I don’t disbelieve you, but if I’m building the Egyptian pyramids I think I’d want to use rubble. It seems to me that squaring off all the interior stones would have consumed a shitload of manhours and resulted in great mounds of waste, all for something you can’t see. Of course, when you’re using slave labor then efficiency may not be the prime concern.
I was thinking of that. But if you want examples of modern pyramids that are more similar to ancient ones, you can find those, too.
Something about this one looks modern:
http://pyramidvalley.org/eng/index.php/about-us/pyramid
This one isn’t quite as traditional in style, but also seems to be in the pyramid tradition.
http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/sociopolitica/esp_sociopol_nwo77.htm
Currently accepted theory is that they weren’t slaves, but paid workers.
You know, if they were monolithic that would be a damn good indication of alien help. Each made from a single chunk of granite? With big piramid shaped holes in Gibraltar? That would be something beyond our skills.
But they aren’t.
OK, ignorance fought! I stand corrected. Actually I’m sitting down corrected, to be more precise.
To win a bet.
“I tell ya, show these primitives a little flash-bang and you can get 'em to do anything. Yes, anything. Watch, I’ll get 'em to spend 20 years building the hugest, most useless pile of rocks you ever saw!”
So, it was a jobs program.
Except that we now know that they didn’t in fact use slave labor. They actually treated their workers a lot better than it used to be assumed.
As for the rubble aspect, I’m pretty sure the great pyramids on the Giza plateau are solid block with little or no rubble fill. I don’t think man hour efficiency was a prime consideration. I’ll see if I can find a cite showing the interior construction as I’m going from memory here…I know that some of the new world pyramids do in fact use rubble fill inside, and I think some of the older pre-pyramid mastaba construction used it as well, but I don’t think the great pyramids did. From what I recall they are made up of millions of limestone blocks (some say quarried, some say cast, though I don’t know what the current thinking on that is) with granite used for some of the interior spaces (tombs, chambers and the like).
Possibly a Cenotaph in at least one case.
I would curious to know if the great pyramids on Giza are solid block - someone told me that the secret to building these pyramids was that the interior was NOT block.
As a Pharaoh… my tomb is going to be solid block. None of these modern shortcuts!!
No the three pyramids on Giza are not rubble filled. They are all blocks, with some holes, passageways, etc.
Well, my google-fu skills are failing me tonight…either that, or I’m dead tired. I can’t find a quick, easy site that says that there is no fill (part of the problem is that I know there are web sites with the answer I’m looking for, but they get drowned out by all the freaking woo sites about the pyramids :p). The best I can do is from the wiki on the Great Pyramid on Giza:
I think where this comes that what we see today IS the ‘inside’ of the pyramids on the Giza plateau…originally, the pyramids were covered in a white limestone casing (with a gold cap stone at the top), so what we see wasn’t really meant to be seen.
There was a lot of rubble fill in the core of the pyramids of Giza, though it is found in the gaps between the blocks, some up to 22 centimeters wide:
how were they built?
with stones. Stones. They used stones.
Personally I would like to see another Mount Rushmore style monument built in the US.
I intend to fill mine with the bones of the dead caused by my reign of terror, but I’m a romantic.
The Old Kingdom pyramids were mostly solid stone.
However, later pyramids - for example, those build during the Middle Kingdom period - were built using rubble or mud-brick, with stone used more sparingly (for bracing and external cladding). Much cheaper and faster - more pyramid for less effort.
However, they did not weather as well.
This is the reason why the (older) Old Kingdom pyramids are still around today, while the (younger) Middle Kingdom pyramids have largely collapsed into piles of rubble.
To correct a misconception upthread - the labour force with which the pyramids were built dod not consist of “slaves”, but neither did it consist of “paid workers”. The theory I have read was that it consisted of two groups: a relatively small group of experts, and a larger group of men paying their corvée labour tax. The Old Kingdom Egyptian state lacked money (it had not been invented yet) and so most things operated in terms of taxation in kind.
[QUOTE=Malthus]
To correct a misconception upthread - the labour force with which the pyramids were built dod not consist of “slaves”, but neither did it consist of “paid workers”. The theory I have read was that it consisted of two groups: a relatively small group of experts, and a larger group of men paying their corvée labour tax. The Old Kingdom Egyptian state lacked money (it had not been invented yet) and so most things operated in terms of taxation in kind.
[/QUOTE]
It depends on how you interpret ‘pay’. If by ‘pay’ you mean in money, then you are correct. As you noted, a lot of the common laborers were doing their labor as part of paying their taxes. They were, in addition however ‘paid’ in good and plentiful food, beer, housing and medical care, as well as other things, at least by some of the worker art and writing I’ve seen. 
I propose a colossal statue of our late lamented sovereign, Emperor Norton. It should be at least three times the size of the statue of Liberty. And buck naked.
Just a few more rocks to carve and it’ll be there.