How were the great pyramids of Egypt built?

Question

First I will refer you to the book by the scientist Davidovits, "The Pyramids, an enigma solved" The evidence is there.

The vast majority of people and Egyptologists still believe that the stones were cut and hauled and set into place. Granted Egyptians did haul huge granite blocks and statues weighing many tons. But the millions and millions of blocks of the pyramids, each stone being giant, were not made that way.

It is interesting that the Biblical description of the construction of the Tower of Bable matches, the translation is that they made bricks, but that is impossible because bricks would crack under the heavy loads, it is known that they crack too easily. If you see a column of brick it is a facade and there is a steal beam inside, except for small walls and such.

I have almost answered the question but I have not been direct and I am looking for informative answers.

I have posted this in the science category because I do not see an archaeology category.

Answer 1

"How were the great pyramids of Egypt built?"

Very, very carefully

Answer 2

You are correct that brick can not stand up to heavy load, they are in fact as you mentioned, a facade. basically a facing for the pyramid itself. the actual structure is crafted of giant carved stone. if you have ever seen imagery from the interior passages to can see these blocks, each one having an approximate weight of 60-90 tons. For comparison sake your average full sized pickup is less than half a ton. While its true that the work required to move such stones can be lessened (rollers, levers, pulleys) the undertaking would have been enormous to carefully fit them into place. Modern engineering uses cranes, sometimes two or more to carefully fit large weights like that into place. Maybe there was something more at work there, maybe there was not. I don't have the answers but I would like to find out.

Answer 3

It seems that you have answered your own question. I am not sure what you want here.

Only the outsides of the Pyramids were brick. The more substantial part of the Pyramids were made from stone. There was a place that it was believed that the stones came from further south 'up' the Nile.

You are right that bricks would not of with stood the weight. They did not even with stand the desert winds as most of them are now gone. The Sphinx was partially buried in sand for most of its existence, and you can see what the sands have done to the parts that was exposed.

Answer 4

The majority of the royal Egyptian pyramids, and especially the famous pyramids at Giza were built of cut stone. There is clear evidence for the quarrying activity on-site at Giza and still visible on some of the blocks on the interior of the pyramid still bear ink inscriptions denoting the work-group that was responsible for putting them into place.
Some later royal pyramids were constructed "cheaply" with a core of stone rubble and a facing of mud-brick and, indeed, many of these have crumbled over time. Non-royal pyramids also became popular in later periods of Egyptian history and were built of mudbrick as well.
I have personally excavated a pyramid constructed of mudbrick that was remarkably well-preserved. This particular pyramid was built using a technique called casemate construction. The building foundation is essentially made of of multiple chambers or rooms without doors in mudbrick. The chambers (casemates) are then filled in with sand, stone, rubble, or a combination of all of the above to form a semi-solid base for futher construction. It's a well-recorded construction technique that, while not as sturdy as solid stone construction, does serve remarkably well and is far less expensive in terms of labor and materials.
There are a number of ways to get around the problem of mud-brick stress torsion and other issues. One, that was popular in Mesopotamia and used in several ziggurats (the inspiration for the "Tower of Babel) was the inclusion of reed matts between layers of brick to serve as a cushion. Another approach is the use of a combination of mud-brick and fired brick.
There are a number of enormous mud-brick structures still standing in Egypt. Probably the most famous is the enormous funerary enclosure (also known by the local name of Shunet el-Zebib) of King Khasekhemwy at Abydos, dating to ca. 2686 BC.
Build entirely of unfired mudbrick, it is still standing, it's walls are several meters high and thick and it has survived several millenia, and various re-uses, including use by Coptic monks who carved "caves" into the thick mud-brick walls to serve as living spaces. I assure you, I have never seen anything remotely resembling an steel beam inside any of those walls, nor would I expect to as the construction of the building predates the use of steel by several millenia.

Answer 5

In India, some of those forgotten temples are almost as old as the pyramids. They discovered an earthen ramp about a mile away from it and used a laser to figuare out where it would go if complete and it pointed to the top of one of the great temples. So more than likely, huge ramps were constructed and logs used as rollers to move the blocks (elephants were used in India to move them over the logs)

Answer 6

They were built one brick at a time.