Excellent report.
And almost every trap from The Prize of Pizarro shows up in an Indiana Jones movie, Dex. So there.
Relax! I’m sure they aren’t booby traps and they aren’t going to hurt you unless you get a hernia trying to lift one. A portcullis block is simply the sliding granite slab mentioned in the article. It fitted in slots on either side of the doorway and when everybody was done piling treasure in the tomb the last guy out would knock out the four by fours holding up the door and it would drop in place. However, being harder than the surrounding rock it was like putting a barred security door on a double wide trailer: if a robber couldn’t go through it he’d go around it. To make it a booby trap they would have to leave the supporting lumber in place until a robber accidentally knocked it out.
dropzone, you refer to potential crossbows as having “taken a set at full draw.” I assume this means locked into position. What would cause this?
Thanks.
You mean an SDSAB member is not on the Straight Dope Mailing List? If you’re on the list, you get an e-mail with links to the coming columns some days before they’re linked on the front page.
If you bend and hold anything long enough the material under tension or compression (which one depends on which side of the bend you’re measuring) will be pulled or pushed into the new shape. Springy materials, like you would make a bow out of, resist the pressure to reform but in time (and here we’re dealing with lots of time) even modern bow materials will “take a set” in the new shape. The best ancient bow materials and designs would take a set quickly (though slower in the dry Egyptian climate) and neither the Egyptians nor Maya used the best designs, instead relying on primitive selfbows made of a single piece of wood and a sinew or hair bowstring. Such a bow would begin to take a set, and the string begin to stretch, immediately and would have no inclination to spring back to its original shape in a few days.
If you want to experiment at home see if you can find one of those wood and kitestring bows that shoot suction cup arrows (it’s extremely unlikely they are still made, though). Nock an arrow and draw the bow. Hold it in that position for a week (you may want to cheat and find some other way to hold it at full draw) then release the arrow. It will likely just fall to the floor while the string hangs limply from the misshapen bow.
Thanks dropzone. I don’t know why I couldn’t figure that out on my own. Thanks again for your time.
Glad to be of help. 
I must comment on Dropzone’s very enjoyable article about booby-trapped tombs. I went to Egypt two years ago and was lucky enough to go to the Valley of the Kings. You can’t visit all the tombs , nor can you take photo’s so my details are a little sketchy, but I seem to recall our guide telling us that in fact some of the tombs WERE booby trapped, but not in the complex style of indiana Jones. Instead what existed was the occaisional pit fall, where intruders could fall into a deep hole that was left in the narrow passageways leading into the tombs through the sides of the valley walls. There were no darts, boulders, or anything fancy like that, but there were evidently some measures put in place to prevent grave robbers from getting in. Also, some statues had refelctive glass eyes that would appear in torch light to be looking at you through the darkness. Not a trap, exactly, but probably scary as hell to a first time grave robber.
Dr Teeter did mention the pitfalls but as they were not disguised (even the Three Stooges knew enough to throw a rug over a hole in the floor) and were easily circumvented by tossing a couple 2x4s across the hole, even if the thieves had to send a couple guys down to the Home Depot for lumber the pits took far longer to cut than they were worth. At best it was a delaying tactic; everybody could see it was there but it took time to get past and since graverobbers are usually in a hurry maybe it was thought anything would help leave Amenhotep in peace. On the other hand, maybe the builders had no great expectations of keeping humans out but hoped for better luck with djinn and other evil spirits, which in Mideastern mythology are often not very bright.