Free Republic

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...

...using synchrotrons to analyse the synthetic turquoise that was popular during the reign of Pharaoh Akhenaten around 1300BC. Archaeologist Dr Mark Eccleston... says Egyptian 'faience', a fine-glazed quartz ceramic of distinct turquoise colour, was a common material used in items ranging from simple beads to religious artefacts. He says while it was known that larger factories were used to produce the faience, his research has shown less prestigious pieces could also have been produced in ovens in household courtyards... "Large state industries were effectively sub-contracting labour and the household would get something in return, for example more food." ...Eccleston says...

Drexel University researchers are revising the book on the Pyramids of Egypt, the last surviving wonder of the ancient world. The standard hypothesis for their construction speculates that ancient Egyptians carved the blocks out of nearby deposits of natural limestone, using stone age tools, and then floated the stones on barges, and used primitive ramps and levers to wrestle the blocks into place. The fact is, no one knows even to this day how the Pyramids were built. Many of the limestone blocks fit so perfectly that not even a human hair ....

At MIT, Hobbs and two colleagues teach a course called Materials in Human Experience... The MIT pyramid will contain only about 280 blocks, compared with 2.3 million in the grandest of the Great Pyramids... Hobbs describes himself as "agnostic" on the issue, but believes mainstream archeologists have been too contemptuous of work by other scientists suggesting the possibility of concrete. "The degree of hostility aimed at experimentation is disturbing," he said. "Too many big egos and too many published works may be riding on the idea that every pyramid block was carved, not cast." ...In 2006, research by Michel W....

Egypt's Pyramids Packed With Seashells Jennifer Viegas, Discovery News Fossil-Filled April 25, 2008 -- Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study. The study's authors suggest that the stones that make up the examined monuments at Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos must have been carved out of natural stone since they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4,000 years ago, when the buildings were...