Lost, unfinished, pyramid in egypt?! +Great pyramid brewery?!

[Arugela]

He goes on about it being an unfinished pyramid. But something interesting dawned on me. It's very potentialy convenient for one things important and possibly annoying in Egypt. Grinding! If it's 75 feet down it could be to stop winds. If so maybe it's not unfinished but purposely capped to slow down wind and possibly add lesser structures for wind power or animal power along with lots of possible animal drawn mechanical rope type rigging with buckets/baskets for getting stuff out easy. It also looks like a modern makeup thing in the middle. So, maybe not even grain. They could go through the expense for either mass constant grain grinding or for something more valuable like dyes or other things they wanted mass amounts of or could sell. It could be stone based mass production. If you take this farther and the great pyramid was something like the worlds largest hopper and grinder maybe that explains why nobody seems to be upset for the most part and why they helped. If they were all farmers they could have been helping make a massive town/city mill they could all send their stuff to to grind down for the populous. If you take into animal labor for trnasport and possible pay for services later, this would be a nice setup for something they are very dependent on. What if all those fancy stone traps in the pyramid or for weather purposes or something so it doesn't get flooded in rare rainy times to keep stuff dry. Those whole could all be for hopper activities to a main grinding chamber or rope for rigging animal power or something odd. Maybe the odd temperature control or other features potential to the pyramid were useful for some industrial activity. Including potential electric lights or helping dry grains if water was used in the grinding. It's possible the overly large stone structures were a basic necessity for long term sights given sand movements and other changes normal in the desert. I'm hinting this could both storage or other grinding technology and potentially amortar and pestle. If it was for something like massive storage for very valuable purple/red dyes for royalty or or other industry it could make sense. He also says some of the blocks are rose granite instead of normal. Is this useful for any type of similar activity over the other materials? It makes a path from the center container to the stairs. What could this have been useful for?

On top of this, if you take into account the idea of the Nile moving it might make sense if these were all practical constructs. If it went right up to the great pyramids it could have been very convenient in it's time. And later constructs could be for other purposes or re-purposing of other things. Cellar technology is as old as time if I'm not mistaken and the know how of how to use similar things is very old and primitive in nature. It's not unreasonable to have it translate to as many uses and styles as possible. Along with anything derived from it or similar. Especially if it's important for things like drying grains or produce which is also old and potentially annoying in a desert, windy, sandy environment. Maybe the great pyramid was only partially done at one point and then built up. Or built in a way needing more complete construction or protection. Let along a tall smooth object with the potenial to drop things into it from shafts. Shafts also related to astronomy which is related to farming. Those shafts could be to watch seasons like a clock and then the building used to also deal with grain grinding on a larger scale for city folk, selling to other nations, storage on top of other means. Underground and it's relation to water reserves could be for different type of grinding methods. maybe even for a lot of different substances. There is the story in the bible related to similar. Might not be far fetched. It doesn't necessarily go into a lot of detail about more than storing a lot of grain for the 7 year famine. It could even create a line of logic to where they got the pyramid design if it lines up time wise. Jews(Abraham etc) came from Babylon that had ziggurats. Pyramids are basically different styles of those buildings in a way. No idea about the timing though.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ziggurat_of_Ur

Abraham came from Ur according to the bible. These stories, before the bible goes into it's major subjects and time periods, has almost nothing else to go over subject wise. It's really narrowed in scope and a bit focused. If it has significance it would make sense. Why is it so important he came from UR etc...? It doesn't focus on much besides, Abraham leaves Ur, wanders, has kids/descendants. One kid gets dropped in a well by his brothers and saves Egypt from famine after becoming a leader just below the pharaoh himself. Later I think it jumps to Moses(who is thought to be Ramses by some) after a long period of time who brings them out of Egypt after having grown into a larger population or something.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d7z58CQ9JBk

We are forgetting the most important potential thing related to cellars and grain.. BEER! ;d What if it was part of beer production on a mass scale! Who wouldn't help make the biggest beer brewery in history(could explain how it was built in 20 years!!). Beer is considered liquid grain in the ancient world(even modern history). Less prone to disease and preserves nutrients.. Think about it! If the pyramids have pure spring water underneath and god knows what else. In alcohol making the stuff you loose is considered the angels portions. Possibly similar to the idea that the pharaohs sole going to heaven potentially!! ;d

Mind you, alcohols can be aged for a very long time. If they had the ability to fill the pyramid or something and need to store beer for the long run the doorways closing could have to do with sealing in areas or stopping airflow for the aging process or some odd things. It seals off the center area almost completely at the tunnels and bottom shaft. But leaves the main opening.. Does this logically stop any action like air flow given the known designs? Can anything obvious be deduced given the way it's sealed off? Even if part of the aging process left beer aging in the pyramid before another stage or transport to another area it could be logical to locally store it for a period. Maybe there was a need to very thoroughly seal it temporarily for things related to this or other activities.

And then all those rumors of underground pathways between everything. That screams cellar storage. Both books and food potentially. I wonder what conditions stored ancient paper best.

Maybe they should put things like the paper used for scrolls and old fashion beer containers of various sorts in the pyramid in different locations and see how they are affected long term(without making a mess obviously). It could be a cool experiment! ;D

https://www.ancient.eu/article/223/beer-in-the-ancient-world/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwycGS8pExM

If they combined purposes and used astrology/astronomical and manufacturing together(common potentially for agricultural related things) it could have multiple functional reasons to exist. Also, water in low area submerging potentially sealed containers. Could be a cooling chamber also.

Also, the length of that walkway reminds me of a greek qoute. It's something about giving the man a lever long enough and he can move the world.

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Archimedes

One other things involving grinding. Inks. If you use scrolls you need inks and paints.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moALNibb4h0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jMGw0QQZUKM <- refrigeration.

BTW, if the kings chamber is a constant 68 degrees that is normal cellar temperatures. Useful for many many things. FYI cellar technology has existed since before written history. It uses the ground. Some of the simplest forms involve putting things in sealed clay jugs under the ground or under ash in a pit etc. It's likely the oldest known form of preservation(That or salts maybe?!) and has probably existed in all civilizations since the beginning of mankind.

Edited September 30, 2018 by Vanamonde
Bible as history is okay. Bible as doctrine needs to stay away from our forum. The post has been edited a little.

[Green Baron]

A ziggurat (temple) is not a pyramid (burial mound).

Ur is not Egyptian.

Some building details do not serve a purpose ("out of money error" for example).

[snip]

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

Beer is a highly desirable, calming, gemütliches social achievement that, through all the times since the Neolithic, has inspired people, and brought them together. Though it might have led - in isolated cases - to non-discursive information exchange, in the end all were sitting at the same table (or whatever) again :-)

And with that i'll get me a cold one. See y'all :-)

Skull

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

Edited September 30, 2018 by Vanamonde

[YNM]

6 hours ago, Arugela said:

If you take this farther and the great pyramid was something like the worlds largest hopper and grinder maybe that explains why nobody seems to be upset for the most part and why they helped.

To be fair though, they might have just made a makeshift one, ie. it was paid in beer. Not sure who would do that, but well...

 

 

That being said though, I think people might have a different reason for rice... the thing has barely changed at all ! In some cases, it's more difficult than other plants (and stays that way).

Edited September 29, 2018 by YNM

[Green Baron]

Lets quickly move on :

 

The up top now oldest evidence for production and consumption of fermented stuff in the Natufien, a late-/end-paleolithic ("epipaleolithic") step in the Levant, before neolithisation:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X18303468

tl,dr: seems like consumption of fermented stuff is much older than plant domestication.

 

I wonder if the October Fest could be described as a "ritual feasting" in 12,000y ... :-)

[Cassel]

42 minutes ago, Green Baron said:

Lets quickly move on :

 

The up top now oldest evidence for production and consumption of fermented stuff in the Natufien, a late-/end-paleolithic ("epipaleolithic") step in the Levant, before neolithisation:

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352409X18303468

tl,dr: seems like consumption of fermented stuff is much older than plant domestication.

 

I wonder if the October Fest could be described as a "ritual feasting" in 12,000y ... :-)

Similarly with the pyramids, pyramids have been found, the construction of which requires advanced knowledge and tools, but no advanced tools have been found. Therefore, it was considered that the pyramids were built without metal tools.

[Green Baron]

19 hours ago, Cassel said:

Similarly with the pyramids, pyramids have been found, the construction of which requires advanced knowledge and tools, but no advanced tools have been found. Therefore, it was considered that the pyramids were built without metal tools.

Well, between the Natufien brewery site and the Great Pyramid of Gizeh lie >7,000 years ...

And yes, Egyptian pyramids could have been constructed without metal tools and the wheel, which has experimentally been demonstrated in various takes but is not published afaik. But i am sure one can find something searching "egyptian pyramids construction techniques". Copper was available but expensive and it does not help carving granite, though limestone (Great pyramids casing) could be worked.

tl,dr: Building a pyramid with a neolithic / chalcolithic tool set is much less mystifying than it is often depicted in pop science.

[snip]

I would like to answer with real world facts, but @Vanamonde has already deleted our dispute in another thread. So i keep my big mouth shut :-)

Edited September 30, 2018 by Vanamonde

[Scotius]

Let's get real. You are a priest-king-pharaoh-god personified-whatever. You want to commemorate your greatness and awesomeness with something truly outstanding. What will you do - spend large chunk of your country (yours - you are lord and master of everything you survey) to raise a ginormous, monumental pile of stone higher than anything anyone before you ever built? Or maybe you will take a sensible route and build something less awe inspiring, but more useful to your subiects? Like enormous granary\mill\booze factory?

A small hint:

"I met a traveller from an antique land,

Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone

Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,

Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,

And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,

Tell that its sculptor well those passions read

Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,

The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;

And on the pedestal, these words appear:

My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;

Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!

Nothing beside remains. Round the decay

Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare

The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

 

Or something modern:

 

Not many take sensible route.

[kerbiloid]

Thutmose III, one of the several greatest kings of Ancient Egypt (together with Ramesses II).
The glorious battle of Megiddo, XV BC, when he has defeated a whole coalition of Middle East kingdoms.

Collected loot, according to the Anc. Egyptian description of this excellent victory, in the camp and in the Megiddo town itself (where the enemy kings were hiding)
340 prisoners, 2041 horse, 191 colts, 6 stallions, 922 battle charriots, 2 VIP battle charriots decorated with gold,  1 bronze armor, 200 leather armors, 502 bows, 7 tent poles decorated with silver, 1929 cattle, 2000 goats, 20 500 sheep, 207 300 sacks of flour.

Loot collected by his glorious army in other towns:
38 captured soldiers, 87 children, 5 more captured soldiers, 1796 slaves (both m&f), 103 civil prisoners, stone and golden chalices, 1 big well done chalice, different other chalices, and even other chalices, 27 knives, all this costs 1784 deben in total (probably, 1 deben here ~= 90 g, so 160 kg of either silver, or gold).

Other glorious victories of Thutmose:
(3 towns were captured) " 691 prisoners, 29 arms (hands?), 44 horses"
(the toll from the king of some country) "chalices, 341 deben (30 kg of silver?), 1 lazurite tile (costs 33 deben = 3 kg of silver)"
(another country toll) "1 silver chalice, 4 copper chalice with silver handles"
(another country toll) "per year: 295 slaves (f&m), 68 horses, 3 shallow golden chalices, 3 chalices with handles, 47 pieces of lead. 1100 debens (100 kg) of lead, gem and bronze goods"
(another victory): "35 prisoners, 22 cows"

And that's the greatest of the greatest.
Hufu had built Great Pyramids? Come on, you seriously?

Did the Ancient Egyptians ever claim that they have built them? Not restored?

Whan common do the great pyramids have with the Egyptian (and others) temple architecture (roads of processsion with columns aside, walls with pylons) ?

Was at least anybody really found buried in Great Pyramids?

Why (and how) that 30 cm wide tilted blind tunnel piercing the Hufu pyramid? Just4lulz?

Great Sphinx. Where is the altar, where are at least some traces of rituals and ceremonies in front of it?  Where are walls and pylons?

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

Rulership is filled with having to deal with your own people. It's far more realistic to solidify your rule with projects for your country. It's much harder to argue over. And in a harsh environment it's more sound and possibly very needed.

You can play hero by invading an enemy to get things. Loosing lives. Or you can do it by building things locally to do the same and get resources and bring prosperity. There were a lot of prosperity stories about Egyptians kings at the time. It's the origin of Egypt according to Egypt. They originally came to power by saving Egypt from nature not outward enemies. It's also much easier to make an army after that to get things from other countries as you have more leverage to gather forces.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

4 minutes ago, Arugela said:

Rulership is filled with having to deal with your own people. It's far more realistic to solidify your rule with projects for your country.

The cost of such pyramids building makes that enlisted loot laughable.
People who take seriously "2000 goats" and "4 chalices" unlikely count their treasures in built pyramids. They would just write "and made a feast from the loot: 2000 goats, etc, just not to carry it all the way"

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

That is why I'm saying it makes more sense if it's about industry or similar. If you consider long term gains it's easier to justify a massive building project made of local to semi local materials if it's going to bring greater ease of living and other things for the entire nation. It's much more justifiable. Especially if it's design is actually completely necessary for the task in the environment and/or there is a massive need for it at the time. If you consider the Nile may have went up to the pyramids at the time(IE it was build on it's banks) you also add the ease of water travel during construction.

It was also a heavy agrarian society. Those tend to not mess around with needless things as much. It would be much harder to justify something wasteful. Even expensive tombs and religious things in older religions had a tendency or beyond to be about education and preserving knowledge or about something very practical otherwise. It would be like if Washington monument were build to be studied by math/history, and other classes for the rest of time. Or much more complicated.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

1 minute ago, Arugela said:

That is why I'm saying it makes more sense if it's about industry or similar. If you consider long term gains it's easier to justify a massive building project made of local to semi local materials if it's going to bring greater ease of living and other things for the entire nation. It's much more justifiable.

I'm afraid in the primitive agricultural society there is not enough customers to make the mega-brewery reasonable.
And Anc.Egyptians were bad seamen, and you can see how rich were their counterparts across the desert.

[Arugela]

I'm assuming the beer was local. Beer in older times was very valuable because it's preserved grains. It's literally storing grain in liquid form and can last much longer than dried grains. it's invaluable locally. That is why they used it. Same with all cultures since. It has endless benefits also like being safe drinking water. it's also a good cooking ingredient if you have enough to improve food and bread and other things. It's also potentially a yeast colony for non flat bread like a sourdough starter. There is a much larger list of uses.

Preserving food is the single most important thing both then and now. It's literally a life and death issue.

Even if the kings chamber was only so big. It could be for a specific stage in brewing or something odd. then it could be moved and processed in another place for another stage etc.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

7 minutes ago, Arugela said:

I'm assuming the beer was local. Beer in older times was very valuable because it's preserved grains. It's literally storing grain in liquid form and can last much longer than dried grains. it's invaluable locally. That is why they used it. Same with all cultures since. It has endless benefits also like being safe drinking water.

Beer tends to spoil, even pasterized and in cold, so not the best way to store the grain.
(Though Anc. Egyptians indeed were fond of beer, that's a well-known fact.)

But as we know there was no royal beer monopoly (in Egyptian tales the heroes brew themselves), so there was no problem how to sell that great amount of beer.
And as the customers were pauper, and the exporting (to the same pauper neighbors) was extremely dangerous, unlikely the king had a brewery.

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

I'm not saying the king had a brewery. I'm saying it was a brewery for the entire city/country. They payed in beer. It could be currency. And No it does not spoild in cellar tempuratures. That is how you age all alcohols. I know how to make alcohol and can and bake. Trust me.

There can also be many kinds of beer and recipes. If it was more like an ale or similar it could be aged for a long time depending on how they made it. It's only beer in name.

https://www.craftbeer.com/craft-beer-muses/cellaring-craft-beer-to-age-or-not-to-age

Some of the stuff on older beer from babylon was a type taht was thick like pourage. This is less a beer and more a refreshable pot of stuff like a sourdough. They still have that type in japan. They have literally been around in a single bowl for hundreds of years and endless generations. They are always done by the women.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

3 minutes ago, Arugela said:

I'm not saying the king had a brewery. I'm saying it was a brewery for the entire city/country.

Hufu wouldn't understand the whole idea: what is "for country but not for personally king". There are king, his family, and their property, and whose is that country if not theirs?

Till ~XVI AD this would sound strange.

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

The entire history of egypt is this sort of things. It would not sound weird. It was the norm. What you are stating is a silly modern viewpoint from modern standards and extremely simplified and unrealistic. All agrarian societies understand these details. He wouldn't be king for long if he was that stupid. You have to consider translation of both language and concepts. It helps if you understand things related to agrarian culture personally. Those things don't change as quickly.

Beer and bread are the same thing.(Bread just has a lot more grain in it basically. By very modern definitions.) The stuff we have today is a very narrow example of what used to exist. I'm not stating this as a guess. I know this personally. We have fridges so we don't have to worry and make it in a certain form(as far as potential short term storage afterwords.). There is no difference between beer and wine either. They are slight changes in a same product/process. It depends totally on what way they made it and what they called beer back then.

https://vinepair.com/beer-101/guide-aging-beer/

Quote

Most beers are brewed to be consumed fairly quickly

This is the key. Most are brewed for this. They pick specific ways to make it where this is the case. Beer can literally be a sludge as thick as clay. When you do that for instance you can refresh it, literally like a sourdough. Those types of things are around for and entire families history. There are probably 1000 year plus old ones on this earth or much older. They are never thrown out potentially. it depends completely on what type you make and what you choose to label it as. They still have them in Japan for instance even though they aren't called beer.

They could have also crafted formulas just for ageing and storing etc. It's not difficult if they knew anything about what they are doing and had to over time. If they built something as big as a pyramid to do you can rest assured they had been doing it along time and new what to go for. And they would have known for a long time.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[wumpus]

Any idea of the location of this Egyptian brewery?  While Egyptians may have been happy to brew their own beer, pyramid workers are said to have been paid in beer and they might not want to wait for it to ferment.  The central government may well have had need for a large brewery (especially one near the pyramids, at least while they and other huge monuments were under construction).  Also don't forget about the Nile.  Transportation in Egypt can't have been that difficult when the entire civilization was located in a singe river valley (have your brewery upstream so that you only need to send the [threshed?] barley upstream, go downstream once the water is added).

[Arugela]

I'm surmising if the pyramid was a brewery or something like it. It has potential convenient qualities and the lack of qualities of a tomb. If they payed in beer they would have already had other means of production. Normally/always these things start in the family and work outwards after they are perfected from mass common use.

BTW, the farther back you go the more religion and agriculture and other things are combined into one. Most older religion was for reproduction because of society developing and reducing sex drive(temple prostitutes, even mandatory use of them) and things like time keeping to know when to plant crops as agriculture developed. Knowing your seasons is the single most important thing to growing food.

Maybe they made it on sight. Could have been part of the workforce somehow. That or had smaller brewery and craftsman by the time. If the payed in beer as a planned thing or it was normal at the time I'm sure the project planners or something knew well ahead of time what they needed to do. Project design/engineering has basically never changed as a profession. It's just thinking things out ahead of time. And how to adjust a project to needed change, which is the same skill.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[Scotius]

Ah. But kings from early dynasties\Old Kingdom weren't just kings. They were gods to their subiects. And archpriests of other gods. Their word wasn't just the law - it was an order from the divine. Defy such order would be equal to a christian meeting an angel armed with burning sword, hearing what celestial messenger has to say... and replying "Nawww." If king said "Build a pyramid over there. About that high." people made it happen.

Of course, it rarely was that simple. There are many examples of unifinished or plain abandoned pyramids, tombs and mortuary temples. And many others who were ruthlessly dismantled later, building materials recycled to raise other buildings. Realpolitik and all that

[kerbiloid]

39 minutes ago, Arugela said:

He wouldn't be king for long if he was that stupid.

If something doesn't belong to the king's family, then it belongs to another king's family. Or least has no owner. Every tribal king would say that.
"Public property" has appeared much later. As well as "nation" and "state".

There was a subsistence economy. Every village produces its own food. They don't need someone's beer, they make it themselves.
 

39 minutes ago, Arugela said:

Beer and bread are the same thing.

How many liters of beer should one drink instead of 1 kg of bread?

Like says a childish joke: "Do you know that one liter of beer is like a blow to kidneys? Look..." 
(Being followed with demonstration of the latter).

17 minutes ago, Scotius said:

If king said "Build a pyramid over there. About that high."

... then he gets a bump on his head by something heavy, and a new godlike king gets the throne.

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Cassel]

13 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

If something doesn't belong to the king's family, then it belongs to another king's family. Or least has no owner. Every tribal king would say that.
"Public property" has appeared much later. As well as "nation" and "state".

 

What? When do you think public property appeared?

[Green Baron]

 

17 minutes ago, wumpus said:

Any idea of the location of this Egyptian brewery?

Zawjat el Aryan ? In Gizeh, opposite to Memphis. The pyramid's basement is part of a Necropolis. Construction of superstructure has never begun and the bowl is simply a sarcophagus. It is unclear for whom it was built and why construction was abandoned. Several names have been proposed depending on interpretation.

The link i posted under the op has some info on Egyptian beer.

[Scotius]

And yet we do have three big pyramids. And many smaller ones. King Djoser alone built three, before he died (mostly because first two were of... questionable quality). And we have pyramids\ziggurats in Mesopotamia, built since Sumerian times. And pyramids in Mesoamerica. Honestly, building artificial hills seems to be favourite hobby of our ancestors

[kerbiloid]

11 minutes ago, Cassel said:

When do you think public property appeared?

The question is: when it had disappeared. Despotism - that's about Ancient Egypt, too. 

10 minutes ago, Scotius said:

And pyramids in Mesoamerica. Honestly, building artificial hills seems to be favourite hobby of our ancestors

Or a typical form of a fast-built temporary depot of hi-tech visitors.

(Let's think good about Ancient Egyptians. They wouldn't spend all their efforts and goods doing that impossible work.)

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid