I've done this math problem before, Pad, so I'll reprise it here.
Est. 2.5 million stones in the Great Pyramid.
2.5 million divided by 20 years = 125,000 per year
125,000 divided by 365 = 342 stones per day
342 divided by 24 hours = 14.25 stones per hour.
Basically one stone every 4 minutes BUT that is working 24/7 365 for 20 years.
As they did not have flood lights one must assume that they only worked when the sun was up which, if you give them the benefit of the doubt is half the time so they'd need to move 1 stone every two minutes provided they never stopped to eat, drink or take a dump. It assumes no accidents, no illnesses sweeping the camp, no days off, no bad weather...you get the picture.To top it all off the Egyptologists shoot themselves in the foot by claiming that the primary force of masons and quarrymen was a permanent work force of perhaps 8.000 but was augmented by laborers who were only sent during the Nile flood season when they couldn't work in the fields anyway. It was this part-time force which did the actual grunt work of moving the stones as they were unfit for more technical tasks. If that argument is true it blows the math all to hell. Oh, and by the way, even though no one knows what kind of ramp was used to get the stones to the top these same workers had to build the ramps too and the ramps would have been every bit as complex a project as the pyramid itself.
I've never heard anyone use a 30 year figure. Few pharaohs lived that long and one who did, Ramesses II, did not build a pyramid as that was out of fashion in the New Kingdom. Instead, he had a tomb which was robbed anyway.
However, if you lose the idea of the pyramid being a tomb then you are no longer constrained by the length of the pharaoh's life to get it done.
Of course, that brings back the question of WTF were they for?
Est. 2.5 million stones in the Great Pyramid.
2.5 million divided by 20 years = 125,000 per year
125,000 divided by 365 = 342 stones per day
342 divided by 24 hours = 14.25 stones per hour.
Basically one stone every 4 minutes BUT that is working 24/7 365 for 20 years.
As they did not have flood lights one must assume that they only worked when the sun was up which, if you give them the benefit of the doubt is half the time so they'd need to move 1 stone every two minutes provided they never stopped to eat, drink or take a dump. It assumes no accidents, no illnesses sweeping the camp, no days off, no bad weather...you get the picture.To top it all off the Egyptologists shoot themselves in the foot by claiming that the primary force of masons and quarrymen was a permanent work force of perhaps 8.000 but was augmented by laborers who were only sent during the Nile flood season when they couldn't work in the fields anyway. It was this part-time force which did the actual grunt work of moving the stones as they were unfit for more technical tasks. If that argument is true it blows the math all to hell. Oh, and by the way, even though no one knows what kind of ramp was used to get the stones to the top these same workers had to build the ramps too and the ramps would have been every bit as complex a project as the pyramid itself.
I've never heard anyone use a 30 year figure. Few pharaohs lived that long and one who did, Ramesses II, did not build a pyramid as that was out of fashion in the New Kingdom. Instead, he had a tomb which was robbed anyway.
However, if you lose the idea of the pyramid being a tomb then you are no longer constrained by the length of the pharaoh's life to get it done.
Of course, that brings back the question of WTF were they for?
