 2560 BC, about 140 meters high

We see a temporal progression, with mistakes made along the way. What is the problem here? They moved a lot of heavy stone, sure that must have been hard... but what they made was just a simple geometric shape, with little internal complexity aside from a few chambers. The technology isn't impressive, but the resources devoted to it was....

But what do you expect from kings with big ego and a fear of death, in a world filled with superstition about an afterlife and no science to explain life?

[sarcasm]but no... surely there must have been a more advanced civilization (aliens/atlantis), that the Egyptians just graffiti'd to make it look like theirs... sure.[/sarcasm]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 years later...
On 12/13/2019 at 5:26 AM, KerikBalm said:

what do you expect from kings with big ego and a fear of death, in a world filled with superstition about an afterlife and no science to explain life

Thank God we've left that era behind us! 

ows_147760884653892.jpg?fit=crop&crop=fa

 

https://m.startribune.com/noah-s-ark-in-kentucky-must-be-seen-to-be-believed/398956821/?clmob=y&c=n&clmob=y&c=n

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

5 hours ago, normalguy said:

Weight of water can move anything, consider it 

Well, no, water cannot move a greater amount of water. What are you talking about?

 

Edit: Overall, I think many commenting on this topic in general (I am not trying to attack anyone in this thread) have not had the experience in manual labour and basic physics to say that it is not realistic humans could just stack bricks. I would like to introduce basic technology such as the lever, pulley, inclined plane, etc.

Edited by Meecrob
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1. Make a lot of cannons.
2. Invade Egypt.
3. Defeat the bad sheikhs, become a friend of good sheikhs.
4. Do big business with big sheikhs.
5. Hire some Arabs with whips, get many Arabs with baskets as a gift from your friendly Sheikh (also a business partner on the Suez Channel construction, etc.).
6. Mine the limestone at far South, burn it into lime on the local charcoal.
7. Bring the lime to Cairo. Mine the sand at Nile.
8. Make the Arabs with baskets bring the lime, the sand, the water to the place of your choice.
9. Make them start building a bad concrete wall (lime+sand+water) around a flat stone hill (the pyramid basement).
10. Make them fill it with ground inside.
11. Get a ground hill with concrete block stones around, and a tricky set of internal chambers, forming a strange hydrostatic fountain system. Let the fools think that it's a stone monolith inside, rather than a pile of junk and ground.
12. Dismiss the survivors, and utilize them in a nice pet cematary for a million of persons without any traces of proper mummifications-schmummifications.
https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna56639940
13. Repeat pp.1-12.

14. Find the Copts. Explain them that they are true ancestors of the Ancient Egyptians (tm), unlike the Egyptian Arabs.
15. Call their language Ancient Egyptian.
16. Invent the aesthetically perfect Egyptian graphics and hieroglyphics, without any predecessors, with no ancestors.
(No joke, it's a memetic masterpiece of art for further mass reproduction. Once seen, can be never forgotten, but can be easily reproduced by parts copypasting, by the laziest and silliest student of arts).
17. Try to pick it up with a shovel and through into the fan as Horapollo's manuscripts.
18. Say oops, after realizing that there are a lot of concepts which can't be represented graphically (abstract ideas, verbs, a hundred of crop names or fishes).
19. Invent first simplified hieratic, then almost stenographic demotic scriptings, based on the failed hieroglyphics.

20. Make the fake Rosette Stone, which would be called idiotic if it was not made from despair.
Hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek incriptions on the same memorial caption.
Like if you make a memorial caption in Roman letters, Gothic letters, and stenographic scratches...
(In more close analogy for Russian: in Ancient Greek, in Church Slavonic, and in stenography.)
A cultured Ancient Egyptian would be happy with hieroglyphs, a Hellinistic person - with Ancient Greek.
From what the hell could they take the idea to add the demotic text??? The only purpose is to present the demotics to the wide public, as a way to write long Ancient Egyptian (tm) texts.

21. Find a talented linguist Champollion (and several others). Intrigue his professional vanity, let him "discover" the "Ancient Egyptian" language which you've just finished inventing. Huzza, huzza!
22. Publish his works, intrigue everyone, let everyone touch the mystic world of hot Ancient MidEast beauty, make the Ancient Egypt a classic setting. Her Deity Isis in thin clothes with wings is our everything!
23. Champollion and some of his colleagues suddenly die tragically, but right in time.
24. Open the mummy market, make hundreds of thousands of them in Egypt, then sell in Europe as a medicine, an aphrodisiac, and just a funny toy.
And khopesh! Make as many bronze khopeshes as you can. Screw the idea that the copper should be mined with iron pickaxes, melted on charcoal (yes, those three palms on the horizon), and the tin mining was absolutely rare until the iron age.

25. Put the pyramid construction junk in four piles one-by-one, put a statue head on the first one, fill the gaps with junk and ground, cover it from side with bricks, call it Sphinx. In early XX add paws and tail for kittiness.

26. Give funny names to the pyramids. Call the biggest "HF", which is either Cheops, or Khufu, or other versions. But probably just "Jefe" / "Chief", /HeFe/.

***

Btw, they indeed were trying to make something working inside.
Every pyramid has a hydrostatic sistem, formed by its chambers and "shafts". Their vertical positions match each other, like if they are to be filled with some viscous liquid from top.
The "great gallery" looks similar to other same structures, like the "Ulugbek observatory" in Samarkand, or Fort Lippe near Elvas, Portugal. It's bad to climb up, but it's good to pour from top.

The "Bent Pyramid" aka "Snofru Pyramid" is a monument of engineering fakeups.
First they were trying to build it with the original, sharp angle, from the Cestius pyramid in Rome and "Nubian" pyramids.
But then it began crushing under its weight. They quickly changed the angle, but soon had to do this again, getting the final angle which they use for Cheops and others.
But as the thing became lower, the planned hydrostatic system appeared to not fit the actual size of the pyramid, so they had to put a half of it outside, building a satellite pyramid to place it inside.
The sarcophagus is put on some another collapsed structure inside the pyramid.
So, the "Bent/Snofru pyramid" should be named "Thousand Facepalm Pyramid".

What's the purpose of the hydrostatic system inside?
That's not enough clear. The only thing we may be absolutely sure, it's made by bad people for greater evil, because good people with good intentions don't build pyramids with mummies.

Edited by kerbiloid
Link to comment
Share on other sites

This thread is quite old. Please consider starting a new thread rather than reviving this one.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...