(July 21, 2017 at 10:46 am)Shell B Wrote: I can't read it without a membership.Maybe I can find something else in it.
I found this video and a tumblr post on the topic. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OHOgtQa7LVw
Quote:CAIRO, March 6—The Japanese, who mastered the art of the compact automobile and the transistor television set, have now tried their hand at the Egyptian pyramid. They learned less about the ancient pharaonic secrets than they did about frustrations of modern Egypt.
Stone by overpriced stone, a Japanese television company set out on the western edge of Cairo to raise a pyramid on a desert rise overlooking the Great Pyramids of Giza, with the assistance of a Japanese master craftsman, two cranes, a fork lift vehicle and hundreds of bags of Rumanian cement.
The imitation will not endure the sands of time because the Egyptian Government wants the pyramid dismantled and hauled away.
The work, when visited the other day, was only six days behind schedule. Egyptian laborers in dusty robes and turbans staggered under baskets filled with sand to shore up a ramp. A Japanese in a white plastic helmet waved into position one more three‐ton block of limestone dangling from heavy crane.
The project was conceived'by Sajuki Yoshimura, an archeologist from Waseda University who married an Egyptian and. now lives here. He thought that a do‐it‐yourself pyramid might help answer the riddles about the manner of the pyramid construction. Mr. Yoshimura said that “ever since I saw the pyramids, my dream was to build a small pyramid.”
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Mr. Yoshimura's dream was fulfilled by Nippon Television, which budgeted Sl million to turn the project into pair of Thursday night documentary specials.
A team of two dozen Japanese wearing blue and gray baseball caps flew into Cairo to explore every aspect of pyramid building.
“And many secrets may be solved,” promised their press release. “How many workers were needed to pull a four‐ton stone block? What size rollers were used? What was the method used to synchronize the workers’ efforts? The rhythmic beat of drum or a chant? How were the thousands of workers and slaves organized into effective working groups?
The intention was to build a model 65 feet high and 96 feet across, in scaled‐down proportion to the Cheops Pyramid, which is 482 feet high with a 756‐foot base.
The size of the Japanese pyramid was sharply reduced when its builders discovered that they could not afford all the limestone needed.
“After we announced we were building the pyramid, the prices went up,” said Takayoshi Sato, the project's television director. “We cannot fight against Egyptian merchant tradition. They have the experience of 5,000 years and NTV has only 25 years’ experience.”
Erecting even a compromise pyramid with a 36‐foot summit and a 50‐foot base has not been simple, Each standard limestone block, though just over three feet square, weighs nearly three tons.
Well before the first stone arrived, there were public complaints that the Egyptian Government was letting a television stunt deface the desert landscape.
Other problems followed. The site selected for its view of the pyramids offered no natural rock base, so a concrete foundation had to be poured, The limestone, quarried at Helwan, just south of Cairo, was badly hewed and the stones did not fit together properly.
The pharaohs had no lack of labor, but the Japanese have been limited to hiring fewer than 100 laborers, mostly farmers from nearby, They have been paid handsomely by Egyptian standards, earning about $5.50 a day by working from 9 A.M. to 6 P.M., with a coffee break and lunch hour thrown in
This was the article, although the video said it pretty well except for the woo-woo stuff at the end. That's just an argument from ignorance. We don't know so let's make some shit up. The basis of all religion!
I recall one Egyptologist named Mark Lehner who explained that 12 men could pull a stone relatively easily on a sled. Of course, that's moving in a straight line on flat ground. He never did discuss how you moved the same block up a slope. Details, details.
