Who Built The Pyramids?

Harvard Magazine ^ | 8-17-2003 | Jonathan Shaw

[blam]

Who Built the Pyramids?

Not slaves. archeaologist Mark Lehner digging deeper, discovers a city of privileged workers.

by Jonathan Shaw

The pyramids and the Great Sphinx rise inexplicably from the desert at Giza, relics of a vanished culture. They dwarf the approaching sprawl of modern Cairo, a city of 16 million. The largest pyramid, built for the Pharaoh Khufu around 2530 B.C. and intended to last an eternity, was until early in the twentieth century the biggest building on the planet. To raise it, laborers moved into position six and a half million tons of stone—some in blocks as large as nine tons—with nothing but wood and rope. During the last 4,500 years, the pyramids have drawn every kind of admiration and interest, ranging in ancient times from religious worship to grave robbery, and, in the modern era, from New-Age claims for healing “pyramid power” to pseudoscientific searches by “fantastic archaeologists” seeking hidden chambers or signs of alien visitations to Earth. As feats of engineering or testaments to the decades-long labor of tens of thousands, they have awed even the most sober observers.

[blam]

I excerpted the article because it is fairly long and has many pictures.

[blam]

Ping.

[The Wizard]

this thing was not built with logs and ropes.....

[MHGinTN]

Great read, blam!

[farmfriend]

Gods, Graves, Glyphs
List for articles regarding early civilizations , life of all forms, - dinosaurs - etc.

Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this ping list.

[Liberal Classic]

I've always found this attitude to be essentially a prejudicial opinion against people in the past that says they weren't clever enough to move giant blocks of stone. Therefore it must have been aliens/chariots of the gods/crystal power.

[KCmark]

I've been there. They are incredible. Pictures have a hard time capturing their size.

[dogbyte12]

One theory, that some discredit, that is getting some cache, is that the blocks are actually not chiseled limestone, but limestone cement.

If they knew how to heat up limestone, and turn it into mortar, it would have made the task so much more easy.

The chiseled "stones" could in actuality be limestone powder, mixed on site, poured into molds, in place. There have been objections to this theory, but it does easily answer a question about how the huge stones were moved and assembled.

[Lockbar]

Yul Brynner built them!

[Central Scrutiniser]

Went there a few years back and was able to go inside the center pyramid.

It was amazing, the blocks were perfectly flush, level and you couldn't pass a hair between the stones.

Highly recommend a trip to Cairo, fascinating place...

[Liberal Classic]

Got a condo made of stona...

[Dog Gone]

This notion of a vast slave class in Egypt originated in Judeo-Christian tradition and has been popularized by Hollywood productions like Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Commandments, in which a captive people labor in the scorching sun beneath the whips of pharaoh’s overseers. But graffiti from inside the Giza monuments themselves have long suggested something very different.

I am becoming more and more convinced that the Exodus never happened, at least not on the terms we once believed. Great article, and anyone with any interest at all should click through.

[ChadGore]

Slaves built the Pyramids. Duh!

[blam]

"Highly recommend a trip to Cairo, fascinating place..."

I agree, went there in 1966, still have a bronze statue of Nefertiti I bought there.

[jetson]

I've had heard that they flooded the valley and built the pyramids with barges. Where is the barge evidence.

[spoiler2]

"Mark Lehner digging deeper, discovers a city of privileged workers."

So here we have concrete evidence, pardon the pun, of the first existence of privileged, perhaps unionized workers!

The egyptians were ahead of us in so many ways....

[Alouette]

I am becoming more and more convinced that the Exodus never happened

The Bible says nothing about the Pyramids. It says the Hebrew built the "storage cities" of Pithom and Ramses.

[jetson]

Where is the evidence of this. The mixing pots, the giant ovens, etc.

[blam]

"I am becoming more and more convinced that the Exodus never happened, at least not on the terms we once believed. "

So, what are you ideas on the Exodus. I believe it happened but, in 1628BC.

[yarddog]

I think it was built by the ancient Egyptians simply using massive numbers of people.

The one mystery to me is how they were able to cut the stones using only bronze tools. They did not have iron yet bronze will not cut stone.