Posted on 08/17/2003 5:13:35 PM PDT by 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 stonesome in blocks as large as nine tonswith 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.
(Excerpt) Read more at harvard-magazine.com ...
Go figger!
Dr Robert Schoch, in his book,Voyages Of The Pyramid Builders, speculates that all the world's pyramid builders originated on the Sunda Shelf (Indonesia) that went underwater at the end of the Ice Age. They took the culture of pyramid building with them all over the world as they fled the flooding. Also, he said that if there was an Atlantis, that was probably it.
Something that I thought was really interesting was that the ancients had plywood which would make producing moulds easier.
It would also be a hell of a lot easier for the hired hands to tote wheelbarrows or baskets of material and jugs of water way up high than would moving 5000 pound blocks of rock.
This came from world-mysteries.com
Joseph Davidovits
Biography
International renown French Scientist, born in 1935, working in France, Europe, USA, Australia and China. Honored by French President Jacques Chirac with one of France's two highest honors, the grade of " Chevalier de lOrdre National du Mérite " (Nov. 1998).
Education: French Degree in Chemical Engineering German Doctor Degree in Chemistry (PhD) Professor and founder of the Institute for Applied Archaeological Sciences, IAPAS, Barry University, Miami ,Florida, (1983-1989). Visiting Professor, Penn State University, Pennsylvania (1989-1991). Professor and Director of the Geopolymer Institute, Saint-Quentin, France (1979 to present). Honorary Professor, Xian Universtity of Architecture and Technology, China (1999).
Professional expertise: World expert in Modern and Ancient Cements. World expert in Geosynthesis and man-made rocks. Consultant (expert) to the European Union Commission. Inventor of Geopolymers and the chemistry of Geopolymerization. Polyglot: English, French, German, Spanish, Latin, Ancient Greek, Hieroglyphs
Member of the following societies: International Association of Egyptologists American Chemical Society American Concrete Institute New York Academy of Sciences American Ceramic Society
International Scientific Award: NASTS Gold Ribbon, awarded at the National Press Club, Washington DC, Sept. 26, 1994, by the National Academy of Engineering, The Federation of Materials Societies and the National Association for Science, Technology and Society.
Articles, Interviews, TV Radio Appearances: 1.from 1981 to 1992, numerous articles and interviews dedicated to science, technology and archaeology (pyramids) in: New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Globe and Mail (Toronto), Sunday Times, Miami Herald, Omni Magazine, Geo Magazine, American Way, Readers Digest, World and I, UPI, Associated Press, Agence France Press, etc; radio: BBC, various American radio networks; TV: NOVA/PBS, CNN, various local TV (San Francisco, Detroit, Miami, etc.) 2.between 1992 and 1999: declined any public appearance, interview, and TV appearance. Focussing on scientific research.
X-Ray Analysis and X-Ray Diffraction of Casing Stones from the Pryramids of Egypt, and the Limestone of the Associated Quarries (1984) by Joseph Davidovits
published in Science in Egyptology, Proceedings of the Science in Egyptology Symposia, Manchester, U.K., pp. 511-520, 1984.
The hypothesis that the limestone that constitutes the major pyramids of the Old Kingdom of Egypt is man-made stone, is discussed. Samples from six different sites at the traditionally associated quarries of Turah and Mokattam have been studied using thin-section, chemical X-Ray analysis and X-Ray diffraction. The results were compared with pyramid casing stones of Cheops, Teti and Seneferu. The quarry samples are pure limestone consisting of 96-99% Calcite, 0.5-2.5% Quartz, and very small amount of dolomite, gypsum and iron-alumino-silicate. On the other hand the Cheops and Teti casing stones are limestone consisting of: calcite 85-90% and a high amount of special minerals such as Opal CT, hydroxy-apatite, a silico-aluminate, which are not found in the quarries. The pyramid casing stones are light in density and contain numerous trapped air bubbles, unlike the quarry samples which are uniformly dense. If the casing stones were natural limestone, quarries different from those traditionally associated with the pyramid sites must be found, but where? X-Ray diffraction of a red casing stone coating is the first proof to demonstrate the fact that a complicated man-made geopolymeric system was produced in Egypt 4,700 years ago.
Small world indeed.
Also the dimensions of the pyramid are evenly divisible by PI because the Egyptians used a wheel with a circumference equal to one cubit. So whenever they rolled that wheel to measure cubits they were encorporating PI in the measurement. No big secret there either.
Possibly a ziggurat also.
It's pretty technical, but he presents known archiological evidence within the framework of his revised time-line and builds a convincing case that the Exodus accounts, e.g., aren't too far off, if off at all.
He has no religious axe to grind, BTW.
Except that most of the "plagues" may not have been that big a deal. For example: the Nile turning red -- the upper Nile, anyway, often turns a reddish hue during the annual flooding due to minerals from the Abyssinian lakes. Frogs and flies often swarm during the flooding. "Cattle pest" causes painful boils in both cattle and humans and did sometimes appear extensively. The darkness is caused by the Khamsin wind -- remember when during the Iraq war there were a couple days when day turned as dark as night due to the windborn sand?
Basically, every single plague except the "death of the firstborn" is not abnormal. So it is quite possible that even if they all struck in a short period, while it would definitely cause unrest I doubt that anything would be carved into stone about it. As for the death of the firstborn, that would be supernatural and you would expect that to be recorded. You can believe it never happened and so of course was never recorded, or it did happen supernaturally and was possibly supernaturally suppressed from being recorded. After all, if it really DID happen, and God caused it, then the logical corollary is that yes, Satan also exists and might have a vested interest in suppressing any recorded evidence. You basically get God and Satan in the same package in both Judism and Christianity, so....
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