The problem that the Egyptology club has constructed for itself is the "tombs-and-tombs-only" dogma. Even that does not stand up to close examination because the average reign of a pharaoh was something like 10 years....and you had guys like Ramesses II (67 years and Amenhotep III ( c 40 years ) inflating the average.

The 3 Giza pyramids stand out like sore thumbs among the vast majority of Egyptian pyramids which look something like this:




Pyramid of Unas, last king of the 5th Dynasty....it's basically a rubble pile.

I believe it was Graham Hancock who made the observation that it appears as if the Egyptians went from building the equivalent of a horse and buggy to a Porsche 911 and then regressed back to horse and buggy technology in the course of about 1 century.

I have my own doubts about this whole scenario but I don't buy the time line at all. Lose the idea that these were tombs and the whole 20 year thing goes with it. Then, like the cathedrals of Europe, you can take as long as you like to build them.

It may or may not have actually taken 20 years, but I think there is nothing intrinsically impossible about 20 year scenario.

---

(September 16, 2011 at 5:12 pm)Minimalist Wrote: I believe it was Graham Hancock who made the observation that it appears as if the Egyptians went from building the equivalent of a horse and buggy to a Porsche 911 and then regressed back to horse and buggy technology in the course of about 1 century.

The fact that they no longer pile 2.5 million stones into one pile doesn't mean their stone working technology regressed. Graham Hancock is a half nut and half charlatan.

Quote:It may or may not have actually taken 20 years, but I think there is nothing intrinsically impossible about 20 year scenario.

Remember no one has a clue about the ramp.

Quote:The fact that they no longer pile 2.5 million stones into one pile doesn't mean their stone working technology regressed. Graham Hancock is a half nut and half charlatan.

Except they DID keep piling stones up but without their former success.

It is not the desire they lost but the technical ability and the Old Kingdom continued until the end of the 6th Dynasty so this loss of knowledge cannot be attributed to some vast catastrophe.


The last pyramid was built by Ahmose I - first pharaoh of the 18th Dynasty...the New Kingdom.


It's a pile of shit, too....in spite of being about 1,000 years newer than the Great Pyramid.

If you look at my post 29, I broke down the labor force involved in building the great pyramid into what I consider to be reasonable divisions. By far the largest portion of the labor is involved in quarying and roughly shaping the stones. The manpower needed to actually move to the pyramid and up any ramp and set the stones is by comparison small.

So if you are short of labor or would rather invest some of your labor elsewhere, the easiest and most effective way to cut the labor involved in building the pyramids is to take short cuts are the quarry. Using smaller stones that much less carefully shaped can cut the labor force by half.

So it should be no surprise if the competition for labor investment intensify, the quality of the stones going into the pyramids, and thereby the structural quality of the pyramid, would be by far the most tempting and effective place to economize.

Hence pyramids that falls down because rougher shaped stones with poorly shaped contact surfaces crack much more easily under the weight of overburden, and are much less stable as structural elements whether cracked or whole.

(September 16, 2011 at 5:12 pm)Rev. Rye Wrote:

(September 16, 2011 at 3:08 pm)Rhythm Wrote: When the Nile wasn't dumping sweet, sweet silt on the banks, the Egyptians weren't incredibly busy (less the building and conquering bits). Impressive, but doable considering the times. I've always been amused when people try to reenact this or that, because invariably it's some post-grad and his lackeys when what they need is Cletus, his brothers, cousins, and in-laws (obviously some overlap here).

Yes. The major condition sine qua non that these attempts completely ignore is an endless supply of expendable slave labor.
And why are we talking about the pyramids?

Because they are there...and no one knows how they were constructed.

Also, Egyptologists have dismissed the "slave-labor" concept. That was not the Egyptian way at least in the time periods we are considering.

Speculation is for a permanent work force of perhaps 8,000 who were more or less skilled craftsmen, masons, stone cutters, metal workers, and of course a logistical staff.

As Rhythm said, when the seasonal floods began farm hands were utilized on what is known as a corvee labor system where work is provided by the citizens on government projects. Any time spent gathering this force and transporting them to Giza has to be subtracted from the time available to work but this group is projected to be the laborers who actually moved the stones from the quarry and then the surveyors and engineers would direct them from there.

BTW, in the Bronze Age, that worker's camp when swelled to nearly 30,000 workers plus who knows how many logistical types would have easily been the largest "city" in the ANE. One must pause to consider the logistics of that, as well.

---

(September 16, 2011 at 5:55 pm)Chuck Wrote: If you look at my post 29, I broke down the labor force involved in building the great pyramid into what I consider to be reasonable divisions. By far the largest portion of the labor is involved in quarying and roughly shaping the stones. The manpower needed to actually move to the pyramid and up any ramp and set the stones is by comparison small.

So if you are short of labor or would rather invest some of your labor elsewhere, the easiest and most effective way to cut the labor involved in building the pyramids is to take short cuts are the quarry. Using smaller stones that much less carefully shaped can cut the labor force by half.

So it should be no surprise if the competition for labor investment intensify, the quality of the stones going into the pyramids, and thereby the structural quality of the pyramid, would be by far the most tempting and effective place to economize.

Hence pyramids that falls down because rougher shaped stones with poorly shaped contact surfaces crack much more easily under the weight of overburden, and are much less stable as structural elements whether cracked or whole.

I'm just going to take #1 as an example, Chuck.

Quote:1. It's say it takes a team of 10 stone pounders 1 working day to hack a stone out a quarry and roughly shape it. So it takes about 3500 men working the daylight hours to create the 350 blocks needed each day.

Europeans have been wondering about the pyramids since Napoleon. The Egyptology club has painted itself into a corner by insisting that they are tombs-and-tombs-only. That's where the 20 year max comes in. By insisting on that they are locked into the other calculations. They have dismissed Herodotus' report of 100,000 slaves building the damn thing as ancient horseshit told to Herodotus nearly 2,000 years after-the-fact.

Now, I don't know if your assumptions are right or wrong. Because as far as I know no one has experimented to see if it could be done. On those few occasions when someone has attempted a demonstration of alleged "ancient Egyptian technology" ( copper chisels [work fine on limestone...not so hot on granite] ropes, sleds, hammer stones, muscle power ) the results have been less than impressive.

Granite was "pounded" out using dolomite hammer stones. Speculation is that limestone was cut with long, toothless, copper saws. The grinding agent was sand which was poured into the groove and the "blade" run over it. I have seen the aforementioned Dennis Cook demonstrate this.
I'm sure it would work...eventually. Then again, the sea will erode mountains if you give it enough time.

I guess what pisses me off about the Egyptology club is that they make statements the way scientists should AND THEN pronounce themselves correct...the way religious shits do. I would be delighted if they would start testing your various hypotheses just to see if it would actually work.

They seem to think that is beneath their dignity.

One other quick example of this phenomenon. While discussing the amazing accuracy to true north of one face of the pyramid it was stated that this was attained by "visualizing a line" between two stars and carrying it down to the ground. Was there a demonstration of this? No. Just an assertion. The GP deviates from true north by 2 1/4 minutes of arc.
No effort was made to substantiate the assertion. Say it and move on.

THAT'S what pisses me off about them!

Quote:So if you are short of labor

Who said they were short of labor?