by
Damien F. Mackey
HOW Were The Pyramids Built?
Though I am no technician, I had been very impressed by the theory of the French polymer scientist, professor Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, who had been claiming that the stones of the Giza pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete, or liquid (wet) cement, created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water. According to the Wikipedia article, for a basic view on the professor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Davidovits):
Davidovits was not convinced that the ancient Egyptians possessed the tools or technology to carve and haul the huge (2.5 to 15 ton) limestone blocks that made up the Great Pyramid. Davidovits suggested that the blocks were molded in place by using a form of limestone concrete. According to his theory, a soft limestone with a high kaolinite content was quarried in the wadi on the south of the Giza plateau. It was then dissolved in large, Nile-fed pools until it became a watery slurry. Lime (found in the ash of ancient cooking fires) and natron (also used by the Egyptians in mummification) was mixed in. The pools were then left to evaporate, leaving behind a moist, clay-like mixture. This wet "concrete" would be carried to the construction site where it would be packed into reusable wooden molds. In the next few days the mixture would undergo a chemical hydration reaction similar to the setting of cement.
Using Davidovits' theory, no large gangs would be needed to haul blocks and no huge and unwieldy ramps would be needed to transport the blocks up the side of the pyramid. No chiseling or carving with soft bronze tools would be required to dress their surfaces and new blocks could be cast in place, on top of and pressed against the old blocks. This would account for the unerring precision of the joints of the casing stones (the blocks of the core show tools marks and were cut with much lower tolerances). Proof-of-concept experiments using similar compounds were carried out at Davidovits' geopolymer institute in northern France. It was found that a crew of ten, working with simple hand tools, could build a structure of fourteen, 1.3 to 4.5 ton blocks in a couple of days. According to Davidovits the architects possessed at least two concrete formulas: one for the large structural blocks and another for the white casing stones. He argues earlier pyramids, brick structures, and stone vases were built using similar techniques.
[End of quote]
However, as there appeared to be amongst mainstream pyramid experts little interest - to practically none whatsoever - in what seemed to my mind to be the eminently sensible and scientific thesis of Davidovits, and since I personally did not have the sort of scientific expertise to push the case of the matter, I have tended to lose interest in the theory until now. This was not because I am unprepared to back a supposed rogue ‘maverick’ against the mainstream flow of conforming scholars. My acceptance of the revision of ‘maverick’ scholar, or ‘wayward polymath’, Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky (Ages in Chaos series), against the conventional view of chronology, is clear evidence of this.
Anyway, my interest in the theory of Davidovits has been rekindled by the following article in support of it (http://www.livescience.com/1554-surprising-truth-great-pyramids-built.html):
The Surprising Truth About
How the Great Pyramids Were Built
telling about the discovery along the same lines by one Michel Barsoum, described therein as “a well respected researcher in the field of ceramics”, and “a distinguished professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University”. The authors of this article, Sheila Berninger and Dorilona Rose, write about how Barsoum, initially as a sceptic, came to reconsider the whole matter:
…. Barsoum received an unexpected phone call from Michael Carrell, a friend of a retired colleague of Barsoum, who called to chat with the Egyptian-born Barsoum about how much he knew of the mysteries surrounding the building of the Great Pyramids of Giza, the only remaining of the seven wonders of the ancient world.
The widely accepted theory — that the pyramids were crafted of carved-out giant limestone blocks that workers carried up ramps — had not only not been embraced by everyone, but as important had quite a number of holes.
Burst out laughing
According to the caller, the mysteries had actually been solved by Joseph Davidovits, Director of the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin, France, more than two decades ago. Davidovits claimed that the stones of the pyramids were actually made of a very early form of concrete created using a mixture of limestone, clay, lime, and water.
"It was at this point in the conversation that I burst out laughing," Barsoum said. If the pyramids were indeed cast, he said, someone should have proven it beyond a doubt by now, in this day and age, with just a few hours of electron microscopy.
It turned out that nobody had completely proven the theory … yet.
"What started as a two-hour project turned into a five-year odyssey that I undertook with one of my graduate students, Adrish Ganguly, and a colleague in France, Gilles Hug," Barsoum said.
[End of quote]
The article goes on to explain some of the geology of the matter, “these blocks are not natural limestone”, and to account for what has puzzled Egyptologists over a long period of time: namely, the high water content:
A year and a half later, after extensive scanning electron microscope observations and other testing, Barsoum and his research group finally began to draw some conclusions about the pyramids. They found that the tiniest structures within the inner and outer casing stones were indeed consistent with a reconstituted limestone. The cement binding the limestone aggregate was either silicon dioxide (the building block of quartz) or a calcium and magnesium-rich silicate mineral.
The stones also had a high water content — unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone found on the Giza plateau — and the cementing phases, in both the inner and outer casing stones, were amorphous, in other words, their atoms were not arranged in a regular and periodic array. Sedimentary rocks such as limestone are seldom, if ever, amorphous.
The sample chemistries the researchers found do not exist anywhere in nature. "Therefore," Barsoum said, "it's very improbable that the outer and inner casing stones that we examined were chiseled from a natural limestone block."
More startlingly, Barsoum and another of his graduate students, Aaron Sakulich, recently discovered the presence of silicon dioxide nanoscale spheres (with diameters only billionths of a meter across) in one of the samples. This discovery further confirms that these blocks are not natural limestone.
[End of quote]
The article then comes to the same dramatic (and somewhat poignant) conclusion arrived at also by chronological revisionists along the lines of Dr. Immanuel Velikovsky (though not intended by the authors of the article): We have been misled.
Generations misled
At the end of their most recent paper reporting these findings, the researchers reflect that it is "ironic, sublime and truly humbling" that this 4,500-year-old limestone is so true to the original that it has misled generations of Egyptologists and geologists and, "because the ancient Egyptians were the original — albeit unknowing — nanotechnologists."
As if the scientific evidence isn't enough, Barsoum has pointed out a number of common sense reasons why the pyramids were not likely constructed entirely of chiseled limestone blocks.
Egyptologists are consistently confronted by unanswered questions: How is it possible that some of the blocks are so perfectly matched that not even a human hair can be inserted between them? Why, despite the existence of millions of tons of stone, carved presumably with copper chisels, has not one copper chisel ever been found on the Giza Plateau?
Although Barsoum's research has not answered all of these questions, his work provides insight into some of the key questions. For example, it is now more likely than not that the tops of the pyramids are cast, as it would have been increasingly difficult to drag the stones to the summit.
Also, casting would explain why some of the stones fit so closely together. Still, as with all great mysteries, not every aspect of the pyramids can be explained. How the Egyptians hoisted 70-ton granite slabs halfway up the great pyramid remains as mysterious as ever.
[End of quote]
Whilst ignorance in such cases can be to some degree simply a natural outcome of pioneering efforts to reach right conclusions about an overwhelming mass of early evidence, Velikovskian-inspired revisionists would be well aware, too, of another common factor that is inexcusable: the persistence by mainstream scholars to proceed in the face of hard evidence.
On this sad phenomenon, see e.g. my article:
Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology
(8) Dumb and Dumbfounded archaeology | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
WHEN Were The Pyramids Built?
Apparently, to account for the make-up of the Giza complex, one no longer has to resort to some of the more esoteric views according to which, due to the high water content - and the heavy erosion associated with the Great Sphinx - the Giza complex was constructed hundreds, to thousands, of years before the era of Egypt’s 4th dynasty, where conventional Egyptology (with which I would here fully agree) has the pyramids being built. Robert Bauval, for instance (http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/piramides/esp_piramide_15.htm), would suggest a possible date of as far back as 10,500 BC for the Sphinx and for the initial planning of the Giza necropolis, though not for the Great Pyramid itself, which he locates to “somewhere around 2500 BC”. This is the conventional time for the 4th dynasty (c. 2613 to 2494 BC).
I, too, would unhesitatingly accept that the Giza complex was created during Egypt’s powerful 4th dynasty, but yet with some major differences from convention, whose grossly over-inflated dates have been estimated on the back of the artificial Sothic theory.
See my post-graduate thesis (1994):
Sothic Star Theory of the Egyptian Calendar
http://www.academia.edu/2568413/Sothic_Star_Theory_of_the_Egyptian_Calendar
and, for simpler reading:
The Fall of the Sothic Theory: Egyptian Chronology Revisited
http://www.academia.edu/3665220/The_Fall_of_the_Sothic_Theory_Egyptian_Chronology_Revisited
Hence I would - based on such previous research - depart from conventional Egyptian history, and re-set standard dates - in the case of the 4th dynasty, by (i) radically re-dating this dynasty to approximately a millennium lower on the time scale, but also, through a re-alignment of Egypt’s so-called Old and Middle kingdoms, by (ii) merging the pyramid- and sphinx-making 4th dynasty with the pyramid- and sphinx-making 12th dynasty: an era that revisionists have found highly compatible with the presence of biblical Israel in Egypt (read on).
Israel in Egypt
According to Josephus it was the Israelite captives in Egypt who built the pyramids for the pharaohs. Dr. Ed (Ewald) Metzler tells of this and links it to Middle Kingdom Egypt:
http://moziani.tripod.com/pyramids/ammm_1_5.htm
§ 8. The pyramids were built by the people of Israel, by its twelve tribes known as the
Dodecarchs “twelve rulers” or “dynasts”, whence
the “twelve dynasties” of the pyramid age, and
after their Exodus at the end of the twelfth
dynasty no more pyramids were built in Egypt.22)
This is confirmed by Josephus Flavius, who
writes in his Jewish Antiquities (II, 9) that the
people of Israel suffered from building pyramids
and irrigation ditches, which fits the description
of the last pyramids of the Middle Kingdom in
Fayoum, irrigated by diverting water from the
Nile into the Baher Youssouf canal.23)
….
––––––––––––––
22) A connection between the “Dodecarchs” of Herodotus
and the “twelve dynasties” of Manetho was already suspected by
Francis Llewellyn Griffith, as quoted by Armayor (N. 20) p. 62.
[End of quote]
Astute revisionists, rejecting the conventional view that the Israelites would have been in Egypt, if at all, during the 19th dynasty period of Ramses II ‘the Great’, have pointed to evidences of 12th dynasty pharaohs employing - for their pyramid building purposes - bricks mixed with straw, just as according to the Book of Exodus.
I take this interesting section from Digging up the Past:
http://www.diggingsonline.com/pages/rese/dyns/yusef.htm
The Chronology of Joseph and the Exodus
By the present chronological system of Egyptian history there are serious problems in synchronising the events described in the Biblical account with Egyptian history. Most scholars have therefore concluded that the Bible record is unreliable or distorted. In 1 Kings 6:1 it is stated that "In the 480th year after the children of Israel had come out of the land of Egypt, in the 4th year of Solomon's reign over Israel ... that he began to build the house of the Lord". Most scholars would accept a date of about 970 BC for the beginning of Solomon's reign. His 4th year would be 966 BC, and this being the 480th year after the Exodus would place that event about 1445 BC.
But because of the lack of archaeological evidence both in Egypt and Israel to support this date, most scholars have rejected the information supplied in 1 Kings 6:1, and have accepted a date closer to 1200 BC for the Exodus. But even for this date there is only very flimsy circumstantial evidence, and scholars still disagree as to who was the Pharaoh of the Exodus. Dr Immanual Velikovsky claims that the fault lies, not with the Biblical information, but with the generally accepted chronology of Egypt, and that the Egyptian dates need to be reduced by some 600 years at the time of the Exodus. This would mean that the ruling dynasty of Egypt at the time Exodus would be the 13th dynasty, rather than the 18th or 19 dynasty as is now generally believed, and the pharaohs at the time of Joseph and Moses were the rulers of the 12th dynasty. When this system is adopted there is found to be remarkable agreement between the histories of Egypt and Israel. The following article, the substance of which has appeared in articles already published in Diggings, demonstrate the consistency of the revised chronology.
….
The Oppression of Israel
"Now there arose up a new king over Egypt which knew not Joseph." (Exodus 1:8) Not that the pharaoh was ignorant of Joseph's services to the nation, but he wished to make no recognition of them, and, so far as possible, to bury them in oblivion. Josephus wrote:
"Having in length of time forgotten the benefits received from Joseph, particularly the crown being now come into another family, they became very abusive to the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them." Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, chapter IX, paragraph 1
….
From the historical records we learn that Asiatic slaves were used during the twelfth dynasty.
"The Asiatic inhabitants of the country at this period must have been more times more numerous than has been generally supposed. Whether or not this largely slave population could have played a part in hastening ... the impending Hyksos domination is difficult to say." Cambridge Ancient History, vol II part I, p. 49
"Asian slaves, whether merchandise or prisoners of war, became plentiful in wealthy Egyptian households." Encyclopaedia Britannica 1964, volume 8, p. 35
Gardiner wrote:
"It should be noted, however, that on stelae and in papyri Asiatic slaves are increasingly often mentioned, though there is no means of telling whether they were prisoners of war or had infiltrated into Egypt of their own accord." Egypt of the Pharaohs, p. 133
From the Scripture records, we can say that they did infiltrate into Egypt of their own accord, but were subsequently enslaved.
There was an extensive building program carried on in the Delta where the Israelites were located during this dynasty. The temples of the eighteenth dynasty at Luxor were too far away from the delta to have been built with Israelite slave labour - and they were built of stone. The buildings constructed in the delta under the twelfth dynasty were made of mud brick. Mountains of such bricks went into the city of Avaris and nearby cities.
Moreover the pyramids of Sesostris III and Amenemhet III were also made of mud bricks. The early dynasties' burial places were made of mud brick. The magnificent third and fourth dynasty pyramids were built of stone. For some strange reason these twelfth dynasty rulers reverted to mud brick. It is interesting in this connection to note that Josephus wrote:
"They (the Egyptians) set them (the Israelites) to build pyramids." Antiquities of the Jews, book 2, chapter IX, paragraph 1
On the assumption that the oppression took place during the eighteenth or nineteenth dynasty, this statement is regarded by scholars as a glaring blunder by Josephus, for by this time, according to their view, the Pyramid Age had ended. The pharaohs of the New Kingdom dynasties were buried in the Valley of the Kings near Luxor. But maybe it is the scholars who have blundered, for the kings of the twelfth dynasty did build pyramids, and what is more, they built them of mud bricks mixed with straw. "Ye shall no more give the people straw to make brick as heretofore: let them go and gather straw for themselves." (Exodus 5:7)
Especially relevant is the research done by Rosalie David whose book The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt was published in 1986. She researched the work done by Sir Flinders Petrie in the Faiyyum. Petrie worked in the Faiyyum in 1889 and he explored the pyramids of the 12th dynasty and identified the owners.
He also excavated the remains of a town that had been occupied by the workmen who actually built these pyramids. He wrote:
"The great prize of Illahun was unknown and the unsuspected by anyone. On the desert adjoining the north side of the temple, I saw traces of a town, brick walls, houses and pottery; moreover, the pottery was of a style as yet unknown to me. The town wall started out in a line with the face of the temple; and it dawned on me that this could hardly be other than the town of the pyramid builders, originally called Ha-Usertesen-hotep, and now known as Kahun. A little digging soon put it beyond doubt, as we found cylinders of the age, and no other; so that it was evident that I actually had in hand an unaltered town of the twelfth dynasty, regularly laid out by the royal architect for the workmen and stores required in building the pyramid and its temple. After a few holes had been made, I formed up the workmen in a line along the outmost street, and regularly cleared the first line of chambers, turning the stuff into the street; then the chambers beyond those were emptied into them; and so line after line, block after block, almost every room in the town was emptied out and searched." Ten Years Digging in Egypt, pp. 112 - 113
From the unidentified pottery and other evidence, Petrie concluded that the occupants had been foreigners. Expanding on this thought Rosalie David has an entire chapter headed "The foreign population at Kahun." She wrote:
"From his excavations at Kahun, Petrie formed the opinion that a certain element of the population there had come from outside Egypt." The Pyramid Builders of Ancient Egypt, p. 175
"It is undeniable that the inhabitants used foreign wares which were derived from the Aegean islands or from Syria-Palestine." p. 188.
"It is apparent that the Asiatics were present in the town in some numbers, and this may reflect the situation elsewhere in Egypt.
It can be stated that these people were loosely classed by Egyptians as 'Asiatics', although their exact homeland in Syria or Palestine cannot be determined... The reason for their presence in Egypt remains unclear." pp. 190-191.
Neither Petrie nor David guessed that these Asiatics were the Israelites because they unquestioningly accept the standard chronology. Velikovsky's views have so far not been widely accepted by the archaeological world, but obviously the evidence fits the Biblical records in a remarkable way.
[End of quote]
Whilst many revisionists seem to have arrived at this same conclusion, that the 12th dynasty era fits very well indeed as the Era of the Oppression of Israel in Egypt, a lot of these, including contributors to Digging up the Past, have continued to follow the conventional view in its separation of the Old and Middle kingdoms. Consequently, they have missed out on what other revisionists believe to be the vital connection of the biblical Joseph with the genius Imhotep of Egypt’s 3rd dynasty. I strongly favour this connection of Joseph with Imhotep.
See e.g. my article:
Enigmatic Imhotep - did he really exist?
(8) Enigmatic Imhotep - did he really exist? | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
And why might not the Israelites have (together with slaves from other nations) built pyramids both of stone (but also as we have seen above using ancient cement) and later - perhaps as materials became scarcer - of bricks mixed with straw?
Egypt’s Old and Middle Kingdoms were, I believe, far closer in time than is conventionally thought. The following samples that might indicate this necessary shortening of eras are taken entirely from N. Grimal’s A History of Ancient Egypt (Blackwell 1994):
P. 67:
“Like his Third Dynasty predecessors, Djoser and Nebka, Snofru soon became a legendary figure, and literature in later periods credited him with a genial personality. He was even deified in the Middle Kingdom, becoming the ideal king whom later Egyptian rulers such as Ammenemes I sought to emulate when they were attempting to legtimize their power”.
P. 71:
“… texts that describe the Fourth Dynasty kings …. It was … quite logical for the Egyptians of the Middle Kingdom and later to link those past rulers represented primarily by their buildings with the greatest tendencies towards immoderation, thus distorting the real situation (Posener 1969a: 13). However, it is difficult to accommodate within this theory the fact that Snofru’s reputation remained untarnished when he built more pyramids than any of his successors”.
P. 73
“A Twelfth Dynasty graffito found in the Wadi Hammamat includes Djedefhor and his half-brother Baefre in the succession of Cheops after Chephren”.
P. 79
“The attribution of the Maxims to Ptahhotep does not necessarily mean that he was the actual author: the oldest versions date to the Middle Kingdom, and there is no proof that they were originally composed in the Old Kingdom, or, more specifically, at the end of the Fifth Dynasty. The question, moreover, is of no great importance”.
Pp. 80-81
{Teti, I have tentatively proposed as being the same pharaoh as Amenemes/Ammenemes I, based on (a) being a founder of a dynasty; (b) having same Horus name; (c) being assassinated. Now, Pepi I and Chephren were married to an Ankhesenmerire/ Meresankh – I have taken Chephren to have been the foster father-in-law of Moses, with his wife Meresankh being Moses’ Egyptian ‘mother’, traditionally, Merris. Both Pepi I and Chephren had substantial reigns}.
Grimal notes the likenesses:
“[Teti’s] adoption of the Horus name Sehetep-tawy (‘He who pacifies the Two Lands’) was an indication of the political programme upon which he embarked. … this Horus name was to reappear in titulatures throughout subsequent Egyptian history, always in connection with such kings as Ammenemes I … [etc.]”.
“Manetho says that Teti was assassinated, and it is this claim that has led to the idea of growing civil disorder, a second similarity with the reign of Ammenemes I”.
P. 84:
“[Pepy I] … an unmistakable return to ancient values: Pepy I changed his coronation name from Neferdjahor to Merire (‘The devotee of Ra’)”.
P. 146:
“The words of Khety III are in fact simply the transposal into the king’s mouth of the Old Kingdom Maxims”.
P. 159:
[Ammenemes I]. Like his predecessors in the Fifth Dynasty, the new ruler used literature to publicize the proofs of his legitimacy. He turned to the genre of prophecy: a premonitory recital placed in the mouth of Neferti, a Heliopolitan sage who bears certain similarities to the magician Djedi in Papyrus Westcar. Like Djedi, Neferti is summoned to the court of King Snofru, in whose reign the story is supposed to have taken place”.
P. 164:
“[Sesostris I]. Having revived the Heliopolitan tradition of taking Neferkare as his coronation name …”.
P. 165:
“There is even evidence of a Twelfth Dynasty cult of Snofru in the region of modern Ankara”.
P. 171:
“Ammenemes IV reigned for a little less than ten years and by the time he died the country was once more moving into a decline. The reasons were similar to those that conspired to end the Old Kingdom”.
P. 173:
“… Mentuhotpe II ordered the construction of a funerary complex modelled on the Old Kingdom royal tombs, with its valley temple, causeway and mortuary temple”.
P. 177:
“… Mentuhotpe II’[s] … successors … returned to the Memphite system for their funerary complexes. They chose sites to the south of Saqqara and the plans of their funerary installations drew on the architectural forms of the end of the Sixth Dynasty”.
…. The mortuary temple was built during the Ammenemes I’s ‘co-regency’ with Sesostris I. The ramp and the surrounding complex were an enlarged version of Pepy II’s”.
P. 178:
“The rest of [Sesostris I’s el-Lisht] complex was again modelled on that of Pepy II”.
Pp. 178-179:
“[Ammenemes III’s ‘black pyramid’ and mortuary structure at Dahshur]. The complex infrastructure contained a granite sarcophagus which was decorated with a replica of the enclosure wall of the Step Pyramid complex of Djoser at Saqqara (Edwards 1985: 211-12)”.
“[Ammenemes III’s pyramid and mortuary temple at Harawa]. This was clearly a sed festival installation, comparable to the jubilee complex of Djoser at Saqqara, with which Ammenemes’ structure has several similarities”.
“The tradition of the Old Kingdom continued to influence Middle Kingdom royal statuary …”.
P. 180:
“The diversity of styles was accompanied by a general return to the royal tradition, which was expressed in the form of a variety of statues representing kings from past times, such as those of Sahure, Neuserre, Inyotef and Djoser created during the reign of Sesostris II”.
P. 181:
“A comparable set of statures represents Ammenemes III (Cairo, Egyptian Museum CG 385 from Hawara) … showing the king kneeling to present wine vessels, a type previously encountered at the end of the Old Kingdom (Cairo, Egyptian Museum CG 42013 …) …".
[End of quotes]
So far, my attempts to align the 3rd with the 11th, and the 4th (including the 6th) with the 12th, dynasties, have been fairly sketchy. Regarding the latter pairing 4th (6th) and 12th, I have in the past put together the following bits and pieces in relation to Moses and the Book of Exodus:
4th Dynasty
From the 4th dynasty, we gain certain elements that are relevant to the early career of Moses. Firstly we have a strong founder-king, Cheops (Egyptian Khufu), builder of the great pyramid at Giza, who would be a good candidate for "the new king" during the infancy of Moses who set the Israelite slaves to work with crushing labour (Exodus 1:8). This would support the testimony of Josephus that the Israelites built pyramids for the pharaohs, and it would explain from whence came the abundance of manpower for pyramid building. Cheap slave labour.
"... they became very abusive toward the Israelites, and contrived many ways of afflicting them; for they enjoined them to cut a great number of channels for the river, and to build walls for their cities and ramparts, that they might restrain the river, and hinder its waters from stagnating, upon its running over its banks: they set them also to build pyramids, and by all this wore them out; and forced them to learn all sorts of mechanical arts, and to accustom them to hard labor." ….
The widespread presence of Asiatics in Egypt at the time would help to explain the large number of Israelites said to be in the land. Pharaoh would have used as slaves other Syro-Palestinians, too, plus Libyans and Nubians. As precious little though is known of Cheops … despite his being powerful enough to build one of the Seven Wonders of the World, we shall need to fill him out later with his 12th dynasty alter ego.
In Cheops' daughter, Mer-es-ankh [III], we have the Merris of tradition who retrieved the baby Moses from the water. The name Mer-es-ankh consists basically of two elements, Meres and ankh, the latter being the 'life' symbol for Egypt worn by people even today.
Mer-es-ankh married Chephren (Egyptian, Ka-kheper-re), builder of the second Giza pyramid and probably of the Great Sphinx. He thus became Moses' f/father-in-law. Chephren is the Chenephres of tradition …. Prince Moses, now a thorough-going 'Egyptian' (cf. Exodus 2:19), must have been his loyal subject. "Now Moses was taught all the wisdom of the Egyptians and became a man of power both in his speech and in his actions." (Acts 7:22) Tradition has Moses leading armies for Chenephres as far as Ethiopia. Whilst this may seem a bit strained in a 4th dynasty context, we shall see that it is perfectly appropriate in a 12th dynasty one, when we uncover Chephren's alter ego.
….
The Name 'Moses'
'Moses' is generally thought to be identified with the Egyptian ms (pronounced Mes), and derived from the root msy, 'conceive, give birth', in the sense of 'child, son of so-and-so'. Egyptologists point to names like Thut-mose, 'Son of [the god] Thoth' and Ra-meses, 'Son of [the god] Ra', which incorporate the ms element with the theophoric (god-name). Professor A. Yahuda … however, strongly disagreed with this standard explanation, claiming that the identification of Moshe with ms, or msy, whilst "having the appearance of being in order" is in fact "very far-fetched." The whole explanation "falls to the ground", he wrote, in view of the fact that the very name 'Rameses', in which ms is held to be of the same root as the Hebrew mes in Moshe, is twice transliterated in the Exodus narrative (1:11 and 12:37), not as should be expected by Ramešes, but by Rameses. Yahuda considered it "unthinkable" that the same Egyptian word ms could be reproduced at one time as Moshe and at another as Mose, not only "in two different vocalizations but also in two sibilants [i.e. sh and s] which etymologically and phonetically are quite different." As to Yahuda's own account of the name, Moshe, from the elements mw and še (i.e. Mwše), I am half in agreement with him. I can readily accept his view that the first element of the name corresponds to Egyptian, mw, meaning 'water' (vocalised as Mu, alternatively Nu …).
Yahuda claimed that mw here stands metaphorically for 'seed' in the sense of 'child, son' [e.g. mw ntry 'divine water' of So-and-so = 'divine son'].
But perhaps his explanation of the second element, as še, meaning 'pond, lake, expanse of water', "... applied here to the Nile which was called by the Egyptians also še", may give rise to a redundancy. Whilst Yahuda's overall conclusion, that "the name means simply 'Child of the Nile'", is ingenious, I rather find the impression he creates of Moses as a Watery Seed of the Nile to be a bit too, well, watery for my liking. For a possible further clue on the name 'Moses' we shall need to turn to the 12th dynasty, to the famous The Story of Sinuhe … the Egyptian Moses.
The 12th Dynasty and The Story of Sinuhe
From the 12th dynasty, we gain certain further elements that are relevant to the early career of Moses. Once again we have a strong founder-king, Amenemes I, who will enable us to fill out the virtually unknown Cheops as "the new king" of Exodus 1:8. This new ruler "knew not Joseph", not in the sense of never having heard of him (the great Imhotep, still 'known' about a millennium and a half later in Ptolemaïc times), but in the Hebrew sense of 'not knowing', presumably , that is, 'not recognising' what Joseph had done for Egypt. {But also not having been alive during the lifetime of Joseph}. The reign of Amenemes I was, deliberately, an abrupt break with the past. The beginning of the 12th dynasty marks not only a new dynasty, but an entirely new order. Amenemes I celebrated his accession by adopting the Horus name: Wehem-Meswt ("He who repeats births"), thought to indicate that he was "the first of a new line" … that he was "thereby consciously identifying himself as the inaugurator of a renaissance, or new era in his country's history." …. Amenemes I is thought actually to have been a commoner, originally from southern Egypt …. Further on … I shall attempt to track down his beginnings. This will be done via the 6th dynasty, which too will be found to be contemporaneous with the 4th and 12th.
"The Prophecy of Neferti", relating to the time of Amenemes I, shows the same concern in Egypt for the growing presence of Asiatics in the eastern Delta as was said to occupy the mind of the new pharaoh of Exodus, seeing the Israelites as a political threat (1:9). That Asiatics were particularly abundant in Egypt at the time is apparent from the Cambridge Ancient History …: "The Asiatic inhabitants of the country at this period [of the Twelfth Dynasty] must have been many times more numerous than has been generally supposed ...".
D. Down gives the account of Sir Flinders Petrie who, working in the Fayyûm in 1899, made the important discovery of the town of Illahûn [Kahun], which Petrie described as "an unaltered town of the twelfth dynasty" …. Of the 'Asiatic' presence in this pyramid builders' town, Rosalie David (who is in charge of the Egyptian branch of the Manchester Museum) has written …:
It is apparent that the Asiatics were present in the town in some numbers, and this may have reflected the situation elsewhere in Egypt. It can be stated that these people were loosely classed by Egyptians as 'Asiatics', although their exact home-land in Syria or Palestine cannot be determined ... The reason for their presence in Egypt remains unclear.
Undoubtedly, the 'Asiatics' were dwelling in Illahûn largely to raise pyramids for the glory of the pharaohs. Is there any documentary evidence that 'Asiatics' in Egypt acted as slaves or servants to the Egyptians? "Evidence is not lacking to indicate that these Asiatics became slaves", Down has written with reference to the Brooklyn Papyrus …. Egyptian households at this time were filled with Asiatic slaves, some of whom bore biblical names. Of the seventy-seven legible names of the servants of an Egyptian woman called Senebtisi recorded on the verso of this document, forty-eight are (like the Hebrews) NW Semitic. In fact, the name "Shiphrah" is identical to that borne by one of the Hebrew midwives whom Pharaoh had commanded to kill the male babies (Exodus 1:15). "Asian slaves, whether merchandise or prisoners of war, became plentiful in wealthy Egyptian households [prior to the New Kingdom]", we read in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. ….
Amenemes I was represented in the 'prophecy' - as with the 'new pharaoh' of Exodus - as one who would set about rectifying the problem. To this end he completely reorganised the administration of Egypt, transferring the from Thebes in the south to Ithtowe in the north, just below the Nile Delta. He allowed those nomarchs who supported his cause to retain their power. He built on a grand scale. Egypt was employing massive slave labour, not only in the Giza area, but also in the eastern Delta region where the Israelites were said to have settled at the time of Joseph. Professor J. Breasted provided ample evidence to show that the powerful 12th dynasty pharaohs carried out an enormous building program whose centre was in the Delta region. More specifically, this building occurred in the eastern Delta region which included the very area that comprised the land of Goshen where the Israelites first settled …. "... in the eastern part [of the Delta], especially at Tanis and Bubastis, ... massive remains still show the interest which the Twelfth Dynasty manifested in the Delta cities." Today, archaeologists recognise the extant remains of the construction under these kings as representing a mere fraction of the original; the major part having been destroyed by the vandalism of the New Kingdom pharaohs (such as Ramses II).
The Biblical account states that: "... they made their lives bitter with hard bondage, in mortar and in brick". (Exodus 1:14).
According to the Book of Exodus, not only did the Egyptians enslave the Israelites, to keep them in check, but Pharaoh even gave orders for all their male babies to be slain at birth, to stem the numbers (1:15-16). In the light of this grim episode, an intriguing aspect of Sir Flinders Petrie's discoveries was the unusual number of infant burials beneath the floors of the houses of Illahûn. Rosalie David thus describes Petrie's find …:
"Larger wooden boxes, probably used to store clothing and other possessions, were discovered underneath the floors of many houses at Kahun. They contained babies, sometimes buried two to three to a box, and aged only a few months at death .... Internment of bodies at domestic sites was not an Egyptian custom, although such practices occurred in other areas of the ancient Near East".
David Rohl …, moreover, has noted multiple graves in the Delta region, at Tell el-Daba during the same approximate period, had an excessively large proportion of babies:
"... it was discovered that there was a higher percentage of infant burials ... than is normally found at archaeological sites of the ancient world. Sixty-five per cent of all the burials were those of children under the age of eighteen months. Based on modern statistical evidence obtained from pre-modern societies we would expect the infant mortality rate to be around twenty to thirty per cent. Could this be explained by the slaughter of the Israelite infant males by the Egyptians?"
Amenemes I assumed a co-regency with Sesostris I …, who acted as the king's deputy and was entrusted with the control of the army, responsible for Libya and Ethiopia. Also, late in his reign, Amenemes undertook campaigns into Ethiopia (Nubia), opening up to him the diorite quarries at Wadi Toshka …. And he campaigned against the Bedouin in the Sinai, thereby safeguarding the turquoise mining operations at Serabit el-Khadem …. It is at this point in history that the 4th and 12th dynasties can really be found to converge, thus seeming to vindicate Courville's view of the contemporaneity of the two kingdoms. For instance, Sesostris I had, as another of his names, Kheper-ka-re; a name containing the exact same elements as we had discovered in the Egyptian name of (the Greek version) Chephren …. Thus, as far as names go, Sesostris I (Kheper-ka-re) is as equally likely as Chephren (Kha-kheper-re) to have been Chenephres, the traditional f/father-in-law of Moses.
….
Then there is the further seemingly identifying element of Sphinx obsession in the case of 'these' prolific builders. This is quite obvious with Chephren, in his building of the Great Sphinx of Giza. And it is again obvious in the case of Sesostris I, from his building works, because he was an obsessive builder of sphinxes. For example: …:
Gold was brought also from mines east of Koptos and hard stone from the nearby Wãdi Hammãmãt, where, in Sesostris I's thirty-eighth year, an expedition of more than seventeen thousand men quarried the blocks for sixty sphinxes and one hundred and fifty statues.
There is also the fact of the 12th dynasty's extension of empire into Ethiopia, where tradition has prince Moses playing so important a rôle.
But the most likely reason for Sesostris I's being the pharaoh whom Moses last served before his flight is that the high official Sinuhe, the 'Moses' of Egyptian folklore, was the servant of Sesostris I. Professor Anati is amongst many who have perceived what are in fact quite startling likenesses between the Exodus account of Moses' flight to Midian/ Arabia and Egypt's account of Sinuhe …:
"The account of Moses in the land of Midian [Exodus 2:15-25] describes how he settled there for several years and formed a family .... Apparently the biblical account also corresponds quite closely to an Egyptian text ... which tells the story of Sinuhe, an officer of Pharaoh Amen-em-het I who lived in the harem and served the hereditary princess. It seems that he committed a violation of some sort, and when the Pharaoh died Sinuhe feared his successor. He fled into Asia, 'in the land of Yaa near the desert', where he was welcomed by a local chieftain.
He took the chieftain's eldest daughter as his wife, raised a family, and tended his father-in-law's pastures and flocks. Finally he was called back to Egypt and returned to his homeland from exile. The chronicle of Sinuhe contains many elements in common with the biblical account of Moses, who escaped to Midian, and his father-in-law, Jethro. It is hard to believe that these similarities are pure coincidence. It seems, instead, quite legitimate to hypothesize that the two accounts have a common matrix that cannot have originated later than the twentieth century B.C". [sic]….
Before we fill out the historical aspects further, and bring to a conclusion the 4th dynasty in its relation to the 12th - and both in relation to prince Moses - we need to conclude our analysis of Moses' name.
The Name 'Moses' (Part Two)
Is it possible to merge the name Sinuhe with the Egyptian name for Moses? And can the former throw any light on the meaning of the latter? I think that the name Sinuhe…, when unravelled, may provide a needed clue. The first part of Sinuhe is variously given as Si …, or Sa …, and translated as 'Son of ...'.
Combining Yahuda's element Mw (i.e. Mu or Nu) with the Sa element from [Sinuhe], we arrive at Sa-mu or Sa-nu, 'Son [or Child] of the Nile', the very same conclusion that Yahuda had reached though via different means. Perhaps 'Child of the Water' ('Water- baby') is more accurate. We can easily discern in the name Sinuhe the two elements Sa-nu …, meaning 'Son [Child] of the Water.' Now I suggest that Sinuhe (var. Sanehat, Samehit) is composed of these same two elements, Sa and Mu (Nu), in reverse (quite a common feature of Egyptian names), with the addition of the theophoric: either Hat, for the goddess Hathor (as in Sanehat), or Re. Originally, Sinuhe was probably something like Sa-nu-re. Now this is a genuine Egyptian name, being found, element for element, in the name of the Fifth Dynasty Pharaoh, N(e)userre, and the Fourth Dynasty Pharaoh, My-ce-ri[nus] (i.e., the Greek version of Menkaure).
Moses' full Egyptian name would therefore have meant, e.g: 'Child Drawn from the Water by Hathor', of which goddess pharaoh's daughter was apparently a personification: "She named him Moses, 'because', she said, 'I drew him out of the water'." (Exodus 2:10). Now notably we find in Egyptian mythology that Hathor was identified with the wet-nurse of Horus, the Moses-like baby god drawn from the marshes of the Nile Delta. And from this legend of Horus I suggest that the Greeks got their concept of Hermes, that is, Hor-mes, "Son of Hathor"; a name carrying exactly the same meaning as Sanehat.
Later, of course, the Yahwistic (monotheistic) Moses would have dropped from his name any Egyptian theophoric elements.
….
…
Sinuhe had impressive official titles such as: "... hereditary prince, royal seal-bearer, confidential friend ... follower ... of the house of the hereditary princess, the greatly favoured, the royal wife." Petrie … claimed that these titles were of a very high rank, implying that Sinuhe was the son either of the king or of a great noble.
And his position in the queen's household shows him to have been of importance, quite familiar with the royal family. That someone like Moses could realistically have become a prince of Egypt is affirmed by archaeologist J. Hoffmeier …. The Egyptian court, he says, did rear and educate foreign-born princes, who then bore the title "child of the nursery." Hoffmeier believes that Moses was one of these privileged foreigners, some of whom went on to serve as high officials in their adopted land.
We can now tabulate our 4th and 12th dynasty synthesis around Moses in the following basic fashion:
Fourth/Twelfth Dynasty Integration
1. Cheops = Amenemes I = Moses' f/grand-father;
2. Chephren = Sesostris I = Moses' f/father-in-law;
3. {Mycerinus?} = Sinuhe = Moses.
….
The following is also highly tentative and incomplete:
Shortening the Twelfth Dynasty
According to this scenario, supported by Exodus 4:19, there would be no room for the conventional 12th dynasty sequence of pharaohs Amenemes and Sesostris (3-4 of each name). …. The founder-pharaoh Amenemes I is, I now suggest, the same person as the mighty Amenemes III; whilst Sesostris I is to be equated with the equally mighty Sesostris III. The name Kheper-ka-ra is common, in variant form, to Sesostris I-II-III …. And Courville refers to the "striking discrepancy between the latest monumental inscription of Sesostris II (10th year) and the total figure as given by Manetho (48 years)", as indicating that there was "something unusual in the situation at this point" …. The unusual situation I suggest is simply that Sesostris II stands in need of his alter ego's. Murphie thinks that Amenemes III, as a master of water management, is a candidate also for the legendary Menes himself, unifier of Egypt …:
Ammenemes III ... was a particularly strong ruler, renowned for massive projects involving water storage and channelling on a gargantuan scale. He is credited with diverting much of the Nile flow into the Fayuum depression to create what became known as lake Moeris (the lake Nasser project of his time).
Indeed if a newcomer to Egyptian history was challenged to identify a candidate for the legendary Menes (organiser of a system of dykes and channels to bring the river Nile under control) on the basis of works alone, (ignoring the remarkable similarity in names), he could do far worse than nominate Ammenemes for the role. ...
The grim-faced depictions of the 12th dynasty kings, Amenemes III and Sesostris III, have been commented upon by conventional and revisionist scholars alike. Thus Cambridge Ancient History has noted with regard to the former …: "The numerous portraits of [Amenemes] III include a group of statues and sphinxes from Tanis and the Faiyûm, which, from their curiously brutal style and strange accessories, were once thought to be monuments of the Hyksos kings." For revisionists, these pharaohs can represent the cruel taskmasters who forced the Israelites to build using bricks mixed with straw (Exodus 5:7, 8) …. This combination of materials can clearly be seen for example in Amenemes III's Dahshur pyramid.
Now when one slots Amenemes III into his rightful place at the beginning of the 12th dynasty, there emerges a very comprehensive picture of the régime under which captive Israel toiled. Amenemes III, according to Grimal …:
"... was respected and honoured [sic] from Kerma to Byblos and during his reign numerous eastern workers, from peasants to soldiers and craftsmen came [sic] to Egypt. This influx [sic] of foreign workers resulted both from the growth in Egyptian influence abroad and from the need for extra workmen to help exploit the valuable resources of Egypt itself. For forty-five years [Amenemes] III ruled a country that had reached a peak of prosperity ... and the exploitation of the Faiyûm went hand in hand with the development of irrigation and an enormous growth in mining and quarrying activities".
The Faiyûm was a huge oasis, about 80 km S.W. of Memphis, which offered the prospect of a completely new area of cultivable land. Exodus 1:14 tells of the Israelite slaves doing "all kinds of work in the fields." Mining and quarrying also, apparently, would have been part of the immense slave-labour effort. Grimal continues …:
"In the Sinai region the exploitation of the turquoise and copper mines reached unprecedented heights: between the ninth and forty-fifth years of [Amenemes III's] reign no less than forty-nine texts were inscribed at Serabit el-Khadim .... The seasonal encampments of the miners were transformed into virtually permanent settlements, with houses, fortifications, wells or cisterns, and even cemeteries. The temple of Hathor at Serabit el-Khadim was enlarged .... The expeditions to quarries elsewhere in Egypt also proliferated ...". ….
Here, surely, was all the organisation and slave work force needed for the building of the (contemporary) Giza pyramids as well!
Amenemes III, it seems, was a complete dictator …:
"The economic activity formed the basis for the numerous building works that make the reign of [Amenemes] III one of the summits of state absolutism. Excavations at Biahmu revealed two colossal granite statues of the seated figure of [Amenemes] III .... Above all, he built himself two [sic] pyramids, one at Dahshur and the other at Hawara…. Beside the Hawara pyramid were found the remains of his mortuary temple, which Strabo described as the Labyrinth".
….
The Jealousy of Chenephres
We already alluded to the fact that pharaoh Chenephres had become jealous of prince Moses - who had been growing in popularity with the people because of his military successes - and had set his mind upon killing Moses. There is a perfect parallel here to Saul's jealousy of David for the very same reasons (I Samuel 18:6-9).
But perhaps the jealousy of Chenephres went even further than all this, to regicide. The assassination of Amenemes I may be implicit in Grimal's likening of the growing civil disorder in the reign of Teti - founder of the 6th dynasty - leading to Teti's assassination, to what happened during the reign of Amenemes I ….
The whole drama may have been re-told again in the legend of Osiris and Set (Seth)…. Let me briefly recall that legend, inserting real names in square brackets after the names of the gods and goddesses:
"Osiris [Khufu/Amemenes] was King of Egypt. Set [Chephren/Sesostris], his brother, urged on by jealousy, resolved to dethrone him and put him to death. The faithful Isis [wife of the King], discovered this criminal design and succeeded for some time in foiling the plots of Set, but his skilful intrigues ended by triumphing over Osiris whom he treacherously assassinated. Set then seized the throne of Egypt".
Enter Horus the Avenger whom we have already associated, in his infancy, with Moses. The chronology is a bit askew, but it is only a legend after all:
"... Isis [here, Moses' Hebrew mother] then gave birth to Horus [Moses] in the marshes of the Delta, near the sacred town of Buto, with the help of the goddess Hathor [Meresankh III, Moses' f/mother]. .... Horus, brought up by his mother amid a thousand dangers, driven to seek a sanctuary in the desert [Midian] to escape the implacable pursuit of Set, grew at last to maturity, and dethroned Set".
Clearly this story has its basis during Moses' career as a prince of Egypt.
Grimal has noted other striking likenesses, too, between Teti and Amenemes I, though he would conventionally date the former about half a millennium earlier than Amenemes. They shared the same throne name, Sehetibre, and the same Horus name, Sehetep-tawy (meaning "He who pacifies the Two Lands") ….
Linking the 4th/12th Dynasty with the 6th Dynasty
We may be able to trace the rise of the 4th dynasty's Khufu (Cheops) to the 6th dynasty, to the wealthy noble from Abydos in the south, called Khui. The latter had a daughter called Ankhenesmerire, in whose name are contained all the elements of Mer-es-ankh, daughter of the Pharaoh who became Moses' adopted mother and married Chephren/ Chenephres. This family relationship may again be duplicated in that Piops I (Cheops?) had a daughter Ankhenesmerire whom his 'son' Merenre I (Chephren/Sesostris?) married. These characters, it seems, have been dupli/triplicated.
Further possible links with the 6th dynasty are the likenesses between the latter's founder, Teti, and Amenemes I, as pointed out by historians. Despite the little that these admit to knowing of Teti - and the fact that they would have him pre-dating the 12th dynasty by half a millennium - historians have noted that Teti shared some common features with Amenemes I, including the same throne name, Sehetibre, the same Horus name, Sehetep-tawy ("He who pacifies the Two Lands"), and the likelihood that death came in 'both' cases through assassination ….
….
It is noticeable that both the 6th and 12th dynasties ended with a woman ruler, respectively Nitocris and Sobek-neferure, whom I suspect was the same person, suggesting that there were no more male members left of the royal family (after the biblical plagues) …:
The Turin Canon lists Nitocris immediately after Merenere II, describing her as the 'King of Upper and Lower Egypt'. This woman, whose fame grew in the Ptolemaic period in the guise of the legendary Rhodopis ... courtesan ... was the first known queen to exercise political power over Egypt.
Nofer-ka-ra (Nefer-kare) of the 6th dynasty may have been the ill-fated 'first born son' who died in the tenth plague (Exodus 12:29), since it was during his lifetime that Egypt was plunged into darkness. ….
Whilst W. Stiebing would, contrary to Courville's view, flatly reject any notion of contemporaneity between the 6th and 12th dynasties …:
This revision, however, ignores the fact that while Palestinian EB III pottery is found in Sixth Dynasty tombs, it is not found in tombs belonging to the supposedly contemporaneous Twelfth Dynasty. It also ignores stylistic differences and developments in tomb reliefs and inscriptions which indicate that the Old and Middle Kingdoms were not contemporaneous .... there might be some substantial architectural evidence to support Courville.
Thus J. Osgood proposes a possible close relationship between the 6th and 12th dynasty mortuary temples …:
"Edwards certainly opens the possibility unconsciously when referring to the pyramid of Sesostris the First ….:
"... and the extent to which its Mortuary Temple was copied from the Mortuary Temples of the VIth dynasty, as illustrated by that of Pepi II …is clearly evident."
The return of a culture to what it was before ... after some three hundred years must be an uncommon event. The theoretical possibility that the two cultures, the Twelfth and the Sixth Dynasties were in fact contemporary and followed a common pattern of Mortuary Temple must be borne in mind as real".
The historic Moses I now believe to be both Weni of the Sixth Dynasty and Mentuhotep of the Twelfth Dynasty, the Vizier and Chief Judge of Egypt:
Historical Moses may be Weni and Mentuhotep
(8) Historical Moses may be Weni and Mentuhotep | Damien Mackey - Academia.edu
WHY Were The Pyramids Built?
With Imhotep, the first pyramid builder, architect of the wondrous Step Pyramid at Saqqara, now identified as a Hebrew, as the biblical Joseph, then perhaps we might find a clue in the Book of Genesis to the why of at least this particular pyramid. My suggestion in the past has been that the Step Pyramid, built by Joseph-Imhotep, was “a ‘material icon’ of his father Jacob’s vision of a ladder (or staircase or ramp) to heaven”. Genesis 28:12: “[Jacob] had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on the earth, with its top reaching to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it”.
And this seemingly esoteric view actually has some degree of support from conventional Egyptology.
We read at the beginning the real truth about how the pyramids were built. Well, in 2003, Joyce Tyldesley provided, in her book on the pyramids, what she considered to be: Pyramids: The Real Story Behind Egypt’s Most Ancient Monuments (emphasis added):
http://joycetyldesley.co.uk/pyramids-the-real-story/
The Old Kingdom pharaohs believed that death was the beginning of eternal life. That they would rise from their tombs to shimmer in the deep blue night as an unsetting star. Or that they would sail endlessly across the watery heavens in the shining boat of the sun god Re. To help them on their way they built pyramids: huge ramps or stairways charged with the most potent magic, leading directly to the sky. These massive monuments came to symbolize the might of a powerful nation ruled by a semi-divine god king.
[End of quote]
I think that Joyce Tyldesley is not far wrong on this one. But it was originally inspired by Hebrew, not by Egyptian, genius.
{Pharaoh Unas of the 5th dynasty also talks about a ‘ladder to heaven’ (in the Pyramid Texts).
Given Joseph’s/Imhotep’s pioneering pyramid building, coupled with Davidovits’ view that: “… the architects possessed at least two concrete formulas: one for the large structural blocks and another for the white casing stones … earlier pyramids, brick structures, and stone vases were built using similar techniques”, then might not the genius Joseph, a Hebrew, have brought this cement technology to Egypt?
Finally, I find highly plausible Robert Bauval’s thesis below about the Giza pyramids: http://www.bibliotecapleyades.net/piramides/esp_piramide_8.htm#
The Orion Mystery
The three pyramids of Giza are a perfect reproduction of the 3 stars of Orion’s belt:
• Like the pyramids, the three stars of Orion are not perfectly aligned, the smallest of them is slightly offset to the East.
• All three are slanted in a Southwesterly direction (Note the exact match in the animation).
• Their orientation to the Nile recreates Orion’s orientation to the Milky Way.
• The layout of the pyramids, and their relative sizes were a deliberate design plan, and not the result of three king’s enormous egos as been preached as dogma by the so-called Egyptologists.
Imhotep (Joseph) introduces polished stone
“Davidovits believes that Imhotep created two different chemical formulas:
a very simple one for the casting of the limestone core blocks, and another one
to produce the high quality stones of the exterior layer”.
Philip Coppens
Tradition has the biblical Joseph of Egypt as a highly inventive man.
He is supposed to have introduced the plough to Egypt (Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich). And, along such lines, the Alexandrian Jew Artapanus tells, according to Gregg Gardner and Kevin Lee Osterloh (Antiquity in Antiquity: Jewish and Christian Pasts in the Greco-Roman World, p. 61): “… Egyptian agriculture is in disorder (àτáκτως), the region is undivided and the weak suffer at the hands of the strong. Joseph reorganizes the land, re-cultivates barren land and gives land to the priests …”.
This same Joseph, the Greeks would later ‘reconstruct’ as the sage, “Thales”, the so-called “Father of Philosophy”, and also as the one who was supposed to have invented the word, philosophy, “Pythagoras”.
Two ‘composite’, non-historical characters.
The legend that has Thales measuring the height of the pyramids arises from the fact that Joseph, according to Artapanus (loc. cit.): “… also invents standards of measure”.
This would have enabled Joseph, as the genius Imhotep of Egypt’s Third Dynasty, to build the Step Pyramid of Saqqara that is attributed to him.
Pharaoh and his officials thought that Joseph was an exceptional person, the wisest of the wise
(Genesis 41:38-43):
“So Pharaoh asked them, ‘Can we find anyone like this man, one in whom is the spirit of God?’
Then Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘Since God has made all this known to you, there is no one so discerning and wise as you. You shall be in charge of my palace, and all my people are to submit to your orders. Only with respect to the throne will I be greater than you’.
So Pharaoh said to Joseph, ‘I hereby put you in charge of the whole land of Egypt’. Then Pharaoh took his signet ring from his finger and put it on Joseph’s finger. He dressed him in robes of fine linen and put a gold chain around his neck. He had him ride in a chariot as his second-in-command, and people shouted before him, ‘Make way!’ Thus he put him in charge of the whole land of Egypt”.
Now Philip Coppens will, in his discussion of the admirable contribution of Joseph Davidovits’ to the subject of how the Giza pyramids were really built, tell of Imhotep’s (Joseph’s) further scientific contributions (http://philipcoppens.com/davidovits.html):
The Pyramid Heretic
For more than thirty years, Joseph Davidovits’ scientific observations have pushed most Egyptologists into histrionics. His findings are that the blocks of the Great Pyramid were not cut, but poured – somewhat similar to cement and other manmade chemical building processes.
Philip Coppens
________________________________________What if the stones of the Great Pyramid were not quarried, but “made” on site – very much like modern skyscrapers use cement – though without the steel structure embedded inside them?
Joseph Davidovits first aired this theory in 1974. Professor Davidovits is an internationally renowned French scientist, who was honoured by French President Jacques Chirac with one of France’s two highest honours, the “Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite”, in November 1998. Davidovits comes with a French Degree in Chemical Engineering and has a German Doctor Degree in Chemistry (PhD), as well as being professor and founder of the Institute for Applied Archaeological Sciences, IAPAS, Barry University, Miami, Florida, from 1983 till 1989, being Visiting Professor, Penn State University, Pennsylvania (1989-1991) and Professor and Director of the Geopolymer Institute, Saint-Quentin, France (since 1979). He is a world expert in modern and ancient cements, as well as geosynthesis and man-made rocks, and the inventor of geopolymers and the chemistry of geopolymerisation. He is, in short, a scientific genius and the expert in his field, sometimes referred to as the “father of geopolymers”.
These are just the highlights; his CV is longer than most books. But the reason why I list his career’s distinctions is that all of his scientific credibility has made virtually no indent in Egyptological circles, who have largely disregarded his findings about how the pyramids – or at least the Great Pyramid – were “really” constructed. In his expert opinion, backed up by experiments and analysis, the stones of the Great Pyramid were not hewn from the quarries and then transported; instead, rough stone was indeed quarried, but then placed in a (wooden?) container, whereby other materials were added, causing a chemical process that made what in simple terms some might call “cement”, but which in fact is a type of stone that even experts in the field have a hard time telling apart from “natural rock”.
From an engineering perspective, this technique would make the construction of the Great Pyramid much easier: there were no immense limestone blocks to be moved; there is no real need for a ramp and the transport of the stone material could be done faster, as less care was required in moving the limestone – the limestone was merely an ingredient and if it broke, no-one cared. Furthermore, the technique could also explain how the tremendous accuracy in the construction of the pyramid was achieved: the famous “no cigarette paper is able to be fitted between two stones”. Rather than figuring out how two hewn stones were perfectly fitted into each other on site, instead, we would have wooden moulds that were placed next to a completed “block”, upon which “cement” was poured into the mould, then left to dry, before the next stone was made. This guaranteed that each one fitted perfectly to the next.
It also fits in with the evidence on the ground. Some of the blocks that are allegedly hewn have large lumps trapped within the mass; others have wavy strata; others have differences in density between the stones of the pyramids and the natural stones as located in the quarries; and there is a general absence of any horizontal orientation of the shells in the pyramid blocks, when normal sedimentation would be expected to result in shells lying flat. All of this is telltale signs for an expert like Davidovits that the stones were cast, not hewn.
For the blocks to have been cast, the only missing ingredient that is required, is to identify whether or not the ancient Egyptians were familiar with such “rock making”, i.e. geopolymerisation. Davidovits is the world expert in this technology and it is fair to say not a single Egyptologist was aware of the possibility until Davidovits first proposed his hypothesis.
Specifically over the past three decades, Davidovits has been trying to educate this group of scientists, but they remain largely unwilling students, even though he sold more than 45,000 copies of his book when it appeared in 1988: the general public wanted to understand, but as Egyptologists were largely unable to criticise – or had any credentials to – they chose to ignore. Today, there seems to be something of an Anglo-Saxon conspiracy against his “theories”, as Davidovits books are easily published in French, and other countries, yet “They Built the Great Pyramid”, published by a mainstream publisher in France, is largely self-published in its English edition.
First aired as a hypothesis in 1974, his theory has come a long way since. Davidovits was given samples of the Great Pyramid by Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer in 1982, which he identified as fragments of geopolymers. In more recent years, his work has received the backing of several other experts in the field and when his team gave samples of modern reagglomerated stone produced at the beginning of the year 2002 to two leading geology laboratories for blind analysis, the scientists stated that the sample was natural limestone! When even geologists get it wrong, it underlines how difficult it is for Egyptologists, who – as mentioned – remain unwilling to venture where they truly should go.
Davidovits has used chemical analysis to show that the stones of the pyramids are different from the native stone in the quarries, showing that the traditional stance of the Egyptologists can, from a scientific point, no longer be maintained. The analysis shows that the stones did not “just” come from these quarries… and are indeed cast. To quote Davidovits: “The results [of the quarry samples] were compared with pyramid casing stones of Cheops, Teti and Sneferu. The quarry samples are pure limestone consisting of 96-99% Calcite, 0.5-2.5% Quartz, and very small amount of dolomite, gypsum and iron-alumino-silicate. On the other hand the Cheops and Teti casing stones are limestone consisting of: calcite 85-90% and a high amount of special minerals such as Opal CT, hydroxy-apatite, a silico-aluminate, which are not found in the quarries. The pyramid casing stones are light in density and contain numerous trapped air bubbles, unlike the quarry samples which are uniformly dense. If the casing stones were natural limestone, quarries different from those traditionally associated with the pyramid sites must be found, but where? X-Ray diffraction of a red casing stone coating is the first proof to demonstrate the fact that a complicated man-made geopolymeric system was produced in Egypt 4,700 years ago.”
Davidovits is also convinced that the method of stone making was at the origin of alchemy. The deity specifically linked with Khufu was Khnum, which means “to bind”, “to join”, “to cement”, “to unite” and which typifies the process of geopolymerisation.
Egypt was seen as the birthplace of alchemy, but for Davidovits, it is also the cradle of chemistry. He argues that certain names, such as mafkat, which Egyptologists have been unable to translate or explain, are very much “invented words” – i.e. technical terms – as they described compounds that ancient chemists had constructed. It is therefore not “white powder gold”, as authors like Laurence Gardner have argued.
Davidovits argues that when Imhotep is credited as “the inventor of the art of constructing with cut stones”, it is actually a mistranslation of the Greek “xeston lithon”, which does not translate as “cut stone”, but rather means “the action to polish stone”. For Davidovits, Imhotep is actually the inventor of working with agglomerates, or geopolymers.
Davidovits believes that Imhotep created two different chemical formulas: a very simple one for the casting of the limestone core blocks, and another one to produce the high quality stones of the exterior layer. The first and major ingredient in these techniques is soft limestone. Soft limestone can be easily disaggregated either under pressure or by diluting it in water. “Shallow canals were dug in the soft limestone along the Nile, forming ideal basins for producing large quantities of muddy limestone. Imhotep’s men began disaggregating the clayish soft rock with its water, until the lime and the clay separated, forming a mud with the fossil shells at the bottom.” Next, a substance called natron salt (sodium carbonate) was poured in. Salt is a very reactive substance that has a petrifying effect, which is why it is used to avoid the putrefaction of organic tissue (mummification). Natron is found in great quantities in the desert and in the Wadi-El-Natron (100 km to the north west of Cairo and named after the substance) and Davidovits has shown that the ancient Egyptians of the Pyramid Age used it in massive quantities.
Next, more lime, the mineral which binds, was added. Lime is a powdery residue obtained by burning and reducing to ashes sedimentary rocks such as limestone and dolomite. The fire oxidizes and converts the rocks into a powdery residue, and that is lime. Davidovits argues that as the ashes of plants are also rich in lime, the ancient Egyptians established the custom of receiving ashes from cooking fires from all over Egypt, to add them to the mixture. In short: recycling not to save the environment, but to build the pyramids.
Lime mixed with natron and water produced a third substance, a much more corrosive one, which sparks off a strong chemical reaction and transforms other materials. The water dissolved the natron salt and put the lime in suspension, forming caustic soda.
Caustic soda is the catalyst Imhotep needed to trigger off a powerful chemical reaction, one which would produce the fast integration of silica and alumina. According to Davidovits, they then mixed the ingredients in the canals until a homogenous binder paste was obtained. Imhotep had invented a water-based cement, which he had to convert into concrete.
For this, he added more fossil shells, limestone rubble and silt from the river Nile, producing a concrete paste, which they carried to where hundreds of small wooden moulds had been prepared. These moulds had been smeared with rancid oil to facilitate the release of the concrete once hardened. The mixture was rammed into the moulds, becoming a dense re-agglomerated limestone, which was let to dry in the shade, to avoid its cracking under the glare of the hot sun.
The above is a proven chemical procedure, but was it known to Imhotep? For an untrained eye, the process seems terribly complex and outside of the scope of ancient Egyptians – after all, Davidovits himself discovered geopolymers only recently – how could it have been known millennia ago, and then forgotten?
Davidovits thinks that ancient records have left us clues… as well as the total cost of the mineral mixing ingredients required in the above process. He believes that this information was actually left behind on the pyramid covering stones and pointed out to Herodotus when he visited Gizeh. Herodotus reported that a sum of 1600 talents, or roughly the equivalent 100 million Euros (dollars), was spent on garlic, onions and radishes, which he and everyone else considered a phenomenal amount of money for what seems to be secondary dietary requirements for the workforce. As such, the story is taken with… a pinch of salt, arguing that Herodotus was lied to by his locally hired tourist guide. But Davidovits believes that those names (“garlic, onions and radishes” were misinterpretations of what was actually written on the pyramid. Originally, we referred to substances based on their colours: rubber comes from the Latin word for red, yet when we today ask for a rubber… And so Davidovits argues that these words are not “garlic”, “onion” or “radish”, but technical terms whose true meaning had become lost and hence were misinterpretations, causing bafflement with anyone who came across them, like Herodotus. Davidovits has used other inscriptions, including several steles from the period, to show that specific mining venues were exploited during the Pyramid Age, but that the quarried materials have no clear purpose within the traditional methodology of how the pyramids were constructed – but they do make sense within his approach.
Is there hard evidence to credit Imhotep and his colleagues of the Third and Fourth Dynasty with the invention of geopolymers? Davidovits argues that the Famine Stele, found on the island of Elephantine in southern Egypt, indeed describes the invention of building with stone through processing different minerals and ores, which could be chemicals involved in the fabrication of man-made stone, or a type of concrete. On the Giza plateau, he has shown that several stones have weathered unnaturally: one single block was sometimes left unfinished for the day, and thus hardened over night, before being brought to the desired height the following morning. This meant that one block was made in two phases, with slightly different materials and created under different circumstances. Six millennia later, it means that sometimes the lower section of a stone has weathered badly, but the higher section has not, even though the stones next to it, did not reveal such lower weathering. Such weathering is not conform to the traditionalist point of view of quarried blocks.
There is also circumstantial evidence. For example, we know that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with cement as such. At several places in the Great Pyramid, remains of 4500 year old cements are found, and are still in excellent condition. This ancient mortar is far superior to the cement used in modern buildings, as well as the cement used to restore the ancient Egyptian monuments, much of which has already degraded and cracked after only fifty years.
Furthermore, his idea that some Egyptian artefacts, specifically some vases, were geopolymers, has been accepted by Egyptologists. Thus, it is accepted that the Egyptians had the necessary chemical and technical knowledge (of copper, alkalis and ceramics) to mould them in this way. Davidovits argues: “So if the Egyptians knew how to make such a high-quality cement for vases and statues, what was there to stop them adding aggregates such as fossil shells to produce a high-performance reagglomerated limestone? Clearly, nothing.”
These are just some examples in a long list of evidence that argues that the most likely method of construction was the use of geopolymers, and not hewn limestone slabs that were perfectly moved into position. But it is clear that it will take some time before it may ever be accepted as the most likely explanation… Let us note that as recently as 1951, Otto Neugebauer argued that “ancient science was the product of very few men; and those few happened not to be Egyptian.” In short: ancient Egyptians had, in his opinion, made no contribution to science whatsoever… though in the successive five millennia, not a single scientist has been able to explain or let alone reconstruct the Great Pyramid. Still, Neugebauer’s statement was in sharp contrast with men like Aristotle, who saw Egypt as “the cradle of mathematics”, crediting them with inventing geometry, astronomy and arithmetic. Eudoxus, like Pythagoras, studied in ancient Egypt, before being admitted in Plato’s Academy in Athens, showing that the ancient Greeks throughout their history realised that Egypt held certain knowledge which was of vital importance for an educated Greek – and which was apparently a type of knowledge that they were unable to get in Greece itself. Intriguingly, Plato, a man who has been seen as standing at the cradle of Western civilisation, himself studied with the priests of Heliopolis, the body who had, two millennia before Plato, initiated the birth of the Pyramid Age.The most recent support and headlines for Davidovits’ findings has come from Linn W. Hobbs, professor of materials science at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hobbs has stated that he believes that mainstream archaeologists have been too contemptuous of work by “other scientists” – read: Davidovits – suggesting the possibility of concrete. “The degree of hostility aimed at experimentation is disturbing,” Hobbs said.
“Too many big egos and too many published works may be riding on the idea that every pyramid block was carved, not cast.”
In 2006, research by Michel W. Barsoum at Philadelphia's Drexel University confirmed Davidovits’ conclusion that samples of stone from parts of the Khufu Pyramid were microstructurally different from limestone blocks. Barsoum, a professor of materials engineering, said microscope, X-ray, and chemical analysis of scraps of stone from the pyramids “suggest a small but significant percentage of blocks on the higher portions of the pyramids were cast” from concrete – thus confirming Davidovits’ conclusions.
When Barsoum, a native of Egypt, went public with these findings, he said he was unprepared for the onslaught of angry criticism that greeted the peer-reviewed research by himself and scientists Adrish Ganguly of Drexel and Gilles Hug of France's National Center for Scientific Research. “You would have thought I claimed the pyramids were carved by lasers,” Barsoum said. Zahi Hawass’ reaction to Hobb’s announcements was typical of the “onslaught”, stating “It's highly stupid. The pyramids are made from solid blocks of quarried limestone. To suggest otherwise is idiotic and insulting.”
“They Built the Pyramids” is the first English book on the subject by Davidovits since 1988. Though focusing on the Great Pyramid, at one point he argues that other ancient monuments too might be cast, rather than hewn. Based on UNESCO reports, he suspects that the Easter Isles statues may have been made by an agglomeration process – though it appears that only the oldest statues were done as such; the most recent statues were carved out of volcanic rock.
Seeing how volatile the reactions of Egyptologists remain thirty years on, it is clear that a head in the sand policy is adhered to, hoping that the bad news will eventually go away. That is, however, unlikely. And for anyone who needs to be convinced, there is a useful appendix, which provides a guided tour for tourists visiting the Giza plateau, where they can see the various pieces of evidence that supports Davidovits’ conclusions.
….
It appears that the Egyptologists are proving to be as stubborn about this issue as they have been with the Sothic chronology. They take more shifting than the Great Pyramid.
That is why I think that the author of the following letter - who may turn out to be prophetic - is being a bit too optimistic to imagine that things Egyptological will change any time “soon”:
“…. Those holding to the old orthodoxy of Egyptian History will soon vanish and out of the mists will arise a new historical chronology that will again dramatically shorten the length of Egyptian chronology. I think the works of Velikovsky, Courville and Mackey and others will eventually unseat the modern Pharisees and Sadduccees who hold sway over the old orthodoxy which is dying as the revisionists get their ideas out in the internet. I hope that you are actively engaged in further research and I suspect you realize that the Hebrew Chronology which influenced three of the major religions in history is more critical than the Egyptian documents that are carved in stone as almost nothing in the Egyptian Chronology matches that of the Hebrews. Keep up the great research. …”.
Was same method applied in Meso-America?
“This approach can also be applied to the precision-fit Inca walls: [Apparently] … the ancients knew a technique to dissolve or soften the stone by use of acid plant extracts!”.
Philip Coppens
Colin Nickerson writes:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/23/world/africa/23iht-pyramid.1.12259608.html
Did the Great Pyramids' builders use concrete?
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — It is a theory that gives indigestion to mainstream archaeologists. Namely, that some of the immense blocks of the Great Pyramids of Egypt might have been cast from synthetic material - the world's first concrete - not just carved whole from quarries and lugged into place by armies of toilers.
Such an innovation would have saved millions of man-hours of grunting and heaving in construction of the enigmatic edifices on the Giza Plateau.
"It could be they used less sweat and more smarts," said Linn Hobbs, professor of materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
"Maybe the ancient Egyptians didn't just leave us mysterious monuments and mummies. Maybe they invented concrete 2,000 years before the Romans started using it in their structures."
That is a notion that would dramatically change engineering history.
….
A handful of determined materials scientists are carrying out experiments with crushed limestone and natural binding chemicals - materials that would have been readily available to ancient Egyptians - designed to show that blocks on the upper reaches of the pyramids may have been cast in place from a slurry poured into wooden molds.
These researchers at labs in Cambridge, Philadelphia and St. Quentin, France, are trying to demonstrate that Egyptians of about 2,500 B.C. could have been the true inventors of the poured substance that is humanity's most common building material.
At MIT, Hobbs and two colleagues teach a course called Materials in Human Experience. Over the years, undergraduates in the program have recreated from scratch such artifacts as samurai swords, tinkling Meso-American bells and even a swaying 60-foot, or 20-meter, plant-fiber suspension bridge like those built by the Incas.
Now a scale-model pyramid is rising in Hobbs's sixth-floor lab, a construction made of quarried limestone as well as concrete-like blocks cast from crushed limestone sludge fortified with dollops of kaolinite clay, silica and natural desert salts - called natron - like those used by ancient Egyptians to mummify corpses. ….
And, according to this next article, what had happened in the Old World (e.g. ancient Egypt) was basically replicated in the New World (e.g. Meso-America):
http://primeross.blogspot.com.au/2011/11/ancient-stone-technology.html
Ancient stone technology
Everybody who has traveled to Egypt, Mesopotamia, South America and many more places has seen it: the astonishing craftsmanship of these ancient stoneworkers. The precision fit of large stoneblocks is eminent in both the Old and New World. It is hardly imaginable, that all of this should have been done by pure manual work alone.
The same applies to the smaller, but [surely] not less perfect artefacts, like stone bowls, vases etc.
The Mesoamerican cultures had a special affinity with obsidian, a very brittle volcanic glass. They used it for a variety of (mostly ritual) objects. An Aztec craftsman made these earplugs, which put our belief in manual work to a tough test...
They are polished to a thickness of less [than] a millimeter and completely symmetrical. The perfect geometrical shape and the somewhat small difference between the tube's diameter and the diameter of the flanges make them rather unusual. They're supposedly made with tools like bamboo drills, stone chisels and sand as an abrasive. I wonder … how often the poor man had to start over...
If one takes a closer look to things, unmistakable signs of machining emerge. Take all the time to visit this magnificant site: Ancient Egyptian Stone Technology (new window).
Experiments
Some years ago, a group of enthusiastic researchers ([led] by Roger Hopkins, a stonework professional who has done several of these experiments) carried out a small scale experiment in Egypt, regarding the building of a pyramid with a base of a few meters across, which is in itself a respectable project. But then they stated, rather boldly in my opinion, this could have been the way, the big ones had been build. Although they were cautious enough to use the word "could", translating the results of the experiment into a project a hundred times larger, seems careless and overconfident to me.
In Southamerica, the same mistake was made. In an attempt, to explain the [astonishing fit of the Inca stone walls,
like this one in the city of Cuzco, incorporating the famous "stone with 12 angles",
the [researchers] experimented with a technique to copy the shape of the top stone to the one beneath it. This involved some quite dangerous methods to hold the top stone in an elevated position, in midair, so to speak, which did well with stones of 30 cm across. What they couldn't provide, was an idea, how to bring it into practice with these stones, some of them more than 3 meters tall:
Sacsayhuaman is believed to have been a fortress.
The interesting thing with these walls is that the builders took every measure to make the stones fit to an almost ridiculous degree of perfection in the most difficult shapes, while the front is rough and covered with deformations that make them look unfinished. That can bring up the idea, that these walls have been [built] in a much different way.
A bold theory
Professor Davidovits from the Geopolymer Institute in France has found a possible answer to these riddles. He asks if the Egyptian Pyramids at Gizeh have been build with a construction technique widely used in our time: Are Pyramids made out of concrete?
It seems ridiculous at first glance, but it solves a few nasty problems that couldn't be solved yet with the established theories. For instance: how did the pyramidbuilders in Egypt manage to haul the stones up to the summit, where the workspace is reduced to virtually nothing? All those man had to stand somewhere.
In short, his theory is that the 2 million blocks of limestone that make up the core of the pyramid of Chufu (Cheops), have not been cut into shape, but the limestone was solved in water, brought to the building place in small portions and then the blocks were cast in situ.
This approach can also be applied to the precision-fit Inca walls: [Apparently] … the ancients knew a technique to dissolve or soften the stone by use of acid plant extracts! Before you start laughing, take a closer look at these images (click the images to see larger, detailed versions in a new window):
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A detail from one of the walls of the Sacsayhuaman complex. Many stones show strange impressions or scrape marks, as if the surface has been soft during tooling. (Take also a closer look to the picture above). Just take a square piece of wood and push it in soft clay. You will make impressions just like these!
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The great wall at Ollantaytambo, Peru.
Observe the third large stone from the left with its long scrape marks and the large flat impression at the top edge of the second stone from the right.
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Detail from the great wall.
The middle stone. [Although] the surface is very rough and looks hewn or carved, I find it difficult to … explain the square marks and the slightly raised edge of the lower zigzag pattern. It is certainly possible to produce such marks with traditional methods, but then they would have to be made deliberately and [that’s] not what it looks like.
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Ollantaytambo, Peru
Soft stones could also explain the precision fit. The stones would settle by their own weight and the weight of the ones on top, thereby squeezing into any gaps.
The protrusions could be formed by making marks in the support structure that would be necessary to prevent uncontrolled movement of the material at the outer face of the wall. It is sometimes mentioned, these protrusion were made to hold gold plating or to tie ropes to for handling. Unfortunately, they would work insufficiently for either use and are too randomly placed. Fact remains: we don't have a clue.
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Puma Punku complex at Tiahuanaco, Bolivia.
The approx. 1cm wide groove with inside a set of equidistant holes is one of many features there, who are so hard to explain, that the whole site is virtually hushed up by the archaeological community. [It’s] just a few hundred meters away from the famous site of Tiahuanaco, but almost never mentioned. If not advanced machining in ancient times is the key to the mystery, then the cast stone theory could provide some answers.
It would not be difficult to build a mold with a strip and pins in it, which had to be removed after hardening of the stone.
I think these theories are really interesting. There are several PDF-documents on the Geopolymer Library page that explain the theories and shows some results of tests conducted on similar types of stone.
To solve this mystery, it would be necessary to examine the actual stones for any signs of such a treatment. ….
You’ve got that sinking feeling
“Can you imagine maneuvering 25-80 ton stones up a ramp, around corners and into final position… at fairly rapid pace? Where would hundreds of workers stand (per stone) on the pyramid in order to move the stones? How could they carve everything with almost optical precision with primitive copper and iron tools (of which very few have been found)?”
The effort involved in building the pyramids according to the conventional view of this, by contrast with professor Davidovits’s explanation of it, is well summed up in the following post: https://geopolymerhouses.wordpress.com/2011/06/10/ancient-stonework/
….
There are large pyramids all around the world, including in Egypt and other countries in Africa, Central and South America, and China. The largest structures, in particular the famous Egyptian pyramids at Giza, have baffled scientists since they were first discovered. Many people agree that ramps to move the stones would have been too large and impractical to build (some estimate the ramps would have taken more time and effort to build than the pyramids). Here are some quick facts about the Great Pyramid of Giza from Wikipedia:
– “building this in 20 years would involve installing approximately 800 tons of stone every day”
– “since it consists of an estimated 2.3 million blocks, completing the building in 20 years would involve moving an average of more than 12 of the blocks into place each hour, day and night”
– “The largest granite stones in the pyramid, found in the “King’s” chamber, weigh 25 to 80 tons and were [Ed.: some believe] transported from Aswan, more than 500 miles away.”
– “the mean opening of the joints is only 0.5 millimetres wide (1/50th of an inch)”
(The list goes on and on.)
All these examples have one thing in common: conventional theories about how they were built are difficult to believe, at least for me. Can you imagine maneuvering 25-80 ton stones up a ramp, around corners and into final position… at fairly rapid pace? Where would hundreds of workers stand (per stone) on the pyramid in order to move the stones? How could they carve everything with almost optical precision with primitive copper and iron tools (of which very few have been found)? Why do the granite stones continue to salt up on the surface? No other granite in the world accumulates salt deposits on the surface except the ones in the pyramids. Microscopic analysis of stone samples from the pyramids indicates random orientation, which indicates human construction (tamping in a form) versus orientation in layers as in natural stone.
These things have fascinated me since I was a child. There seemed to be no logical explanation to the mysteries until just recently when I learned about geopolymer.
Finally, I found a theory that seems credible. This much appears certain: scientists agree that ancient Egyptians did use polymer to build certain items such as vessels. They agree geopolymer technology was known and understood at that time. If this is true, then it’s reasonable to believe at least some of the stones in the pyramids were made by geopolymer. It’s much easier for me to imagine thousands of laborers carrying or passing along baskets of geopolymer materials than moving and precisely fitting cut stone. ….
With professor Davidovits’s geopolymer theory in mind, I watched with horror on SBS TV (Sunday 12th November 2017) as a team of archaeologists tried to sit a huge limestone block atop a small boat apparently modelled on the ones used in ancient Egypt at the time of the Giza constructions.
The block had to be situated right in the centre of the boat.
After what seemed like an age of careful and painstaking manoeuvring - this all involving just the one block - there was alarm because the boat had begun to let in water. I am not sure how it ended up, because I found what I considered to be more credible things on other channels. Though I would guess from the above photo that the team did eventually manage to float above the Nile with the limestone block atop.
I had felt sorry for them. If this was the laborious process that the ancient Egyptians had been forced to use for all of the blocks in the pyramids, then they would still be chipping away at them to this very day!
Nevertheless, we read: http://www.cbc.ca/natureofthings/features/an-ancient-papyrus-reveals-how-the-great-pyramid-of-giza-was-built
….
Wooden boats built with rope instead of nails.
The limestone was carried along the River Nile in wooden boats built with planks and rope that were capable of hauling two-and-a-half tonne stones. Using ancient tomb carvings and the remains of an ancient dismantled ship as a guide, archeologist Mohamed Abd El-Maguid has recreated one Egyptian boat from scratch.
3D scans of the ship planks revealed that the boats were full of holes that lined up perfectly with each other. Instead of nails or wood pegs, these boats were sewn together with rope like a giant jigsaw puzzle.
With 1,000 holes and five kilometres of rope the new boat was assembled and Abd El-Maguid and in Secrets of the Pyramid, attempts to re-create every step of Merer’s journey down the Nile with a two-tonne limestone rock.
http://nypost.com/2017/09/24/archaeologists-solve-the-mystery-of-the-great-pyramid/
New evidence proves that the ancient Egyptians constructed the Great Pyramid at Giza by transporting 170,000 tons of limestone in boats.
It has long been known that the rock was extracted eight miles away in Tura and that granite used in the monumental structure was quarried 533 miles away in Aswan.
However, archaeologists have disagreed over how the material was transported to Giza, now part of modern-day Cairo, for construction of Pharaoh Khufu’s tomb in 2600 BC.
Now that mystery could be a step further to being solved after the discovery of an ancient scroll of papyrus, a ceremonial boat and a network of waterways, the Mail on Sunday reported.
The new evidence shows that thousands of laborers transported 170,000 tons of limestone along the River Nile in wooden boats built with planks and rope.
The 2.5-ton blocks were ferried through a system of specially designed canals before arriving at an inland port built just yards away from the base of the Great Pyramid.
….
Scientists detect large hidden chamber
“According to Nature, the large, previously unknown “big void” inside the Great Pyramid is the first major interior structure found there in well over a century”.
Last night (December 10, 2017), when watching on SBS TV the use of cutting edge science, involving ‘muons’, to determine the interior of the Great Pyramid, I was less than enthusiastic about the presumed origin of these muons from exploding stars. But, as it turned out, this was one of the rare documentaries on the subject that actually concludes with some new knowledge.
With the likelihood of more to come.
The whole thing is summarised in the following article by Molly Rubin, “What we know about the mysterious chamber discovered inside the Great Pyramid”: https://qz.com/1118563/the-great-pyramid-of-giza-has-a-secret-chamber-hidden-inside/
We are one step closer to understanding more about the only remaining Wonder of the Ancient World.
Scientists have discovered a void inside the Great Pyramid of Giza, according to new research published in the scientific journal Nature. The discovery is the result of work from ScanPyramids, an organization led by the HIP Institute and the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University that is dedicated to studying the Pyramids of Egypt using non-invasive techniques.
A symbol of the awesome power of ancient Egypt, the Great Pyramid is 479 feet tall, the tallest structure built by man until the Eiffel Tower in 1889. Built as a royal tomb around 2560 BC, it’s made of an estimated 2.3 million blocks of stone.
There were three known chambers inside the Great Pyramid—an unfinished low chamber near the bedrock, as well as the king and queen’s chambers, believed to be for Pharaoh Khufu and his wives—until today.
What is the secret chamber?
According to Nature, the large, previously unknown “big void” inside the Great Pyramid is the first major interior structure found there in well over a century.
Though they don’t know the precise dimensions, researchers say the hidden chamber is at least 100 feet long and located above a hallway about 155 feet long, known as the Grand Gallery, part of a maze of passages inside the pyramid.
“What we are sure about is that this big void is there, that it is impressive, that it was not expected by, as far as I know, any kind of theory,” Mehdi Tayoubi, president and co-founder of the HIP Institute told Reuters.
How was the chamber found?
Researches made the discovery using cosmic ray-based imaging, a process that uses modern particle physics to understand new information about ancient structures.
Known as muon tomography, the technique generates 3-D images using information from particles that hit the Earth close to the speed of light and then penetrate deeply into solid objects. Muons (elementary particles similar to electrons) originate from collisions between cosmic rays and atoms in the upper atmosphere. They penetrate material more deeply than X-rays, so the technique can be used to image more dense structures than, say, CT scanning.
Muons can penetrate stone, but as they travel through a dense object they lose energy and decay, so scientists can understand the density of an object based on the number of muons flowing from a particular direction. If there’s a big void, lots of muons will flow through.
Muon detection has improved significantly since it was developed in the 1960s, so Tayoubi and his colleagues were able to use three advanced muon-detection techniques–nuclear-emulsion films, hodoscopes, and ardon gas-based detection. Every method showed the same result: a large void in the area above the Grand Gallery.
The mysteries that remain
Experts are unsure about the purpose of the void—it could have been a burial chamber, another gallery, an architectural anomaly, or simply a sealed-off construction passage. However, some historians are more excited than others about the discovery.
“It’s very clear what they found as a void doesn’t mean anything at all. There are many voids in the pyramid because of construction reasons,” said Zahi Hawass, an Egyptologist and former Egyptian minister of antiquities and director of excavations at Giza, Saqqara, Bahariya Oasis and the Valley of the Kings, told LiveScience.
Tayoubi argues that the void is not a construction irregularity because blocks of varying sizes and shapes would have absorbed more muons that were detected.
Right now, there are no plans to enter the Great Pyramid to further investigate the void, because there is no way to get to it through the existing network of passages and chambers. Egyptologists banned the use of destructive methods to study the pyramids. However scientists could put additional muon detectors in the king’s chamber to try and assess the void from alternate angles.
Given the world’s fascination with the pyramids and secrets of the ancient world, it’s clear the discovery will lead to much archaeological speculation and debate.
Hany Helal of Cairo University, coordinator of the ScanPyramids project, put the open question to the academic community: “We open the question to Egyptologists and archaeologists: what could it be?”
