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

[Scotius]

Depots of what? They are just mounds of piled up stones, clay bricks or soil. There is no bulk storage space anywhere. And smaller items of high value usually do not require building a small mountains over them.

[kerbiloid]

5 minutes ago, Scotius said:

They are just mounds of piled up stones

That's it. Get to the place, cut enough stones, make a gravitationally stable pile (a pyramid) of them with small hollows inside. Just a week or two of work for your pioneer brigade.
(Just like building a wooden hut for the same nowadays).
Then put some equipment inside. (beacon? tranciever? sensor? doesn't matter).
No need in roads, walls, pylons, gates. 

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

There is the potential of vast underground things connected to the pyramid. If they used those like storage(cooled underground cellar storage) and the pyramid was the giant production, or part of the production, then who knows. That could hypothetically be a lot of storage. All you need is a hall and then some inlets in the walls and you have a heck of a large cellar. Let alone carving any side rooms etc. The idea of a library under the sphinx could make sense if it was part of cooling specifically the make older or original manuscripts last as long as possible. Maybe it had to do with preserving specific particularly long lasting types of paper or something. Or speciality paper/parchment that lasted nearly forever under those circumstances.

What better way to store food and perishables in a desert than underground. It's literally where you store it in every other climate already.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

And why hide the brewery underground?

[Arugela]

It would have to do with keeping cellar range temperatures. The top would have to do with wind blockage or some type of production stage or something potentially. Max cellar temperature is about 70 degrees. They could have easily also done things like cheese storage and vegetable storages. You can never have too much redundancy when it comes to food storage.

There is one easy way to make a cellar at home you can find online atm. It involves storing things in wet sand in cellar tempuratures. ;d

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

And why build Sphinx?

[Arugela]

Why are you expecting me to answer that? Hypothesize!

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[Kerbart]

1 hour 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. 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.

Pyramids are still among the largest objects built by mankind. And they are solid. Certainly one could pose a theory that the pyramids were intended to cover up celars used for the production of beer and other products. But those are theories that will rank very, very low on the list of "likely to be true."

1 hour ago, Arugela said:

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.

• The pharao's who built them didn't see them as needless. And that's all that counted in that society.
• "But it's not productive!" Let's take a look at what was buried with Tutankhamon, will we? Solid gold masks and many other golden artifacts? What was the productive value of that? And if we're willing to accept that as a burial gift, then why not the pyramid. Keep in mind that the pyramids were not burial mounds for mere kings. They were burial mounds for gods.

[kerbiloid]

(ninja'd)

I don't. Just Sphinx has no visible practical usage at all.

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

It could be similar to the same thing with most pottery. By the time you do that much work it's not that much harder to decorate relatively(sometimes as markers or whatnot.). Plus it usually stores knowledge in a different form and is an example for others to learn from later. Most religion and similar things were education originally. They had practical reasons to exist originally. Art and everything like it go with that grouping as it is pure geometry or material application or other things. This is likely why cave paintings existed. It was a visual story etc. Probably along with verbal stories. Plus quality of life is important to some extent. Although harder living conditions you to not need quite the same things. There could be a lot of reasons.

One example could be like bread where bread decorations were from, at minimum, communal ovens and you needed to see your bread from the other peoples. maybe if it was near a port at the time it was a give away(a large one) for sailor or travellers to see where they were or something. Big can be useful.

And never underestimate multi purpose things in older construction(or older things in general). The more you can pack into something the better it is to make. Unless it really needs to be specialized.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, Kerbart said:

Keep in mind that the pyramids were not burial mounds for mere kings. They were burial mounds for gods.

Afaik nobody knows what were the Great Pyramids (not numerous smaller ones) for. No burials (except one or two of later time).

Tutankhamon's tomb could be just a family gold deposit. He was nothing as a king.

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Cassel]

21 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

And why hide the brewery underground?

To make it harder to steal content?

[kerbiloid]

Just now, Cassel said:

To make it harder to steal content?

Food storage - ok, keep it in dry and cold place. But the brewery itself.

And if you have a food storage, why necessary beer? Just an anyfood storage.

[Cassel]

36 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

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

 

Was there a period in which capitalism and private property prevailed in ancient Egypt?

 

[Arugela]

Beer was just an example. Anything with cellars can do. But beer was probably the most important to daily life. it was also a catchy title as I thought it might be interesting if it was a giant beer making machine. and if it turned out the bible was the story of beer. I think that I've actually heard that from somewhere before. it's not a new idea. Not sure if it was a religious source or a beer source.

That and if the aquifers are really there under the pyramid that is fresh water for beer making etc. It could just be a giant place like a bottle plant or some staging in production. Except in big clay jugs or something. maybe they did different brewing things in each chamber that didn't need as much added per batch. Then it was taken down stairs for general addition. Say adding the water stage after mixing with a thicker sludge. Each chamber had an addative to be added and the basement was the water adding a bottling area. Then it was taken to underground areas for storage and whatnot.

Example: Kings chamber had one addetive in the large tomb thing. You only needed a cup per giant vat so you didn't need as much production but the room was big enough for constant manufactureing. The sled goes down the room and a guy runs down with a pitcher and throws some in a giant vat of materials as it heds down t the bottom in one container. The rest are the rest of the materials going down. At the queens chamber something similar happens. All the ingredients are taken to the basement for production and bottling. All added mixed etc.

Since it's about the gods. maybe the gods are a story about the production if inferred correctly. The Pharaohs sole going to heaven is already similar to a cask loosing essence. Maybe this was true of each chamber for it's special ingredient.

Some peoples ideas are that the pyramid channels/air ducts from those chambers were exposed during construction. IE the tunnels to the sky from king/queen chamber that are capped now were used during construction atn exposed in early construction. Maybe they made the beer in pyramid as it was built. The most of the building usage would be at the lowest chambers hypothetically. Maybe that is how they paid the workers. It is a building with an estimated minimum 20 year build time. Even at that number it would be insanely useful to do everything on sight. Especially if it's related to the building itself. The best reason to pay in beer is if you are making a building to make beer. At least as convenience goes.

 

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[Cassel]

1 minute ago, kerbiloid said:

Food storage - ok, keep it in dry and cold place. But the brewery itself.

And if you have a food storage, why necessary beer? Just an anyfood storage.

I'm guessing that there were no patents at that time, so technology was the greatest treasure of every ruler.

[kerbiloid]

Just now, Cassel said:

Was there a period in which capitalism and private property prevailed in ancient Egypt?

?
There was a period of public property when they were living as trbes.

Then there were nomes (kingdoms), then the toughest king had possessed them all.
(And later many times they were getting apart and together, captured and recaptured).

All your Egypt are belong to king.

[Cassel]

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

?
There was a period of public property when they were living as trbes.

Then there were nomes (kingdoms), then the toughest king had possessed them all.
(And later many times they were getting apart and together, captured and recaptured).

All your Egypt are belong to king.

But I mean, if the average man was a slave then or could have a piece of land, which he cultivated and independently traded with what he gathered?

 

[kerbiloid]

9 minutes ago, Cassel said:

if the average man was a slave then or could have a piece of land, which he cultivated and independently traded

and if the king says to him: drop your work and come on building a pyramid, he will obey.

And if the king's army trashes his harvest, that's his problems.

If an absolute king asks: "Whose is that property?", the correct answer is always "Yours, my king."

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

I'm pretty sure the pyramid was supposed to have been payed for and it was voluntary. It was probably good pay or something. I think some things have said there was no real heavy slavery in eqypt and it was built on things like organized work with pay and volunteer work or contracts.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2016/06/5000-year-old-pay-stub-shows-that-ancient-workers-were-paid-in-beer/

I imagine the beer the got payed in was a giant cask sized thing and not a little bottle like today.

Quote

In ancient Egypt, there are records of people receiving beer for their work—roughly 4 to 5 liters per day for people building the pyramids.

Cheapest 5 liters kegs I can find online are 20 bucks. Probably empty. If not they go up to 80 dollars or much more for metal containers. Probably irrelevant. But still they are getting paid 20-80 dollars a day in beer. Liquid sustenance. And it was probably not the light beer we have to day. It was probably as thick as your pourage. Which if desired could probably be turned into a drink in water or used to cook bread and meals. In a world of farmers they could probably get vegetables and other things they needed if they didn't have it. I wonder how long they worked a day for this. Sounds like a sweet deal regardless.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[Cassel]

Just now, kerbiloid said:

and if the king says to him: drop your work and come on building a pyramid, he will obey.

Ok, royal power is one thing, but the power over private property is something else.
I mean that in an old book there is a description of how Egypt from the kingdom where capitalism reigned, became a kingdom in which there was central planning, bureaucracy and food warehouses. At the end of these transformations, the majority of the inhabitants gave themselves to the captivity of the pharaoh, because they had nothing to eat or to sell.

[kerbiloid]

15 minutes ago, Arugela said:

the pyramid was supposed to have been payed for

Fed for free and haven't beaten.

15 minutes ago, Arugela said:

voluntary

Told voluntary looks more probable.

13 minutes ago, Cassel said:

Ok, royal power is one thing, but the power over private property is something else.

Roman Empire and its laws appeared a little later. 

13 minutes ago, Cassel said:

Egypt from the kingdom where capitalism reigned

Capitalism (i.e power of capital) appears much later. In ancient times and in early medieval they didn't even have real money. So, plowland possession and military hierarchy decides.
And don't forget that most part of Egyptian plowland depend on the royal irrigation.

15 minutes ago, Arugela said:

roughly 4 to 5 liters per day for people building the pyramids.

This pretty well explains why the pyramids are so strange, lol

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Arugela]

Actually capitalism isn't original economic in the sense of trade/ modern currency. It originates from farming. It's comes from and originally refers to the need on farms to make things in abundance to make it through various circumstances. It means to grow more than needed. it's more recently dealt with in a pure monetary fashion in books isolated from it's more complex original meaning. It's a natural need originating in agriculture. Think Jeffersonian agricultural ideals.

4 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

This pretty well explains why the pyramids are so strange, lol 

Yea it depends who was drinking.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Arugela

[kerbiloid]

Capitalism is a system when you don't need to own plowland or fabric directly. You own money (capital) and give it to their owners.

No capital - no capitalism.

Edited September 29, 2018 by kerbiloid

[Scotius]

Beer was not storable in ancient Egypt. It was by modern standards a low quality, low alcohol drink with very short "shelf life". That's why it was produced locally, by local artisans who covered the needs of local population. And it remained that way for thousands of years to come - until pasteurisation and advanced methods of production available to industrialised society allowed it to be brewed in standarised method, from standardised products, with high sanitary standards. And then packaged in metal or glass containers which could be stored and transported over long distances and periods of time.

I repeat: In ancient Egypt no one would brew a batch of beer meant for 10 000 people in one huge facility. Because that huge batch of drink would spoil before it could be distributed to population by porters, rowboats and oxen carriages. It just wasn't feasible.