Riddle of the Pyramids: Why De Mille didn't need all those slaves

The Observer ^ | Sunday December 30, 2001 | Paul Webster in Paris

[John Farson]

ping

[Fish out of Water]

Interesting

[WriteOn]

It would make a lot of sense. Take some of the wonder/mystery out of it, though.

[DrJasper]

The ancient Egyptians were a lot smarter that we give them credit. They knew or maybe invented the KISS theory. All this time modern, smart people were looking at complicated theories including UFO's

[Commonsense]

I have such mixed emotions everytime something is "revealed". It's like finding out that Santa is really Mom and Dad. There's something wonderful about the mystifying pyramids that I wish we could retain instead of always trying to find the answers. It's like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. I don't WANT to know how they did it. The fascination with it is enough and feels good.

OTOH, if it continues to debunk the alien theories, then that's a good thing.

[ken5050]

French are idiots...how did they pile sand up that high...keep its shape....dunes move....look at the desert....

[Commonsense]

Exactly what I meant in my post #6.

[Garrisson Lee]

I have never bought the theory of the massive blocks and all the slaves. The trouble with Egyptologists is none of them ever did a day's work in their lives. There is no way hundreds of thousands of non-existent slaves could be forced for generations to build a pile of non existent rocks using non existent trees for rollers and scaffolding.

The answer has to be simple; Every year the river flooded and then receded. It had to be dredged every summer. What to do with the silt? Make it into blocks and build something big. It could have been built using bucket brigades passing baskets of silt to a form, then mixed into concrete, covered with straw and fired.

Would have taken ten years to build a pyramid this way, as opposed to never, ever being done via the slave/block/no trees in Egypt method.

[Billy_bob_bob]

This is the best theory I have ever heard concerning the origin of the pyramids. Now, can this guy tell us who built the Sphinx?

[Straight Vermonter]

Combined with this nearly everything we learned in school about the ancient monuments seems to be wrong.

[spqrzilla9]

This is actually an old theory, its been debunked repeatedly.

[henbane]

...until the mould theory is proved or shattered, the dominant opinion will remain Cecil B. De Mille's images of slaves and whips.

Whatever the outcome of the research, DeMille's images of slaves and whips will endure--but the pictures of ropes, pulleys and huge blocks of granite will be replaced by endless lines of slaves shuffling along with big buckets of freshly mixed concrete on their backs.

[Billthedrill]

This isn't the first time I'd heard this theory, or something like it. There's a book published in 1988, called The Pyramids, an Enigma Solved which title seems a little presumptious, but it's an interesting idea - the whole shebang poured in situ in concrete. I'm not enough of a civil engineer to know if it were possible at that period, but it's fun to speculate.

[TRY ONE]

.....they are nothing more than weathered concrete blocks, moulded on the spot, stone by stone and layer by layer, from the ground upwards.

Not so! Here's the problem. In order to pour that much concrete you would need the Mafia cement contractors from New Jersey. And since Egypt is not unionized they wouldn't go work there.

SO, NEXT THEORY!!!

[Restorer]

I am very skeptical. Concrete is not a mysterious substance. It has very specific chemical characteristics.

This concrete would have to be absolutely the best and most durable ever created. I know the Egyptians were advanced, but I think such an understanding of chemistry is a lot less likely than the ability to move large stone blocks.

[Carry_Okie]

French are idiots...how did they pile sand up that high...keep its shape....dunes move....look at the desert....

Is this sarcasm? The theory is entirely logical. Concrete is a sand/gravel slurry that is held rigid until a hydrating binder cures. One can even make free-standing continuous-cast concrete objects with minimal forming, simply by slip-casting. Silos are made that way.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla]

endless lines of slaves shuffling along with big buckets of freshly mixed concrete on their backs.

The newest theories that I have been reading is that there is no evidence that the ancient Egyptians used slave labor, except for one period, when the Hebrews were enslaved. This implies that slavery was invented as a way of controlling the Hebrews, rather than because it was needed for labor. Evidence which has been recently excavated show that the Pyramid builders lived as free men, not as slaves (their houses were not prisons, and allowed easy entrance and exit). They apparently built the pyramids as part of their own religious observances, worshipping their Pharoah/God.

[jimtorr]

This simply comfirms theories that French intellectuals can be such idiots. Where was much of the stone of the pyramids quarried? Much of the stone for the Great Pyramid was quarried from the plateau around it. There are even cut blocks still buried under the sand that are perfect matches for blocks on the heap. I assure readers that one can readilly tell the difference between cut stone and concrete.

[RGSpincich]

Where did they purchase the rebar or other structural steel for the pyramids?