So how were the pyramids built?

Great Debates
21

The aliens came down and activated the chip in the brains of the Egyptians from the Mothership. The Egyptians had been monkeyed with genetically with the aliens making us think we evolved. This was a plan from another dimension from a long long time ago.
Then the aliens used dinosaurs to haul the stones and vaporised all their footprints and all the evidence so we wouldn’t catch on.

A very experienced channeler from San Diego documented all of this with a thought-recording he made from the planet Vulcan.

I think they used Photon torpedos, but I’m not sure.

Phaedrus

22

Lots of good specifics on the techniques employed - to summarize and add a little.

The pyramids were built on bedrock. Not cooinsedence, but design. Mastabas had been constructed for 500-1000 years previous from just before the 1st dynasty to the 4th and beyond when the Great aPyramid was built. Some knowledge was in the pipe about how much weight a foundation could bear. It was not exact an formulated number, but a feel for the innate properties of materials from years of experience. This phenomenon usually results in “overbuilding” as in the cathedrals of Europe. A pyramid is a classic example of a structure that is over built in that the base is thousands of times greater than needed to erect a structure of such height. However the goal was a pyramid, so of course the base is large.

A flat base was prepared by carving channels in the rock in a grid formation. Water was added. Stone was removed down to the water line or a chalk line made from it. Perfect level, voila.

The essential right angles were established with ropes or rods in a 3x4x5 triangle. The ancients before Pythagoras didn’t know that a2 + b2 = c2, but they knew a 3x4x5 triangle was a right triangle. They made larger or smller versions of this triangle to generate all of their “squares”.

The grid was oriented towards true north by planting a stake in the rock (or rigging up a stand) that was vertical (use a plumb line - as seen in Egyptian drawings). When the shadow was shortest, it is high noon. It is also pointing towards true north at that moment. Use shadows of equal length before and after the noon point to corfirm your measurements.

Stones were rough hewn nearby (see above responses). Labor was provided by the “corvee” a quasi military labor corps that worked like this. “Remeber all that grain we taxed you for in kind? - See how the river is rising now and you can’t work? Would you like to eat? I have grain and you’re broke - come build a pyramid.” Entire families followed the men folk to the corveee and subsisted on the grain stores that the Pharoah had stockpiled. Not slavery, but similar to state socialism.

The river rises and perhaps (my speculation) precut stones were floated to the base of the pyramid or as near as possible. Other techniques are discussed above for pulling stones, many have been tried with some success.

These stones are rough cut with an ingenious method. Make holes or grooves with dolomite balls (yes dolomite balls, and if you don’t believe it, ask the Egyptians what they used). Fill with hot coals (you can use dung, not the best, or the royal store of hardwood from Lebanon, traded for grain, or imported from way up the nile. The Sahara, once a forest had already been decimated long before), add cold vinegar (keeping liquids in unglazed pottery that “sweats” in a shady place makes them cool through evaporation - no high falutin techno theories here, just years of experience in what works) - rocks crack. Voila.

The pyramid has a structure beyond layer over layer - there is essentially an interior pyramid of the largest stones forming a stable core. The smallest stones being the eventual facing on the surface. They came to this idea after several pyramids didn’t make it to opening day due to sides that were too steep, stones that were too loose etc. Also many pyramids did not survive until today due to poor workmanship as well. For those one the board who do not know which these are and will think they do not exist, they are:

The pyramid of Medum (The “False Pyramid”)
The pyramids of Abu Roash and Abusir (ancient Busiris)
The pyramid of Unas

File uder poor architectural design -
The Bent Pyramid

In other words, for the most part only the most perfect pyramids survived in any recognizable state - namely because they were perfect. Egyptian work was as today, subject to the vagaries of expenses, politics, personal and group will power.

Much of the perfect pyramid design was trial and error, not based on theory.

To complete, the stones were dragged up ramps. Work crewes of a hundred thousand on some shifts - working for scores of years. Use a whip as well, and you can get a lot done. Also, no need for a clothing allowance - there were none for the workers.

How was the pyramid made “true” after all of this work? a good question. The proportions of the height of the sides of the great pyramid are the number “phi” (the ease of calculating this proportion is another tale) if the base is considerd to be a measurement of “2”, While working down the pyramid, adding the finishing stones and polishing them to perfection - if any completed portion holds these proportions and this “virtual pyramid” (the area so far completed) is oriented perfectly level, by using water levels, the pyramid will be perfect each step of the way. Approaching the base, a system of rods or rope measures assured that these proportions are followed.

One thing I don’t get here tho - the golden cap stone was said to be put on last, sometimes even after the final polishing to the base. I would think the ramps were removed already. Perhaps it was placed and covered for the inaugural festivities. Also, I am not sure how “polished” the final product was - if there were any footholds to be gained?

As for plans remaining behind. In ancient Greece ONLY ONE extensive template for a column has been found. It is a kind of reddish chalk/paint sketch of a column’s proportions, on its side done on the base of the temple, where steps would eventually be put in. Materials in the ancient world - of any kind - were very expensive. Paper was a final product and not used for “sketches” (not like the modern writer discarding sheets out of the typewrtier after a few failed lines). Through continued practice, memory (over written documentation) was the prefered means of retaining data (the “oral tradition”). Tentative plans were probably made in sand and if any models were made for construction, they were probably just reeds.

The great pyramid was designed and executed by Imhotep a veritable genius, and I suspect much of the complete conception was realized in his head (and his closest adjuvant’s) exclusively until completion.

The argument for “impossibility” (implying extraterestrial or other intervention) based on our own period’s ignorance will only be erased through further exploration. Erik Von Daniken saw evidence of the use of light bulbs in the lack of soot in Egyptian rock tombs from torches. Today, even movies like “The Mummy” and the “Fifth Element” incorporate giant brass mirrors for reflecting sunlight deep into tombs. Today’s mysteries - tomorrow’s pop culture.

23

To address a specific issue here -

“If the Egyptians had done it in a geologically weaker area, it would already be sunken into the sand. They, of course, didn’t know anything about geology, so either they were really lucky or there’s something more here.”

If not knowing the difference between rock and sand is not at least a primitive notion of “geology”, enough to build a stable edifice, I don’t know what is. No doubt some sand was cleared to make the base of the great pyramid - it was already a nuisance issue in terms of previous work needing to be periodically excavated. The Egyptians seemed to assume that sand usually sat ON TOP of rock. Intuitive, perhaps, correct, yes most of the time.

In fact many pyramids were built on less than ideal foundations - they have not lasted. Perhaps extensive surface examination and knowledge of the terrain was enough to convince Imhotep that it was the right place. Not “lucky” just smart.

Extensive building of mastabas and rock tombs over the previous 500 years acquainted the Egyptians with the concepts of “rock=stable” and “sand=impermapnent”. Individual Egyptians were no less dumbnor smart that modern individulas. Ask yourself - if I’m gunna build a really heavy pyramid, should I do it on sand or rock? If you’re not sure, that is a statement about you, not the genuis or lack thereof of Imhotep and other Egyptian architects.

I’m convinced technology has made us smarter as a race, dumber as individuals.

24

Perhaps I need to clarify. The rock was far below the surface. The Egyptians theoretically shouldn’t have known it was there.

The problem is that they WERE sheared with precision. The blocks are so well fit together and so exact that no one has the slightest idea how it was done. Interestingly enough, the same concept applies to Incan fortresses in Peru.

This is a theory I know a little about. Due to gradients, the ramp would have to be significantly larger than the pyramid itself. Dismantling it should be pretty difficult too. They are NOT going to be able to make that kind of a structure

I’m still looking for comments on the picture of the Okinawa pyramids.

25

Giant Squid comments on:

bedrock:

How not? Without wishing to denigrate the Egyptians, it’s not rocket science (even von Daniken’s take on rocket science) for an engineer to say: “You know, the last 500 times we dug in this kind of terrain, we hit rock a few dozen cubits down. Let’s get the sand out of the way, and I’ll bet that there’s rock down there now.”
quarrying:

Now, do we have evidence that the stones were not ground? One can get quite amazing (seeming) fits with a little sand and a lot of time.
on ramps:

I believe that it has already been stipulated that the ramps were of sand. This is a rare, difficult-to-work-with material?

“Kings die, and leave their crowns to their sons. Shmuel HaKatan took all the treasures in the world, and went away.”

26

One brick at a time until they ran out of bricks.

27

If Wolfduke needs references how do we get to the name Imhotep? I know it was in my schoolbooks but was his tomb found and his role in pyamid building established at that time?

And wasn’t there a dig near the pyramids which showed workers’ homes and graves? Wouldn’t that be in a periodical or just on the darned TV?

28

So your theory is that no Egyptian, in the thousands of years before the pyramids were buit, had the inclination to dig a hole?

29

I don’t know where the idea come from that the bedrock base of the Great Pyramid was deep beneath the sand. This must be heresay, as every schematic I’ve seen of the pyramid shows that it is slightly ABOVE the surrounding terrain, not below.

Imhotep was the architect of the Great pyramid. His tomb was found near by. Inside are records of his dees as well as a portrait statue of him, one of the most beautiful ever made. He is seated with a Horus hawk gently peeking over his head. From the front the hawk looks like a sun rising over a curved horizon (!). His statue looks through a window in the tomb at the pyramid itself.

He was well known throughout Egyptian history and was known by Egyptian legend to the Greeks.

30

I’m just going to throw out a lot of information; this should answer Ursa Major’s question and reinforce me a little (Answer to person who asked what I’m saying: I think the Egyptians had a bit of help from a more powerful civilization that once existed)

 By John Zajac
       The Pyramids. According to common perception they were built, with the begrudging help of great armies
 of slaves, by the ancient pharaohs of Egypt as tombs for preserving their royal bodies. Pyramids were meant to be
 monuments to the pharaoh's greatness, filled with great treasures for the afterlife. To construct these massive
 shrines, the pharaoh's copied the oldest and largest pyramid of all, the Great Pyramid of Giza.

 But the Great Pyramid itself contains no pharaoh's body, no treasure chamber, and no treasures. Who, then,
 designed it and built it? What was its purpose? Let us begin our tour by considering a few basic facts about the
 Great Pyramid.

       The Last "Wonder of the World"

      Thirty times larger than the Empire State Building, the Pyramid's features are so large they can be seen from
      the Moon.
      Its base covers 13.6 acres (equal to seven midtown Manhatten city blocks), each side being greater than five
      acres in area.
      A highway lane eight feet wide and four inches thick could be built from San Francisco to New York and
      put inside the Great Pyramid.
      The oldest structure in existence, having been started 4,617 years ago, it is the sole remnant of the Seven
      Wonders of the World.

       Journey to the Center of the Earth

      Only a solid stone mountain could endure the Pyramid's immense weight. And indeed, a flat solid granite
      mountain happens to be located just beneath the surface of the ground directly under the Pyramid.
      It is built to face true North.
      The Pyramid is located at the exact center of the Earth's land mass. That is, its
      East-West axis corresponds to the longest land parallel across the Earth, passing
      through Africa, Asia, and America. Similarly, the longest land meridian on Earth, through
      Asia, Africa, Europa, and Antarctica, also passes right through the Pyramid. Since the
      Earth has enough land area to provide 3 billion possible building sites for the Pyramid, the odds of it's having
      been built where it is are 1 in 3 billion.

       Construction Unequaled by Modern Technology

      Like 20th century bridge designs, the Pyramid's cornerstones have balls and sockets built into them. Several
      football fields long, the Pyramid is subject to expansion and contraction movements from heat and cold, as
      well as earthquakes, settling, and other such phenomena. After 4,600 years it's structure would have been
      significantly damaged without such construction.
      While the bulk of the Pyramid's core was constructed of 4,000- to 40,000-pound blocks of soft limestone,
      the outer layer of the Pyramid was made of a beautifully bright, protective layer of polished stone. These
      outer "casing stones" are missing today because about 600 years ago they were stolen by Arabs, (This
      accounts for the very worn appearance of the Pyramid today, since the inner limestone blocks are not
      immune to attack by the elements-wind, rain, and sandstrom.) This protective covering was made up of
      100-inch-thick, 20-ton block of hard, white limestone, similar to marble but superior in hardness and in
      durability against the elements.

 The Great Pyramid did not always look as "rough" as it does today. Originally it was encased with a layer of tight-fitting, highly
                                   polished 20-ton stone slabs.

      The casing stones, 144,000 in all, were so brilliant that they could literally be seen from the mountains of
      Israel hundreds of miles away. On bright mornings and late afternoons, sunlight reflected by this vast
      mirrored surface of 5-1/4 acres distinguished the Pyramid as being visible from the moon.
      (Note: For those interested in possible symbolic significance, in Bible prophecy 144,000 is the number
      of people-12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel-who are supposed to evangelize the world at the
      endtime.)
      The people of the area had viewed the Pyramid and its polished stones with awe for centuries. But when a
      13th century earthquake loosened some of these casing stones, the Arabs recognized a great quarry of
      precut stones that could be used to finish off palaces and mosques. For instance, the casing stones were
      used to rebuild the new city of El Kaherah plus Cairo mosques and palaces, including the Mosque of Sultan
      Hasan.
      Amazingly, the outside surface stones are cut within 0.01 (1/100th) inch of perfectly straight and at nearly
      perfect right angles for all six sides. And they were placed together with an intentional gap between them of
      0.02 inch. Modern technology cannot place such 20-ton stones with greater accuracy than those in the
      Pyramid.
      Even more amazing is that the 0.02-inch gap was designed to allow space for glue to seal and hold the
      stones together. A white cement that connected the casing stones and made them watertight is still intact and
      stronger than the blocks that it joins.

 Let's pause from our tour for a moment's rest and reflection. Whoever built the Pyramid used a technologly that we
 still do not possess today to cut, move, and cement stones. Whoever built it also had some knowledge of the Earth,
 because it was built in the right spot-one of the few places that would support such a great weight. The builder also
 knew where the greatest land mass of the Earth was in both the North-South and East-West directions.
 Amazing. But we had better keep going. And joining us on the leg of our tour will be none other than Sir Issac
 Newton...

       The Cosmic Yardstick

              The Great Pyramid is one of the most comprehensively surveyed buildings in the World. Scientists
 over the centuries have taken thousands of measurements in their quest to find out more about its mysteries.

 Among those intrigued by the incredible accuracy of the Pyramid's construction was the great scientist and
 mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Attemping to formulate his famous law of gravity, Newton needed to know the
 diameter of the Earth. However, in the 1600's no measurement was accurate enough, especially since Newton
 theorized that the Earth's spin would cause an equatorial bulge. Having heard legends claiming that knowledge of
 the Earth, the past, and the future were contained in the Pyramid, Newton set out to investigate.

 After studying the detailed measurements made by the investigators before him, Newton recognized that many key
 measurements would be in round numbers if the standard unit of measure was just 0.001 (1/1,000) inch larger than
 the British inch-which just happens to be the Sacred Jewish Inch. (The Sacred Jewish Inch, 1/25 of a cubit, equals
 1.00106 British inches.) This discovery allowed the secrets of the Pyramid to be unlocked and revealed
 unmistakable and mathematical relationships. For instance:

      We know from geometry that there is a universal relationship between the diameter of a circle and its
      circumference. Consider this: The height of the Pyramid's apex is 5,812.98 inches, and each side is 9,131
      inches from corner to corner (in a straight line). If the circumference
31

Uh, no. That doesn’t answer my question. Besides, quoting a frequent guest on the Art Bell Show does little to impress me.

32

That’s a lot to swallow in one post, but I’ll start picking holes in it: nothing artificial is visible from the moon, even lacking cloud cover.

Never attribute to an -ism anything more easily explained by common, human stupidity.

33

Giant Squid wrote, regarding the ramp used to haul the stones to the top of the pyramid:

On the “This Old Pyramid” episode of NOVA, the pyramid builder came up with a better way. Instead of making one long, linear ramp rising up from the desert floor in front of the pyramid, he built his ramp ON TOP OF the already-finished layers of the pyramid, winding around the outside as he went. This dramatically reduced the amount of material needed to hold the ramp up.

The truth, as always, is more complicated than that.

34

Wow – Impressive post, GS. I haven’t come across that much concentrated misinformation and fudgery in ages. (But, then, I don’t get the Art Bell show anymore.)

I like hansel’s idea. Let’s all just do one at a time.

No, it isn’t. It isn’t even the oldest structure in Egypt. For that matter, it isn’t even the oldest pyramid in Egypt. Either Mr Zajac did not do as much research as the average 4th grader with a homework assignment (ie – copy the encyclopedia entry), or he is more interested in sensationalism than accuracy. Hmmm, I wonder which one it can be . . .

The best lack all conviction
The worst are full of passionate intensity.
*

35

I remember something about the pyramids being laid out in a fashion so, from above, they match the appearance of a certain constellation. Has anyone else heard this?

Additionally, there are some questions about the Sphinx, too. I had heard that it is a lot older than the pyramids, and I remember some news stories on Yahoo in the last couple of years about a prophecy about something being discovered in/around the Sphinx, and the Egyptian government had locked the site down until their people had more time to dig around.

Does any of this sound familiar to the teeming millions out there? Or have I been duped by some UL’s again?

From Hell’s heart, I stab at thee-

36

Interesting reading… I remember a show where the location and size of the three pyramids match the three stars that make up Orions belt. I always wondered why those two big ones are perfectly aligned, but that smaller one is off. I also seem to recall that the shafts built into the walls line up directly with the stars, presumably to point the exact way for the soul to take to the heavens.

On a side note, some believe the Sphinx is much older than the pyramids, as much as 10,000 - 11,000 years old, making it twice as old. Part of this theory is due to the Sphinx showing water erosion over a long period of time where the pyramids and other structures do not. Something about using computers to back-date weather patterns and such, I guess the last time the desert was a tropical forest was 10,000 years ago.

“Wow! Spider-Man! Are you really friends with the X-men?”
"Not since Cyclops tried to use my viewmaster."
(Marvel Team Up #1)

37

‘Some People’ turns out to basically be Bauval and Hancock, the originators of the ‘Orion’s Belt’ theory. They took the work of a Geologist named Shoch, and bent it out of all recognition to suit their wacky theories.

Briefly, Shoch proposed that the Sphynx is older than supposed by about 4000 years due to apparent water erosion shown on it. However, the same effect can be caused by salt exfoliation, which is another type of rock weathering which could easily have occurred in the area.

Bauval and Hancock took this information and fit it into their ‘Orion’ theory, which required that the Sphynx be about 12,500 years old. Unfortunately, even Shoch doesn’t think it’s that old. But hey, what’s a few thousand years when you are scouring the earth for ‘data’ to support a crackpot theory?

38

Spiritus: Blast! I should have caught that one. But I find it hard to believe he blatantly lied about all of the numbers. Did he?

Some more support for Bauval and Hancock: the Sphinx’s head is smaller than its body, almost as if it was redone. And artists and historians who study it say the face is NOT Khafre. Why is it associated with Khafre? One inscription in th Sphinx temple at a time when Pharoahs were known to take credit for others’ work.

39

Giant Squid- I can’t say what, if any, numbers are lies, but I can say that any “expert” who says in one paragraph that the outer stones were lost 600 years ago and the ones beneath them were significantly weathered, and then a couple paragraphs later claims the outer stones were cut to an accuracy of 1/100 of an inch is full of BS.

40

Another poster gave the entire process on how the granite was split. So I forgot that only grooves were made with the dolomite, and then heat fracturing was used to crack the blocks off.

Anyway, Most stones fracture along predetermined joints (cleaves IIRC). Limestone being sedimentary readily chips into block shapes (The local mountains here are part limestone, and there is a roadcut that shows layered bricklike shapes on the exposed rock).