Skyscrapers aren’t as useful as most people think. They often end up with half or more of their office space (which is mostly what they are) going empty, which means you could have done the same job with a building half as tall, for less than half the price. Or to put it another way, the top half of a skyscraper is there for no reason other than prestige and bragging rights, just like a pyramid.
oops
How big was the tomb area anyway in the Great Pyramid? Is it still accessible?
I’ve been in it - though it was in the late 80s - and I recall the actual space wasn’t all that big. Just a room or two and not big ones.
You can still go inside, though I think they try to keep at least one of the Giza pyramids closed for preservation at all times. That article’s from 2011, I don’t know what the situation is since the political issues they’ve had. There are plenty of pictures and schematics online.
The Empire State Building’s occupancy rate is considered low and it usually has 60-70 percent occupancy. Newer buildings tend to have better occupancy rates, so I’m doubtful of your ‘more than 50% number’.
My guess is that cranes and other devices would be custom-designed for the specialty task at hand. For something this massive, the cost could be justified. No need to use off-the-shelf hardware.
Been in two of them (at different times) plus the Red Pyramid and the “pyramid” of Teti down near the step pyramid… plus a few of the minor (queens’ ) pyramids alongside the big ones at Giza.
Typically for the 3 big ones at Giza - the upper chamber or lower chamber was open but the corridors to the other chambers were fenced off. It’s about a 5x5 foot passage, you go in the way you come out so it’s fun passing others while bent over,and the slope is about 30 degrees or more going up or down before it levels off. they usually have one or two open. Tickets extra on top of admission to the site. (150LE I think, or about $24 for entry to the only surviving wonder of the ancient world.)
the upper chamber in the big one Khufu is about (I think) 20 feet by 30 feet. It’s pretty bare and undecorated. The Egyptians did not have arches, and keep in mind these are 4,500 years old (the Greeks didn’t even use arches 400BC). The roofs will corbel, each course of blocks a bit further in than the one below until they meet. There’s a sarcophagus in there, but it’s empty, IIRC no lid, and there’s basically no hint what was originally in there; we can’t even be sure the pharaoh was actually buried there. Plus, were they that much into gold work etc. that far back? (Tut’s treasure was over 1000 years later…) IIRC they found some wood furniture in a nearby queen’s pyramid. Plus, they found a fully intact solar boat kit (some assembly required) in a pit beside the pyramid. It’s assembled in a museum, about 100 feet long.
The only decoration inside was some annoying large graffiti by some Italian in the 1800’s. In fact, the only pyramid I’ve seen with actual decoration inside was a pile of rubble called Teti’s pyramid, at Sakarra, where you can go down into the sarcophagus chamber and the walls and ceiling are covered.
This is mostly not true. Skyscrapers are built to the size of occupancy that the market will safely hold. Their actual occupancy therefore changes depending on location, upkeep, general business climate, and flexibility.
You’re probably thinking of the handful of supertall skyscrapers that are, often, built as symbols. The Empire State Building had the misfortune of being one of the last big buildings in NYC after the Depression hit and for years had so many openings that it was nicknamed the Empty State Building. But WWII’s boom filled it up.
No American city could possibly run with skyscrapers on average 50% empty. For Pete’s sake, Detroit’s class A vacancy rate is half that (although it was much higher during the height of the recession). When downtowns get oversupplied, new construction simply stops until conditions change. China has whole cities full of empty skyscrapers, but their business model is not market driven. Even there, the crazed construction of cities for future occupancy is slowing and may have stopped entirely.
boytyperanma, I stand corrected. I’m sure I’ve heard the 50% figure before… but apparently whoever I heard it from was incorrect, too. A bit of Googling shows that the vacancy rate in downtown Cleveland has ranged between about 10% and 30% in recent history. A 10% vacancy rate doesn’t seem all that high, especially since you really don’t want to have to tell a potential tenant “sorry, we don’t have room for you”.
Most Old Kingdom goldwork & other treasures were long ago looted. However, as long ago as the first dynasty, they were into gold and jewelry … the oldest bit of mummy ever actually found was a single arm, in the tomb of King Djer:
http://www.touregypt.net/featurestories/earlydyn2.htm#ixzz3OpuX1R9A
This predates the great pyramids - it’s a safe bet that the kings inside those had lots of treasures (though whether those treasures were in the room inside the pyramid or not is of course an open question).
Anyone who pretends that they actually know how the Egyptians made the pyramids is high on something.
I swear I answered this yesterday, but cannot find it. Do we have a deleter here on this site?
I’d say offer the contract out for bid and someone would take the contract. They are starting a canal across Nicaragua for $50 billion and that has to be an undertaking as big as a pyramid.
We may not know all the details of how they did it, but we do know that they built them on the ground.
It’s only taken 189 years for that project to get off the ground.
More in the GD thread than this one but, it’s not
Science doesn’t know how the Egyptians built the pyramids
it’s
Science doesn’t know how the Egyptians built the pyramids
and that subtle difference is reallllly important!
CMC fnord!
Right. It’s similar to a point Ianzin often makes about magic tricks: We can come up with a large number of ways in which they might have done it, but we don’t know which of those ways was the one they actually used.