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Good books to read and current theories welcome, too.

Careful there...........

You're coming dangerously close to giving the term vanity post a good name.

I read that they paid the workers in beer.

When do I start?

Last thing I read was that their failure to take into account the earth's rotation forver ruined was is supposed to be quite a light show.

Read the books by Adam Rutherford titled Pyramidology. He is considered the foremost authority on the subject. The Great Pyramid is often referred to as "the Bible in Stone". That is why the capstone is missing, along with the 144,000 casing stones. Here is a great web site for more information.

Great Pyramid Site

I recently saw the most plausible theory I've ever heard concerning how the pyramids were built, and I'm amazed that it hasn't been thought of far, far sooner. Much ado has always been made over the incredible precision of the stones, so perfectly mated that a razor blade won't fit between them, etc. Seems all but impossible that such stones could have cut with the available technology, then moved into place precisely.

What if they were never cut? What if they were POURED? It would explain dang near everything, the fit, how the stones got to those heights, etc., etc., etc. Some researcher is claiming that the stones are actually a type of mortar mix that was poured into molds that sat right on top of the next lower layer, which would certainly explain the precise fit of one stone to another. It also erases the mammoth task of moving huge stones to those heights. It's a very interesting theory and I think quite possibly the right one.

MM

I imagine that the pyramid would have taken far fewer than the thousands and thousands of people to build commonly imagined, and the time involved would have been much shorter than the 20 years bandied about. Since the top narrows as it gets taller, the building surface gets smaller as the structure gets bigger.

As for moving megaliths up the slope, a large counter weight system would haul them up rather quickly. No aliens, no New Age ancient Egyptian mystical cosmic silliness, and most importantly, no expensive wars or press gangs to seize the slaves commonly supposed. It would have been much cheaper to hire a bunch of folks, and then keep firing more and more of them as the thing got taller and taller.

Graham Hancock, author of "Fingerprints of the Gods" and "The Message of the Sphinx," has a web site with an interesting and active message board. Both Hancock and his co-author on a couple of books, Robert Bauval, often post there. Enjoy.

http://www.grahamhancock.com/phorum/list.php?f=1

One of the most interesting sites I've visited regarding Cheops Pyramid is one dedicated to the Upuaut Project, which was a semi private exploration venture adminisistered by a German engineering firm and the Egyptian agency in charge of the the Pyramids. Anyway, in exchange for setting up a low-maintenance ventalating system to reduce the humiduty within Cheop's Pryamid, the Egyptians allowed a handful of German engineers to use a serious of remote-controlled robots to investigate the "air-shafts leading out of the King's and Queen's chambers. You can read all about it here:

http://www.cheops.org/

SOme of the major discoveries:

• The airshafts leading from the Queen's chamber do not, it appears, lead to the surface of the pyramid. One shaft is closed off with fully dressed and finished block that is wider and taller than the shaft and contains what appears to be two copper fittings. Speculation is that the fittings join to form a handle on the opposite side, leading to further speculation that a chamber may exist on the far side of the block. We may never know.

• Another shaft from the Queen's chamber turns sharply west and continues in that direction for many meters. The robots were unable to continue in this direction. Detritus from previous expeditons were found here.

• Both shafts leading from the King's chamber lead to open air beyond the surface of the pyramid.

• Similar shafts in Khephren's Pyramid only extend a few inches into the mass of thhat pyramid.

The site also marvels at what a terrific pain the abckside it was for the engineers to put those "airshafts" into Cheop's Pyramid. Each segment within each shaft is composed of two blocks: One to serve as the floor of the shaft, the other resting on top with the shaft perfectly grooved into the block and adjoining the next segment. All these segments start from deep inside the Pyramid to points outside or other points deep within the Pyramid. This means that the Masonry that composes the mass of the Pyramid had to be cut and dressed with other stones to accomadate the shafts.

It's stuff like that that make me wonder what would drive these builders to solve such complex problems.

One interesting thought that occurred to me about the pyramids is that they might me massive public works projects that kept a large population in the heart of the empire highly skilled in engineering, transportation, victualing, administration, training, management, physical labor, logistics... You see where I'm going: It allowed the Egyptians to have a reserve army skilled in the many needed talents of a professional standing army without the need of actually having one. VIPs from neighboring lands would see the well drilled, skilled, disciplined, and led Egyptian citizenry and understand that every single person working on the Pyramids could be called into the Pharoah's Army. After learning trades while working on the Pyramids, workers could then employ their talents in private business endeavors. All in all, working on the Pyramids may have served the function of volunteering (or being drafted) for the Army, learning a skill, and getting gainful employment/starting a business with your newfound skills. (Well, why not?)

The book has been out of print for years but is well worth hunting down. Oriental Despotism by Karl August Wittfogel, who was a history professor at Columbia during the 50's.

The thesis he created is called Hydraulic Despotism. Ancient societies that were based on huge irrigation systems like Egypt, China, the Fertile Crescent, the Indus River, etc. developed a kind of proto-totalitarian structure. You see, a society that developed wet agriculture could grow more grain, raise more taxes, grow a larger population than neighboring rainfall agriculture societies. So with better organization, more people, more soldiers, more grain, etc it could simply muscle its way until it controlled a huge area. To administer the water, to maintain dikes and canals and bridges and sluice gates, it had a privileged mandarin class of bureaucrat engineers. It had the kind of bureaucratic reach to plan and organize on a colossal scale. After all, a state which could plan and organize the conscription of peasant forced labor to maintain irrigation systems could also use that labor for roads, fortresses, palaces, Great Walls, Hanging Gardens, Pyramids, etc. So all that engineering and administrative expertise didn't just spring up from nowhere. It had been honed for centuries on water control.