# How were the pyramids in Egypt built? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 7, 2014, 10:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559 "2014-12-07T10:40:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 122
**Author:** ![simster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/simster/32/1047_2.png) [@simster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/simster)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 12:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2422 "2015-05-28T00:07:38Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > I > \*\* Once you get a term wrong it is very difficult to fix it. > \*\* (snipped and bolded by me) hmmmm - ya think? What do you think happens when you get _everything_ wrong? ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2423 "2015-05-28T00:18:02Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > If there’s anything we know for certain about building pyramids, they must have done it efficiently. This is simply more of your imaginary attempts to rationalize your beliefs. There is NO reason to believe that any effort in which humans have engaged “must have” been efficient. None. > [@cladking](#): > > If they used ramps it would have required incredible timing and exquisite planning. They would not have been wasting much effort in the manifestation of the most lifting for any project in human history. Even a tiny percentage of waste represented a huge output of labor. And all the evidence is that they had huge resources of labor available. The growing season is limited. There is no period (such as a Northern winter) in which they had to expend more effort gathering firewood or other means of survival. (And even in places such as Northern Europe, the people were able to take time off outside the growing season to build cathedrals and castles–using a much smaller local population.) > [@cladking](#): > > Certainly some sort of temporary housing can’t be ruled out. Perhaps there’s no suitable or evidenced location for such housing at Giza because the workers were boated in from more remote locations along the Nile. A short ferry then a quarter mile long walk up the causeway isn’t too much of a commute. There are numerous possibilities but the facts are the facts. The fact is too many men would have died of exposure on the ramps. It would be highly inefficient to pull ones belongings up ramps all day. If conditions were so horrendous potential workers would have fled rather than come drag stones. You’re just making up excuses. (And pretty dumb ones, at that.) Dying of exposure in Egypt’s climate? Exposure to what? A tent city would have solved the whole issue with water available from the Nile, (or, I suppose, they might have gone to the geysers each morning), and food kept in temporary granaries. > [@cladking](#): > > What exists is a tiny workers village full of men women and children. We don’t have evidence or good reason to believe men were brought in by boat every day. There are no “overseers of ferrymen” or “overseers of fare collectors”. There’s nothing to suggest another town and no reason to suppose they’d use tents when they knew in advance the project would require decades. Wherever the men lived they’d have needed a steady stream of supplies but only three ports are known and one lacks roads in and out. There is an implication that the builders village was home to the men and it didn’t need roads because building supplies took a different route. Men would not need to be “brought in every day.” They would arrive at the end of the farming season along with enough grain to support them for a few months of labor, set up a tent city, work from there, and pack it up and go home _en masse_ when they were needed back at their farms. > [@cladking](#): > > If we get more data the equation might change but until we do we have only what’s currently in evidence. And, of course, that evidence shows that there were no geyser keepers of any sort among the workers. It is amusing how you jump from one topic to another while spinning your imaginary events, then rushing off to a different one when the flaws in your logic are shown or a request for evidence appears. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2424 "2015-05-28T00:27:57Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > I posted the link for Oakley. Really? Where? > [@cladking](#): > > It’s only the lack of education that made it possible to understand it. Once you think Tefnut is the “Goddess of Moisture” or any sort of god at all, you are lost. I went to extreme effort to avoid all interpretation of the PT during the 6+ years it required to solve it. Once you get a term wrong it is very difficult to fix it. Ahh! _“I don’t have any education, so I can see everything that the experts miss.”_ Piffle. You are just making up stuff that you want to believe. You are not “reading” the actual PT, simply looking at other people’s transliterations and making up meanings for things that you do not understand. > [@cladking](#): > > Every single job is now evidenced with only a couple very minor exceptions. I know the name of every worker and can point to a tomb of one who did that job. The exceptions are simply tasks that were done by very very few men and required little training other than on the job training. More handwaving. You already pointed out all the jobs associated with the construction and you did not once mention any of the tasks required for geyser wrangling. Now, you are backtracking and pretending that you have identified all the workers, (_really? you have a list of all several thousand workers, somewhere?_) when you somehow “forgot” to mention, originally, the people and jobs who are most necessary for your claim to have any relevance. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 12:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2425 "2015-05-28T00:32:25Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > This would be humoroius if I hadn’t heard it a million times. Egyptologists say not that they know they used ramps but that they could only have used ramps. They not only know they used ramps but they even know there were no other possibilities and the only question is the shape of the mile long ramps. it takes only a short search to discover that this is not accurate. Dozens of archeologists and researchers have proposed multiple theories. To claim that “Egyptologists” say that they “could only have used ramps” ignores all the people who have speculated on methods other than ramps. You are claiming that some monolithic body of “Egyptologists” have made a claim when that is simply not true. You really need to stop doing that, because it makes you look like you are not interested in accuracy. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 12:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2426 "2015-05-28T00:46:52Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > It’s right there in front of people. > > [https://cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/img/articles/utp/chap5/khufus-pyramid-bottom.jpg](https://cdn-assets.answersingenesis.org/img/articles/utp/chap5/khufus-pyramid-bottom.jpg) > > It was built before the pyramid. It is surrounded by a coffer dam. There is a canal that is known to have taken water from it to the point that would be perfect to build the easter cliff face counterweight. (seeing as how all the infrastructure was here) A photograph of paving stones at the base of the pyramid is not evidence of “water collecting devices” and even if you pretend that, it shows nothing indicating that it was collecting water from below the pyramid. Sure there was a canal. It ran from the Nile to the plateau, bringing water (and, perhaps materials) TO the plateau. Your photograph does nothing to show water being brought up from below the pyramid. You remind me of the former poster **seethruart** who kept linking to photographs of the footprints of Armstrong and Aldrin and insisting that when they were enlarged, they were evidence of a miniature lunar civilization. You might want to see “evidence” in those photographs, but the evidence you want is just not there. ---
**Author:** ![dropzone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dropzone/32/7515_2.png) [@dropzone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dropzone)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2427 "2015-05-28T02:17:08Z")
I miss **seethruart**. She was fun. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![cladking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@cladking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cladking)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 3:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2428 "2015-05-28T03:49:44Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > A photograph of paving stones at the base of the pyramid is not evidence of “water collecting devices” and even if you pretend that, it shows nothing indicating that it was collecting water from below the pyramid. > Sure there was a canal. It ran from the Nile to the plateau, bringing water (and, perhaps materials) TO the plateau. Your photograph does nothing to show water being brought up from below the pyramid. You remind me of the former poster **seethruart** who kept linking to photographs of the footprints of Armstrong and Aldrin and insisting that when they were enlarged, they were evidence of a miniature lunar civilization. You might want to see “evidence” in those photographs, but the evidence you want is just not there. Thanks. I think I’m beginning to see my problem here. There are just so few facts and none of the few facts is very determinative so I’m trying to solve them all simultaneously and other people are trying to explain them one at a time. It’s very similar to the solution of the PT which can’t be seen at all if you take it apart to look at the pieces. I don’t know if it’s possible to present all the facts at once however so this insight might be of very limnited utility. PBS’s recent program on Armstrong reminded me of the “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” quip. I just saw it in the last hour. Perhaps trying to get people to see this a step at a time isn’t possible and it will take one giant leap to see that the pyramids were built a step at a time just as everything must be. Mankind didn’t make the leap from the Eagle to the surface but he made the leap at Kitty Hawk and 100 other places that culminated at Tranquility Base. You can’t infer the Wright Brothers by seeing grainy movies of an astronaut stepping onto the moon but they are just as necessary as the Saturn V. Somehow people have to see the entire picture. This will be difficult since everyone already has the romantic image of men made strong by their beliefs straining against gravity and sore backs to lift 6 1/2 million tons to 140’. This seems easy enough to everybody since the pyramid’s there and there’s not much reason to think aliens did it. There is a canal that flowed DOWN from the pyramid base that is on top of a hill. The pyramid base is 200’ up from the Nile so no water could get from the river to the pyramid. The canal which flowed down intersects one of those “ramps” at the cliff face. The “ramp” went between the queens pyramids and the first row of mastabas. It ran N/ S. At its nothern terminus is the place water came from the water collection device under the pyramid and enclosed by the coffer dam called “tenemos walls” by Egyptologists. ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2429 "2015-05-28T05:49:40Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > The pyramid is resting on these stones. Obviously it can be concluded that these flat water tight stones were laid BEFORE the pyramid was begun. > > These flat stones have all the characteristics of a water collection device that was ACTUALLY USED. It transported water to the two cliff face counterweights. The water arrived in it from the pyramid counterweigts after construction began and (probably) a geyser before. The have all the characteristics of a layer of stones used as the base of a very large monument. Only to someone desperate for a water collection device do they have any characteristics of the latter that aren’t also shared by the former. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 6:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2430 "2015-05-28T06:33:40Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > The pyramid is resting on these stones. Obviously it can be concluded that these flat water tight stones were laid BEFORE the pyramid was begun. Agreed, the stones under the pyramid were put there before the pyramid. They built it from the bottom up. > [@](#): > > These flat stones have all the characteristics of a water collection device that was ACTUALLY USED. This is where you need to show your workings. They just look like foundation stones. The quality of workmanship is high, but then, the work was all done at ground level. I’m genuinely not seeing what you claim to be a coffer dam. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2431 "2015-05-28T15:53:14Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > Thanks. I think I’m beginning to see my problem here. > > There are just so few facts and none of the few facts is very determinative so I’m trying to solve them all simultaneously and other people are trying to explain them one at a time. It’s very similar to the solution of the PT which can’t be seen at all if you take it apart to look at the pieces. I don’t know if it’s possible to present all the facts at once however so this insight might be of very limnited utility. PBS’s recent program on Armstrong reminded me of the “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” quip. I just saw it in the last hour. Perhaps trying to get people to see this a step at a time isn’t possible and it will take one giant leap to see that the pyramids were built a step at a time just as everything must be. Mankind didn’t make the leap from the Eagle to the surface but he made the leap at Kitty Hawk and 100 other places that culminated at Tranquility Base. You can’t infer the Wright Brothers by seeing grainy movies of an astronaut stepping onto the moon but they are just as necessary as the Saturn V. > > Somehow people have to see the entire picture. You have taken several jigsaw puzzles, mixed up the pieces, forced them together in an ill fitting way leaving gaps, with some pieces upside down, edge pieces in the center, forming an amorphous blob of random colors and disconnected pieces that do not form an image of anything. If you would examine each piece individually you would see that they do not fit together to form an image at all and the entire picture you see exists only in your mind. It is easy to infer the Wright Brothers from seeing astronauts step on the moon. It is easy to infer James Watt from the existence of the steam engine. To infer Morse if you receive a telegram, to infer Bell when your cell phone rings. That’s the way technology develops, it starts with those who work out the details from experimentation and engineering. Those people did not find the instructions for their inventions written in magical symbols on walls. ---
**Author:** ![Yllaria](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yllaria/32/3452_2.png) [@Yllaria](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yllaria)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2432 "2015-05-28T17:26:47Z")
> [@cladking](#): > > The soil is highly porous limestone. It is also marked by fissures of various sizes. > > To keep a ditch circling 14 acres of this would require vast amounts of water. Why would they even do this if there were no pressing need? Not my theory and not my claim that there was magic leveling that needed the whole area flooded with water. Just saying that the ditch would be much easier than flooding it all. I still like their bob-level better. My point in putting forward some other folks’ ideas regarding a leveling ditch was that A) it’s a better idea than flooding the whole square and B) it’s much less than half of the area to flood (your figure). It’s more like 0.53% the area. Small enough to seal with . . . no, I’m not going there. > [@cladking](#): > > . . .These flat stones have all the characteristics of a water collection device that was ACTUALLY USED. . . . One of the characteristics of this collection device is that it will form part of a sphere because it was built by AND for water. **It must be part of a sphere or it wouldn’t drain 100%**. . . . . Bolding mine. Spheres are not necessary for drainage. Check out any street with curbs and gutters. It’s all done with slopes. A 2% slope is all you need in most cases. No spheres. > [@cladking](#): > > Thanks. I think I’m beginning to see my problem here. > > There are just so few facts and none of the few facts is very determinative so I’m trying to solve them all simultaneously and other people are trying to explain them one at a time. . . . . First problem - facts are not things to solve. Problems are things to solve and you use facts to solve them. Second problem - solving problems simultaneously requires that each problem actually be solved. If an individual problem can be shown to not be solved by the simultaneous solution, then the simultaneous solution has been shown not to be solved. You don’t get to say, it doesn’t solve any specific problem, but if you look at the whole, it’s solved. I’ve got no problem with flashes of intuition, but then you have to go back and see if they work. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2433 "2015-05-28T18:59:04Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > Agreed, the stones under the pyramid were put there before the pyramid. Finally something consistent with the laws of physics there. 😉 > [@](#): > > I’m genuinely not seeing what you claim to be a coffer dam. He didn’t even mention that until I suggested one would be needed to flood the area (so I’m taking a little moment of pride here for my contribution to this insightful theory). Now he thinks there really was one, and there is physical evidence that somehow escaped notice and identification for all these millenia. I would still like to know how \*it \*was built, though. The pyramid itself would have been easier. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2434 "2015-05-28T20:50:54Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > now how \*it \*was built, though. The pyramid itself would have been easier. The floor of the water basin is actually the base of a bigger upside-down pyramid. See, it’s all coming together. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2435 "2015-05-28T20:53:03Z")
Just like the glass pyramid in the Louvre where Mary Magdalene is buried! NOW I see it! ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [May 28, 2015, 9:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2436 "2015-05-28T21:05:31Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Just like the glass pyramid in the Louvre where Mary Magdalene is buried! NOW I see it! And subsequently destroyed by the Ground-Hog-esque Omega in Edge of Tomorrow (SUPPOSEDLY…might have just been to cover up MM’s grave). Remember the scene where they fly the busted Osprey thingy across the waterway to the Louvre? Remember how Tom doesn’t get killed when thrown off at high speed and onto a concrete pad? Well, Tom is part of a stinky footed bumpkin modern tradition, so imagine how the Ancient Egyptians™ would have been able to use all of this to build their coffer dam (or perhaps it was a COFFEE DAM…maybe that’s how they got the cold geyser to work, using coffee creamer!) built. THINK ABOUT IT!!! :eek: ---
**Author:** ![ufel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/b4bc9f/32.png) [@ufel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ufel)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2015, 8:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2437 "2015-06-01T20:38:32Z")
Only the outside stones are quarried. the huge internal ones are a type of concrete. Making the task MANY times more feasible (but still a wonder). Remember, this job had to be done in ONE man’s lifetime. Nobody finished another man’s pyramid. ---
**Author:** ![Telemark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/telemark/32/372_2.png) [@Telemark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Telemark)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2015, 9:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2438 "2015-06-01T21:27:57Z")
> [@ufel](#): > > Only the outside stones are quarried. **the huge internal ones are a type of concrete.** No, they weren’t. The majority were quarried nearby, although some were transported from a considerable distance. ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2015, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2439 "2015-06-01T21:30:13Z")
Oh great, we’ll be arguing about that theory for another 2200 posts. ☹ ---
**Author:** ![XT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/xt/32/456_2.png) [@XT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/XT)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2015, 9:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2440 "2015-06-01T21:37:35Z")
> [@Telemark](#): > > No, they weren’t. The majority were quarried nearby, although some were transported from a considerable distance. Well, the [limestone quarries](http://www.cheops-pyramide.ch/khufu-pyramid/stone-quarries.html) are still there and visible (still stones roughed out in them for that matter that were never used), however, perhaps what the Egyptians REALLY did was to use the cold geyser to mix a really huge batch of limestone concrete where the quarries are and then cut them out and move them via a homunculus powered pleiades red shifted through piezo-electric dark matter crystals. Stranger things have posited, after all, and who am I to be the neigh sayer or beat a dead horse after checking it’s teeth mid-stream while changing mounts? ---
**Author:** ![cladking](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/4af34b/32.png) [@cladking](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/cladking)\ **Post date:** [June 1, 2015, 10:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559/2441 "2015-06-01T22:12:10Z")
> [@XT](#): > > Stranger things have posited, after all, and who am I to be the neigh sayer or beat a dead horse after checking it’s teeth mid-stream while changing mounts? But ya’ still can’t make him drink. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559.md?page=121) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-were-the-pyramids-in-egypt-built/706559.md?page=123)