Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
Hi Julian ...where did you get the UFO thing?
Why say such a thing? I did not remotely suggest such a thing ..did I?
It is clear you have formed a view and are not thinking about the matters that I am raising...you are creating a straw man which is not cricket old chap.
As to getting it done in twenty years please do me a favour..get out your calculator and tell me how many blocks an hour, each hour for the twenty years...Maybe I made a mistake but just that one single observation must cause one to doubt the twenty year story...wouldn't that be better than going on with alien rubbish..
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Alex,
I apologise that my post has created offence.
My reference to aliens and UFOs was not aimed at you, it was more a general frustration that when people can't imagine how THEY could personally achieve what has been done in the past, they start to resort to other explanations, or to doubt that the project could have been completed in a sensible timeline. However, if you take away the references to UFOs, aliens and voodoo (for which i apologise), I stand by the remainder of my post.
For the specifics of the Great Pyramid, yes, it is an astonishing undertaking, but it is in fact quite achievable in 20 years - or less! I really do urge you to check the project management article that I linked, because they present the maths for the man-power quite convincingly. (They even factor in days off and holidays, allowing 280 x 10-hour days per worker per year.)
https://web.archive.org/web/20070608.../0699feat.html
A few key highlights, though.
There are about 2.6 million cubic metres of material, estimated to be about 2 million blocks. While some of the blocks are massive, the majority are around 1 cubic metre, and weigh about 2 1/2 tonnes each. Yes, these are substantial objects, but we KNOW that a team of about 20 labourers can haul such a bock up an earthen ramp on a sled, without needing wheels or rollers.
Note that the blocks are not uniform in size, they actually get smaller as we go up - this is presumably part of their methodology for moving these quantities of stone blocks to such heights. The vast majority of blocks are completely undressed; finishing was generally done in-situ on the visible faces only, and presumably a skilled artisan workforce was employed on this aspect.
A common misconception is to assume that the rate of installation of the 2 million blocks was something like constant over the life of the project - say 500 - 600 blocks per day over a 10-year program (or whatever number you arrive at depending on the assumed time-line) - but this is not the case!
As the structure is a pyramid, the vast bulk of the material is in the lower tiers. 7/8 of the total material is in the bottom half of the height, only 1/8 of the material, or about 250,000 blocks, comprise the whole top half! The paper estimates that there are about 250 layers of blocks in the main structure, but that 2/3 of the blocks had been placed by level 50; there are only about 7,000 blocks in the last 20 layers.
The delivery rate of the blocks can be MUCH higher at the base than at the top - because the base is vast, there is not much problem with bringing in blocks from multiple directions. The base is 230 metres to a side, so you can easily conceive of how you could initially have dozens of teams bringing in blocks from all directions.
Things get more challenging as we go up, because we get more and more restricted in the number of ramps, and the widths and lengths of those ramps - but the number of blocks per layer drops off rapidly. The paper assumes a single ramp, with a 15% gradient; the final volume of the ramp works out to be about 1/3 that of the pyramid itself, and its construction and removal is factored into the whole project undertaking. We know that a 15% ramp is feasible, because there are archaeological sites at quarries where such ramps (and steeper) have been found, as well as evidence of the technology used to haul the blocks up the ramps.
In the early stages of construction, a team of 20 could probably move a couple of blocks a day from a staging area at the base of the pyramid into position; as height is gained, the hauling distance becomes longer, and it takes one or more days for each block to reach its finished location - but we are moving far fewer blocks per day than at the start. 20 to 50 metres behind the first team is another team, and another behind that, and another behind that... At the end of each working day, all the blocks are left where they lie, the crew go off for a meal and a sleep, and the next day they all pick-up where they left off.
Yes, an astonishing undertaking, requiring fantastic project management - but entirely achievable with the technology and labour force that we know they had.
Quote:
Originally Posted by xelasnave
You admit there is nothing to go on as to the tomb aspect..as it's all gone and focus upon a granite box that you guess must have been a tomb because you can't imagine what else it could be used for???? So based on your best guess we can ignore the fact that all the bodies are found in the Valley of the Kings...come on ..do you expect to sweep away my observations on your best unsupported guess.
AND if a cofin why is it in the corner...that alone suggests to me it was not a coffin and absolutely inconsistent with their strict ideas as to perfect layout.
And why nothing on the walls...looted?
And why do we find all the bodies in the Valley of the Kings..you do know where they found the king you mention..not in a pyramid is a clue.
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I don't pretend to know all of the purpose and meaning of the Great Pyramid, but we can take a lot of clues from earlier smaller pyramids from multiple sites (which most assuredly WERE used as tombs), and the fact that the Great Pyramid is part of a substantial funerary and religious complex.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giza_pyramid_complex
The Giza complex dates from an entirely different (MUCH older) part of Egyptian history to the Valley of the Kings - circa 2500 BC for the Giza complex (4th Dynasty), versus 11th to 16th century BC for the Valley of the Kings (18th to 20th Dynasties). Funerary customs (artefacts, wall decorations, ceremonies, etc) should not be assumed to be comparable. It is believed that pretty well everything at Giza had been looted long before the time of the Valley of the Kings.