Where did ancient Egyptians get all the stones to build the pyramids?

Question

I mean, they lived in the middle of the desert. Where did they get all this spare stone?

Answer 1

"How did the Egyptians build the pyramids?

The Great Pyramid of Khufu was one of the Seven Wonders of the World to the ancients and we still marvel at it today. Although it is not the largest pyramid of the past -- honors go to an otherwise undistinguished pyramid from Cholula, Mexico, that was built about half as far back -- Khufu's pyramid amazes because of its antiquity, the size of its stones, the perfection of its orientation, and its many hidden chambers. Outwardly about as simple as an edifice can be, the Great Pyramid is actually a complex and interesting object. Furthermore, it is flanked by two nearby pyramids, each almost as large, that would be wonders by themselves if the Great Pyramid had never been built.

The Greek historian Herodotus, writing about two millennia after construction of the pyramids, claimed that it took teams of 100,000 men at a time working for 20 years to build them. Herodotus also claimed that the ancient Egyptians had marvelous machines that they used to lift the stones into place. Neither of these claims seems to be true.

A current misconception is that the Egyptians moved the large stones on rollers made from tree trunks. According to this theory, by having teams constantly replenish the front rollers with those from the rear, it should have been possible to move a stone almost as if the wheel had been invented. This is idle speculation with no evidence in its favor and much circumstantial evidence against it.

The most reliable clues to Egyptian construction methods are the wall paintings from ancient Egypt, although many of the most suggestive are far from contemporaneous with the pyramids. Using such paintings and some related texts, along with practices employed in more recent times and a few artifacts, we can put together the following scenario:

Quarrying. Decent limestone beds on the same side of the river as the pyramids and good limestone from the far side were used. Limestone was cut in blocks by making notches with hard rock, inserting wooden wedges, and wetting the wedges. When the wedges swelled, the stone fractured. Sometimes copper wedges in increasing sizes were used instead. Granite, used for plugs and caps, may have been cut by pounding it with a harder stone.
Transporting. Very heavy objects, some ten times the weight of pyramid stones, are shown in wall paintings as being moved on sledges, not on rollers or wheels, considerably later than when the pyramids were built. Wheels were new in Mesopotamia around the time of the pyramids, but word had not reached Egypt. The sledges were aided by pouring a liquid in their path to lubricate the way. Some have speculated that the liquid was milk, but vegetable oil of some kind seems within the abilities of Egyptians of the time (and much more efficient)."


"Herodotus' script (translated to English): "The priests said, Egypt was excellently governed, and flourished greatly; Cheops, who brought the people to utter misery**, closed the temples, and forbade the Egyptians to offer sacrifice, compelling them instead to labor, one and all, in his service. To some, he assigned the task of dragging stones from the quarries in the Arabian mountains to the Nile; and after the stones were ferried across the river in boats, he organized others to receive and drag them to the mountains called Libyan. Hundred thousand men labored constantly, and were relieved every three months by a fresh lot. It took ten years to make the causeway for the conveyance of the stones, a work not much inferior, in my opinion, to the pyramid itself. This causeway is nearly a mile long and twenty yards wide, and elevated at its highest to a height of sixteen yards. It is built of polished stone, and is covered with carvings of animals. The aforesaid ten years went to the building of this road and of the underground chambers in the hill where the pyramid stand; these, the king meant to be burial places for himself. These last were built on a sort of island, surrounded by water introduced from the Nile by a canal."


"Next they needed to get the stones. Some were cut from hills nearby and others were taken from the other side of the Nile. They also took granite and marble from Aswan, in the South of Egypt, to build a cover for the pyramid. Each stone was cut very precisely, and weighed between 21/2 and 5 tons. To build the pyramid they used 2,300,000 blocks of stone. If it took them the whole 23 years to build, that was 273 stones that they had to cut and move every day. If you look at the picture below, it will give you some idea of the size of the blocks."

Answer 2

The Egyptians did, and they left hieroglyphics on various tomb and temple walls explaining how they did it. there are clear illustrations showing human works quarrying and placing stones. Of course, not everything that mainstream Egyptology would have you believe is true. The pyramid is much older than historians will admit because if they admit how old it is then they will have to re write established time lines, and in turn this will mean that they will have to admit that famous archaeologists who they idolize were just plain wrong. A few years back somebody calculated the number of stones required to build the great pyramid and found that the stones would have to have been laid at an impossibly fast rate for it to be built in the time that it is supposed to have been built. Which would throw out a lot of the ideas about the pyramid, who built it, and when.

Answer 3

There were hundreds of stone quarries in the desert; the Egyptians got their stone supply from them, and transported them in boats on the Nile River. This first excerpt explains whey the stone is in the desert, it is pretty interesting.

"...Dr. Hunt stated that everywhere there are plates meeting, much hard stone is found: stone which has been formed deep within the earth and thrust upward thorough geological activity. The result of this activity is the source of Egypt’s phenomenal wealth of hard stone.... "

http://hebsed.home.comcast.net/hunt.htm

"...Since 1989 , through a combination of literature research and field work, we have located a total of 162 ancient quarries in Egypt and Sudan. This number includes all the quarries recognized by earlier workers plus another 30 that we discovered......"


"...The ancient Egyptians had an awareness of geo-logical strata in the Bronze Age, and probably well before that. Their understanding of geology was well ahead of other ancient cultures. Dr. Hunt believes that the ancient Egyptians had very early developed stone selection criteria, and used stone based on both empirical and experimental observation of its character. Ancient stone workers were skilled in selecting the stone that best suited the needs of their projects; they knew what worked best for specific uses. The ancient Egyptians were capable of working stone ranging from #1 to #9 on the 10-step, relativized Moh’s scale of hardness...."

Answer 4

Large blocks of stone were cut from quarries. They were dragged by groups of men across the desert to the site of the pyramid and set in place. Most of the workers were farmers who worked on building the pyramid during the flood season when their fields were under water.

Answer 5

I heard that they made a pit of mud and the slaves of the Paroh would stomp and walk in this mud whole all day long throwing straw (wheat stalks)...etc inside the pit and mushing it together. Like todays cement we have support beams or bars underneath and the straw acted like that. It held together this mud and they had shpaers which shaped it into shapes like bricks