Study Shows Life Was Tough For Ancient Egyptians

“According to tradition, Exodus and the other four books of the Torah were written by Moses in the latter half of the 2nd millennium BC, and modern biblical scholarship sees it reaching its final form around 450 BC.”

It’s a real eye-opener to most Americans to realize that the Kingdoms of Egypt lasted about 3000 years, but that much of the framework of that guess is very rickety indeed, with lots of hundred year or more periods based on just the slightest evidence. Archaeology isn’t easy.

As an aside, I and some friends had a huge laugh while visiting the “Splendors of Ancient Egypt” touring exhibit at the Phoenix Art Museum in 2000. Their last exhibit was of a painted “Greco-Roman Period” wooden coffin with a mummy.

The outside of the coffin was painted in broad red and white horizontal stripes, and the inside of the lid section over the face of the mummy was painted in a dark blue, with white stars in it to look like the night sky. And when this lid section was opened, it looked much like the American flag!

“Well,” I said to my friends, “at least we know the time machine works halfway!”

N.B.: The Greco-Roman period overlapped the year zero. Prime time for a Christian time traveler.

Some years ago, the Smithsonian came up with a low tech solution to the construction of the pyramids that would have reduced the time and manpower needed to a fraction of what it would have had to have been otherwise.

Simply put, using sectional wooden “wheels”, held together with pins, to turn square stones into cylinders that would be easy to roll up dirt ramps.

At the quarry, where there are considerable ruins of workers homes, you muscle the cut stone onto the first two of eight wooden pieces that are flat on the side facing the stone, and rounded on the outside. Then you add the other six wooden sections and pin them together.

The stone is like an axle with two wheels, so could then be rolled down to the dock and loaded on a small ship to take it down the river. Once there, it could be rolled all the way to the pyramid site.

On site, once the lowest level of stones had been laid, then you build a dirt ramp to the same height. Then push or pull the “wheeled” stones up the ramp to build the next level. There doesn’t even have to be a great incline to the dirt ramp, as it can circle the pyramid. Dirt ramp technology was well known at that time.

Once you have emplaced the capstone, you just remove the dirt, and you have a finished pyramid. Importantly, using this technique would also explain the ease with which the inner chambers of the pyramid were built.

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