Say I’m a megalomaniacal multibillionaire, and I decide I want to be buried in style. Using modern construction equipment, how much would it cost to duplicate the Great Pyramid? How long would it take to finish? How many workers would it require?
Assume that I want it to be made entirely of fitted blocks of stone like the original – no low-rent shortcuts like an internal steel frame or poured concrete. I also want the original pretty white limestone outer shell and gold capstone. And a sphinx with my head on it out in front…
OK, it’s 481 ft. tall and the base covers 13 acres! It was the world’s tallest building until the 19th century. It contains 6M tons of stone. It was cased in marble, not limestone.
481 ft. is tall–at 20ft. per story that’s still 24 stories.
Assuming you get the land for cheap, that’s still a hell of a lot of construction. Engineering-wise, cranes and whatnot could handle the stones without much of a problem.
Big, tall office buildings these days can cost 100s of millions of dollars. So I can see no reason to suppose that constructing a new Great Pyramid of Khufu would not cost over a billion dollars.
If the stone cost $100 a ton (and each block was over a ton–I can’t imagine these things being cheap), that would be $600M right there.
So, my WAG is a minimum of $1B, max $5B assuming cheap land near an appropriate stone quarry (which you don’t own; you have to buy the stone) to save on shipping costs.
Oh, you also asked about time and workers. Well, you could use more workers for a shorter amount of time, and vice versa. Supposing max speed, I think you could do it in a couple of years. The toughest part would be cutting all the stones to spec. Second toughest would be lifting them. Third toughest would be duplicating all the artwork inside–hey there’s probably a couple million right there, not counting the cost of materials.
A few years ago, a German TV show (here’s the link, in German) asked Philipp Holzmann AG, one of Germany’s largest contractors for an estimation of costs. Holzmann came up with a calculation of 6.85 billion deutschmarks (approximately 3.5 billion euros or 4.2 billion dollars, according to Yahoo!'s currency converter) and a construction time of eight and a half years.
I have been there and they are big, but to a modern person they are not huge. I suppose the problem would mostly be in using a lot of expensive materials in a very inefficient way.
I am sure you could build a full-scale exterior replica, or even a complete copy, much more cheaply by using concrete for example.
I read some years ago an article estimating the cost of building now various famous monuments (Versailles palace, the Pyramids, the Taj Mahal…). I don’t remember these costs (which were really huge) but they assumed that they would be rebuild precisely with the modern methods you’re listing (using concrete, etc…). And the reason given wasn’t simply that the cost would be then astronomical, but plainly that it would be impossible to build them in the “old fashionned” way now because there isn’t currently enough skilled craftmen (stonecutters, woodcarvers, gilders, etc…) to rebuild any of the major monuments of the past.
While there may not be many artisans who are competent with the construction techniques of Versailles or the Taj Mahal, I think we have plenty of skill remaining to build a great pyramid. The stonecutting is basic, there are plenty of crane operators who can pick up large blocks and place them, and plenty of construction laborers who can do the basic stuff. The engineering is mostly simple, (since we have a model to copy), and the logistics are certainly easier than, say, moving the interstate through downtown Boston underground.
It’s just pick up a block, lay it down. Repeat two million times.
Strangely, my quick estimate got the same time as Holzmann, by estimating an average of 10 minutes per block (given that in the early stages, you can have multiple cranes going). With double-shifts (but not round the clock), I got about 8 years.
I would assume that the German estimate in Schnitte’s link is based on using modern construction techniques. This would involve cranes, trucks, rock saws, high pressure water cutters (good for stone), etc. And, if I was a megalomaniacal multibillionaire, that’s what I would want. APB’s link, while fascinating, assumes all manual labor as originally used. It also assumes a wage of $6/hr which, while cheap or fairly reasonable by North American or European standards, is much higher than most of the rest of the world. I would believe that current unskilled manual labor in Egypt is probably more on the order of dollars per day which would greatly reduce the $5 billion labor estimate. Granted there would need to be quite a bit of skilled labor and supervisors, but for a large portion of the work, general unskilled labor should be able to work.
Still, interesting question. It’s even more interesting that people on SDMB can produce existing web sites with the information.
Shall we try to raise money on the SDMB to fund such a project? I’d be willing to fork over another $4.95.
Don’t forget to measure all the intricate details if your final result is to DUPLICATE the original. Lots of subtle little things to account for. You will need a bedrock foundation to start with, leveled and flat, then how do you account for the dimensions of each and every block of stone. Are you going to import the stone from Aswan? Or is the end result just a erzatz imitation.
Incidently the Sphinx was there first and not a part of the pyramid complex.
The reason for building the Great Pyramid was the culmination of 200 years more or less of pyramid building and it then dwindled quickly to no more construction as the need ceased to exist.
Read “Secrets of The Great Pyramid” by Peter Tompkins, Harper & Row, 1971.
As a mater of fact it would be impossible to DUPLICATE the Great Pyramid due to the many astronomical features that are built in and can only be realized in it’s present location.
Either the OP asks for too much or doesn’t understant the question!
Just a minor bit of trivia; according to the “Trivia a Day” calendar sitting on my desk the average weight of one of the blocks in the Great Pyramid is 2.5 tons. :eek:
Which astronomical features would these be? If the Great Pyramid is aligned with the compass directions, you could certainly duplicate that alignment anywhere; likewise if the Pyramid is aligned with the north pole star, or with whatever star was the pole star at the time of its construction. And if you’re going for some funky effect like “on the summer solstice, and that day only, this one shaft in the pyramid will be illuminated with sunlight”, you can certainly incorporate that into the design as well. You don’t have to be in Egypt to achieve any of this.
Does the pyramid have some geometric feature tied to its latitude? That’s the only thing I can imagine that would constrain the OP’s plans for his tomb. I suppose the solstice trick might be a problem here, if you’re requiring the sun’s position angle on that day to be a particular value.
Incidentally, this thread brings to mind the Luxor hotel in Las Vegas, which is sort of a replica of the Great Pyramid of Giza, only without the dignity.
Or, as a third possibility, you don’t understand the nature of the possible astronomical features.
To firm up Bytegeist’s point, the only constraint this factor would impose is that the replica would have to be on the same latitude. There are even parts of the USA where that condition could be fulfilled.
Not that there is any certainty that the possible astronomical features were designed as such.
Well, I don’t need an exact stone for stone copy. That would require disassembling the original anyway, which I don’t think the government of Egypt would be too keen on.
Basically I want a solid stone structure that matches the size and appearance of the Great Pyramid so that 6000 years from now people will still be talking about me. So, of course, all of the carvings and paintings inside would differ from the original – they’d be honoring ME, not that bum Khufu!
The astronomical stuff I don’t care about.
So it sounds like we’re talking roughly 5 billon dollars and 8 years. Sweet! That’s within the realm of possibility! Bill Gates could build himself his own Great Pyramid if he really wanted to.
It is indeed. The calculation, according to the site I linked to, gives a few more details on the proceedings of the construction:
1.4 million stones would be required, 1.3 million for the core and 100,000 for the casing. Material alone would count for 80 % of the entire costs.
The foundations would consist of a 2 metres layer of gravel and 2 meters of concrete.
Modern cranes and a sort of elevators running on rails would lift the stones.
All in all, only 68 (!) workers would be required to work on the highly automated construction site.
Given that the fiction upon which the calculation was based included constructing the pyramid in Cologne, Germany, it seems that a European level of wages was assumed.
[sub]Maybe it should be added that Holzmann was notorious for its aggressive strategy of underpricing competitors and nearly went bankrupt in 1999, which was only avoided by a massive intervention of the German government.[/sub]
Eh, you don’t want the same astronomical alignments as the Great Pyramid (show some originality!), but astronomical alignments are cool! We could, for instance, easily arrange for the Sun to shine into a special chamber only exactly on your birthday (well, on your birthday and one other day of the year). Customized, stylish, and it’ll have the folks five thousand years from now thinking that you were some inhuman alien superbeing overlord (and isn’t that the whole point?). Maybe include some quasar alignments, too (and then throw in one alignment among the quasars to a galaxy that isn’t a quasar, just so folks wonder if there’s something we knew they don’t).
Incidentally, I can see why you wouldn’t want concrete facing, but what’s stopping you from making the structure from concrete where nobody’s going to see it, with limestone or marble facing?