New age: Details about 'Great Pyramid'
|
|||||||
Home
|
The Great Pyramid of Giza () is the oldest and last remaining of the Seven Wonders of the World. It is generally believed the Great Pyramid was built as the tomb of Fourth dynasty Egyptian king Khufu (also known under his Greek name Cheops and believed to have reigned from 2606-2583 BC), after whom it is sometimes called Khufu's Pyramid or the Pyramid of Khufu. Traditionally, the architect of the pyramid was Hemon, a relative of Khufu. Labor and construction theories
Many varied estimates have been made regarding the labor force needed to construct the Great Pyramid. Herodotus, the Greek historian in the 5th century BC, estimated that construction may have required the labor of 100,000 workers for 20 years. Recent evidence has been found that suggests the workforce was in fact paid, which would require accounting and bureaucratic skills of a high order. Polish architect Wieslaw Kozinski believed that it took as many as 25 men to transport a 1.5-ton stone block; based on this, he estimated the workforce to be 300,000 men on the construction site, with an additional 60,000 off-site. 19th century Egyptologist William Flinders Petrie proposed that the labor force was largely composed not of slaves but of the rural Egyptian population, working during periods when the Nile river was flooded and agricultural activity suspended. Egyptologist Miroslav Verner posited that the labor was organized into a hierarchy, consisting of two gangs of 1000 men, divided into five zaa or phyle of 200 men each, which may have been further divided according to the skills of the workers. Some research suggests alternate estimates to the aforementioned labor size. For instance, mathematician Kurt Mendelssohn calculated that the labor force may have been 50,000 men at most, while Ludwig Borchardt and Louis Croon placed the number at 36,000. According to Verner, a labor force of no more than 30,000 was needed in the Great Pyramid's construction. A construction management study carried out by the firm Daniel, Mann, Johnson, & Mendenhall in association with Mark Lehner and other egyptologists (Civil Engineering magazine, June 1999), estimates that the total project required an average workforce of 13,200 people and a peak workforce of 40,000 and was completed from start to finish in approximately 10 years. The study estimates the number of blocks used in construction was between 2-2.8 million (an average of 2.4 million), but settles on a much reduced finished total of 2 million subtracting the estimated area of the hollow spaces of the chambers and galleries. Their calculations suggest the workforce could have sustained a rate of 180 blocks per hour (3 blocks every 60 seconds)with ten hour work days for putting each individual block in place. They derived these estimates from contruction projects in the third world that did not use modern machinery. This study fails to take into account however, especially when compared to modern third world construction projects, the added labor and logistics required among other things to perform the work with such precision, the entire project as a whole, or the use of up to 80 tonne stones being quarried and transported a distance of over 500 miles. Regardless of how many workers were required for construction, to use the following equation: 2,400,000 (total stones used in construction) ÷ 20 years (estimated time of completion) ÷ 365 days in a year ÷ 10 work hours in a day ÷ 60 minutes in one hour, the resulting answer is 0.55 stones/minute. What this means is that no matter how many workers were used or in what configuration, to complete the construction of the Great Pyramid within this time frame 1.1 blocks would have to be put in place every 2 minutes, ten hours a day, 365 days a year for twenty years. To use the same equation, but instead assuming the time of completion to be one hundred years instead of twenty, it would require 1.1 blocks to be set every ten minutes, ten hours a day, 365 days a year. These equations, however, do not include the time and labor required to design, plan, survey, and level the 13 acre site which the Great Pyramid sits on. Nor do they include construction time for the two other main pyramids on the site, the Sphinx, the temples (which feature stones weighing upwards of 200 tonnes), networks of causeways, several square miles of paving stones (which originally covered the entire Giza plateau), the leveling of the entire Giza plateau, the 35 boat pits carved out of solid bedrock (some of which are nearly 150 ft long and 30 ft deep), or several other highly laborious features. When considering the time it would have taken to build the Great Pyramid alone, it is worth noting that the construction of the entire Giza plateau is believed to have been accomplished by three pharaohs (possibly 4 if Djedefre, Kheops' son, is considered) in less than a hundred years starting with Khufu who reigned from 2606-2583 BC and ending with Menkaure 2548-2530 BC (76 years). To apply the Great Pyramid labor formula (which only provides for the physical act of dropping the stones in place) to the entire Giza plateau would require stones, even the 80-200 tonne variety some of which were quarried over 500 miles away in Aswan, to be placed ten hours a day, 365 days a year for approximately 76 years - not every few minutes, but every few seconds. This feat becomes even more impessive given beginning with king Snefru who ruled from 2630-2606 BC (leaving a span of 100 years between the beginning of his reign and the end of Menkaure's in 2530 BC), three other massive pyramids were built: the Step Pyramid of Saqqara (believed to be the first Egyptian pyramid), the Bent Pyramid, and the Red Pyramid of Dashur. Also during this time period (between 2686 and 2498 BC), an equally impressive construction project was carried out, the Wadi Al-Garawi dam believed by some to be the world's oldest, which used an estimated 100,000 cubic metres of rock and rubble for its construction. Herodotus speculated that the stone blocks used in the Great Pyramid's construction were maneuvered into place by raising them up a succession of short wooden scaffolds. Another possibility proposed by the ancient scholar Diodorus Siculus was that the giant blocks were dragged along a system of ramps to the necessary height. More recently, Mark Lehner speculated that a spiralling ramp, beginning in the stone quarry to the southeast and continuing around the exterior of the pyramid, may have been used. In Lehner's model, the stone blocks may have been drawn on sleds lubricated by water. Another source claims milk was a lubricant. The most precisely cut stone blocks were reserved for the outside. Once in place their corners were smoothed to give an almost shiny outer appearance of the pyramid. For the inner core, the blocks were cut with less precision, since there are gaps big enough to introduce an arm. These gaps were filled with rubble, mixed with gypsum. Recent studies by Gilles Dormion and Jean Patrice Goidin suggest the existence of cavities filled with sand, that could amount to 10 to 15% of the volume of the pyramid. This could reduce the amount of work required of the construction. The idea of using rollers to move stone blocks was made popular in Hollywood movies, but as of today, whether it be ramp, roller, or otherwise, there are few historical records to demonstrate how ground transportation was done. If a ramp were used to push the top-most blocks of the pyramid into place, the incline would contain more material than the pyramid itself and this material would have had to be removed after construction was completed. Excavation on the area south of the Great Pyramid revealed evidence of the remains of a ramp consisting of two walls built of stone rubble and mixed with Tafla. The area in between was filled with sand and gypsum forming the bulk of the ramp. They were discovered during the work of relocating the Sound and Light Show cables at Giza (Hawass, The Pyramids of Ancient Egypt). Given the mass required to build a ramp of such magnitude to contruct the Great Pyramid as ramp theories suggest, it is unknown what purpose this much smaller newly discovered ramp may have served. It has also been suggested that Egyptians might have moved the stones with wind power, relying on kites and pulleys rather than huge numbers of slaves. On June 23, 2001, Caltech aeronautics professor Mory Gharib and a small team of undergraduates raised a 3000 kg, 3 metre tall obelisk into vertical position in 22 mph (35 km/h) winds in a California desert in under 25 seconds, using a 10 m kite connected to a pulley system and support frame, to demonstrate that wind power can be harnessed to create large lifting forces. The originator of this idea, business consultant Maureen Clemmons, recalled seeing a building frieze now displayed in a Cairo museum, showing a wing pattern in bas relief that did not resemble any living bird, directly below which were several men standing near vertical objects that could be ropes. However, though the engineering may have been feasible, Egyptian experts point out there is no evidence that ancient Egyptians used either kites or pulleys as we know them today. Materials scientist Joseph Davidovits has posited that the blocks of the pyramid are not carved stone, but mostly a form of limestone concrete: i.e. they were 'cast' as with modern cement. Because of the blocks huge (2.5 to 15 tons) size each was molded in situ. According to this theory soft limestone with a high kaolinite content was quarried in the wadi on the south if the Giza plateau. It was then dissolved in large, Nile-fed pools until it became a watery slurry. Lime (found in the ash of 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. No large gangs would be needed to haul blocks, and no chiseling or carving would be required to dress their surfaces. 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 (the blocks of the core show tools marks and were cut with much lower tolerances). Proof-of-concept tests using similar compounds were carried out at a 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 were built using similar techniques. Alternative theoriesIn common with many other monumental structures from antiquity, the Great Pyramid has over time been the subject of a great number of speculative or alternative theories, which put forward a variety of explanations about its origins, dating, construction and purpose. In support of these claims such accounts either rely upon novel reinterpretations of the available data from fields such as archaeology, history and astronomy, or appeal to mythological, mystical, numerological, astrological and other esoteric sources of knowledge, or some combination of these. Such ideas have been part of popular culture since at least the turn of the 20th century and can be traced back among others to such figures as the early-twentieth century American psychic Edgar Cayce, whose "psychic channeling" of "Ra Ta" purports to have conveyed that the pyramids were built by refugees from Atlantis, and even to his predecessor Ignatius Donnelly. In recent years, some of the more widely-publicised writers of alternative theories include Graham Hancock, Robert Bauval, Adrian Gilbert and Boston University geology professor Robert M. Schoch. These have written extensive alternate theories about the age and origin of the Giza pyramids and the Sphinx. While many Egyptologists and field scientists tend to dismiss such accounts out of hand as being a form of pseudoarchaeology (if only because of the subject material), other specialists such as astronomy professor Ed Krupp who have been involved in debate surrounding their ideas have produced refutations based on analyses of the presented evidence for many of their claims. A common theme found in many of the alternative theories put forward concerning the Giza pyramids and many other megalithic sites around the world, is the suggestion that these are not the products of the civilizations and cultures known to conventional history, but are instead the much older remnants of some hitherto unknown advanced ancient culture. This progenitor civilization is supposed to have been destroyed in antiquity by some devastating catastrophe, according to most of these accounts sometime around 10,500 BC. For the Great Pyramid of Giza in particular, it is maintained (depending on the theorist) that either it was ordained and built by this now-vanished civilization, or else that its construction was somehow influenced by knowledge (now lost) acquired from this civilization. The latter point of view is more common among recent theorists such as Hancock and Bauval, who have acknowledged that the Great Pyramid incorporates star shafts 'locked in' to Orion's Belt and Sirius at around 2450 BC, though they argue the Giza ground-plan was laid out in 10,450 BC . The a priori existence of such a civilization is postulated by such theorists who believe this is the only reasonable explanation how the most advanced of ancient historical cultures, such as Egypt and Sumer, were able to reach such high levels of unequaled technological advancement from their very beginnings with what might appear to be little or no precedent. This precedent they argue is not unknown, but found all over the globe in the form of megalithic ruins discovered at the beginnings of history but too complex they argue to have been constructed by the cultures they are ascribed to by the mainstream. As another of these theorists John Anthony West writes in reference to Egypt in particular: "How does a complex civilization spring full blown into being? Look at a 1905 automobile and compare it to a modern one. There is no mistaking the process of 'development'. But in Egypt there are no parallels. Everything is right there from the start." (Serpent In the Sky, 1979) Egyptologists accuse Hancock of "just acknowledg the existence of a large body of data and the detailed hypothesis formulated to explain them, then bypass that hypothesis and present his alternative". This because most of the evidence presented by Hancock has already been rejected by most Egyptologists and geologists since the evidence has not been subject to the system of peer review. However, he is only one of the many authors and researchers to have questioned the veracity of the evidence given to support the mainstream theory, and contest that there are too many weaknesses overlooked in their arguments. These shortcomings, they contest, include weak evidence tying the building of the pyramid to Khufu — a link which his supporters made on far less strong a base than is generally acceptable in egyptology. Hancock, Schoch and others who put forward alternative theories contest that traditional thoughts of egyptologists should not prevent us from considering new information with a new model, and that if the old theories cannot explain anomalies then they have to be reevaluated in light of new information, rather than brushing these anomalies under the carpet, for this is the scientific method. Further Reading
See also
Exploration Other theories
News
Images
Хеопсова пирамида Den store pyramide i Giza Cheops-Pyramide Πυραμίδες της Γκίζα Gran Pirámide de Giza Cheopsi püramiid هرم بزرگ جیزه Kheopsin pyramidi Grande pyramide de Gizeh הפירמידה הגדולה של גיזה Piramide di Cheope ギザの大ピラミッド Piramid Besar Kufu Piramide van Cheops Den store pyramiden i Giza Piramida Cheopsa Pirâmide de Quéops Пирамида Хеопса Piramide pri Gizi Велике пирамиде Cheopspyramiden Keops Piramidi
|
||||||