Secret of the Pyramids
Ever since I was a kid I have been interested in architecture of all kinds. The most impressive and among the oldest examples are the pyramids. They have been found in a number of places on earth. The best known are in Egypt.
My interest is how these things were built. The Great Pyramid of Khufu at Giza in Egypt contains two million blocks, each weighing two tons. The original facing on the structure was marble (looted sometime in the past) and there was a special stone at the top rumored to have been gold or gold clad. The designing, planning and the methods involved in the construction of any of these wonders is astonishing.
The most perplexing mystery for me is how all those heavy blocks were stacked up so high. Theories include the use of hundreds of thousands of slaves working hundreds of years, to aliens with gravity defying devices used to float the stones through the air into place.
Among all the clues discovered was one which revealed to me, as a builder, the secret of the pyramids. The clue, attributed to most of the pyramids and other large stone edifices of early history, is the precision fit of the stones. It is commonly said a knife blade can not be inserted into the joints.
If the stones had been quarried miles away and somehow moved to the building site and put in place, getting them to fit so precisely would indeed require the aliens’ anti-gravity devices along with laser stone cutters.
However, there is a way the job could have been done using the available technology, workforce and materials at hand. It is a method called Rammed Earth. Imagine a wooden form 2 cubits x 2 cubits x 2 cubits (3.5′ x 3.5′ x 3.5′) that would produce a 4000 pound block. The form has four sides, no top or bottom, and could easily have been built with skills of the time period. The form is filled with a mix of sand (from the Sahara), clay and a little water (from the Nile) and some blood (don’t want to guess about that) as a binder. As the form is filled it is tamped down until it is very hard – in fact, as hard as stone. Much bigger blocks could be made this way too.
Now suppose the blocks were formed just a few inches away from where they were meant to end up. Once the form was removed the block could be pushed into place with simple levers and a couple of good kicks. If every other stone block was made using the form, the blocks in between could be rammed right in place. This explains the knife blade clue. The seams would be precise and tight.
Workers would use conveniently sized backpack type baskets to transport materials up ramps to the forms as the pyramid rose in elevation. Probably hundreds of forms would have been in use simultaneously. The lowest estimate of workers building the Egyptian pyramids was 3000 to 4000. With the Rammed Earth Method it is feasible for the construction to have been done in just a few years with such a small workforce and there were no unions back then to slow things down.
Add in many centuries of weathering and Rammed Earth blocks would be indistinguishable from quarried stone. I will concede that the marble and some of the special stonework in these structures would be quarried but over 90% of the mass could have been done with Rammed Earth.
I have capitalized Rammed Earth because it is a great building method you should think about. These days with motorized compaction machines, costing much less than slave labor, it is within reason to consider this method as part of your building plans. I suggest you use Portland cement as a more socially acceptable binder than blood. But that is up to you. Google tells all.
If my explanation of the Pyramid secret proves wrong, I am going with the alien theory.
