How pyramid builders thought pyramids were built.

[cladking]

I’ve been running a theory around the egyptological web sites for nearly four years now and am not getting satisfaction., There’s little doubt that the theory has their attention and Hawass probably referred to it as “other unscientific theories on the internet”. In any case I’m beginning to fear that the powers that be will take another century and a half to weigh the merits of this revolutionary idea. I’ve threatened previously to take this public and my posting it here is intended as a sort of intermediate step.

Part of the reason it’s not taken seriously is that it’s been with the help of and criticism by students of Egypt which has been largely responsible for shaping the theory. My earliest versions of this theory were simply wrong. I’m not afraid of looking foolish so here it is.

There is massive physical, historical, cultural, and textual evidence that the great pyramids were built with water caught at altitude and channeled to counterweights. Indeed all the evidence fits this idea and most of the evidence denies that ramps might or even could have been used. There are visible lines on the pyramids and these are all horizontal or vertical suggesting that all the forces that moved and placed the stones occurred in the horizontal and vertical planes. Ramps would leave sloped lines. In the cemeteries the titles of the tombs are displayed and these titles reflect a very sophisticated people and very very few appear to be related to pyramids at all. This is not consistent with the concept of tens of thousands of men toiling in the desert summer sun to drag stones up ramps.

There are canals with water erosion right on the plateau as well as man made passages beneath the plateau with water erosion. The ancient name for Giza actually means “mouth of caverns”. Numerous fissures, caves, and caverns are known yet the powers that be deny the existence of caves. The Great Pyramid is surrounded by a device which would serve to collect water and channel it to the cliff face. This has a 300’ lateral fall which is exactly the distance that Manetho said the stones moved toward the pyramid.

But the most impressive evidence perhaps is the words of the builders themselves. When these words were first found the translators were already very familiar with much later versions of it. These later versions were the book of the dead and coffin texts as well as several others. The translators naturally assumed this too was nothing but a book of spells written by the superstitious. But this earliest version known as the Pyramid Texts dates to a time only a hundred years after the great pyramid building age. The paragraphs in it known as utterances date back to the very earliest historic times and some are believed to be prehistoric. They have been wholly misinterpreted. They aren’t spells but rather ritual to be read aloud at ceremonies (mostly the king’s ascension).

It boils down to the fact that these utterances have a literal meaning that has been overlooked. The literal meaning says that it was Osiris who built the pyramids and that yeast gas (CO2) fell from him to the desert sands. The Pyramid Texts essentially can be taken to say that the great pyramids were built with cold water geysers. These are the words of the builders and they consistently and repeatedly say that the pyramids were not tombs and were built by the Gods. In fact even the iconography and most of the mysteries are simply explained when viewed in this light.

The ball has been in Egyptology’s court for some time but they simply won’t acknowledge the fact. I’d be happy to elaborate or expand any point or defend them. There’s much too much evidence to get in a single post.

[edy420]

How fast could this water-counter weight technology operate?
I read somewhere that one of the pyramids had 2,300,000 stone blocks and the builders had to build it within a time frame of 20 years.
To build the pyramid in time you would have to place at least 2 blocks every 10 min all day and night without stopping for 20 years.

Lets not forget how well these blocks were cut and finely spaced together.(more time)

How would we use your technique to get to the higher parts of the pyramid?
I laugh at the idea of an imaginary ramp that would have been more difficult to build than the pyramids themselves which then vanished to the point that it left no trace.
It sounds like your hinting at cranes/elevators that use ropes and the water is what controls the balance of the crane/elevators?
Or geysers that pushed the blocks up in the air?

If you know anything about the pyramids then you must know how perfect they were and how difficult it would be for our technology to meet such high standards.
If what you say about the man made canals is true then your idea might suit best.
Where can I find about more about them?

[Forest_Dump]

I have read this a couple of times and I am still not 100% sure what your point is. As an archaeologist who sometimes teaches a bit about Egypt (usually no more than one lecture per year) I am perfectly happy to look at anything that might bring something new or interesting to the table. This would especially be the case with some complex societies like Egypt because so much of the past research has been fairly boring, IMHO, focused more on simply establishing sequences of pharaohs, etc., without really telling me much about where that leads. It seems that you are suggesting an alternate method of constructing the pyramids. You have not really shown that there is a problem with the ramp idea, not that some kind of water system works better. I would want to know about the labor investment in constructing the water system, whatever it is you have in mind, where the water came from, how much water, etc. There are a lot of potential red herrings here (because I am not sure what difference this interest in names, etc., has) so, in short, I am not sure what I would learn about Egypt even if you were 100% correct. Rhetorically, you could have some great idea about the name of the first person to sit on the very top of one of those things but I would still be shrugging and wondering what difference that really makes.

[cladking]

How fast could this water-counter weight technology operate?

Each great pyramid was a little different but it looks like there were two main counterweights on the Great Pyramid (Khufu's, G1). One was on the south and the other on the east. They had a capacity of about 20 tons each but were operated at around 15 tons. There were two auxilliary lifters on the south side. The eastern pulled stone up from the quarry and the western moistly lifted men and supplies to the top. The western cliff face counterweight might have been used to lift stones up in the earliest stages. The counterweights were filled by weirs and water depth ([]b[]w.t) was the limiting factor. It's likely that water was relifted manually for the later pyramids like G1 and G2.

Lets not forget how well these blocks were cut and finely spaced together.(more time)

I believe lifting the stones was the bottleneck. This would account for the visible horizontal lines as being evidence that stones moved straight from the quarry to being laid in rows on the pyramid top. The evidence of these visible lines is augmented by gravimetric scans which also show horizontal lines.

How would we use your technique to get to the higher parts of the pyramid?

Great question. This is why all the great pyramids are actually step pyramids and shows Imhotep's genius. The construction was always limited to the height of the water pressure until Imhotep thought of shortening the ropes and continuing higher.


...cont

[cladking]

...cont

Initially they weren't concerned with filling in the steps but after Djoser's pyramid they did. Most of this was filled in using the same technique after the everything else was in place. During construction they needed these "steps" for a place to set the stones as they attached shorter ropes for the higher lifts. G1 had water at 80' ([]b[]w) naturally at the level of the so called queens chamber but this water was lifted to 160' (the kings chamber) to save a lot of rigging higher up.

I laugh at the idea of an imaginary ramp that would have been more difficult to build than the pyramids themselves which then vanished to the point that it left no trace.

There would have to be extensive evidence for ramps if they had been used. But all the evidence says there were no ramps. It's unlikely ramps even could have been used since they would obscure sight lines and make it impossible to build straight. There's also the little problem of maintaining 40 HP of efficient work for ten hours, nine months and for twenty years. Any ramp would have to be gigantic to get enough men on it for this. It takes 11 Egyptians to generate a HP and this is dramatically reduced since much of their effort would be to lift their own weight. Not to mention the huge effort of building ramps and friction.

If what you say about the man made canals is true then your idea might suit best.
Where can I find about more about them?

Egyptologists have a disconcerting habit of not talking about facts that don't agree with their conclusions. Petrie used a 92 word sentence to not call the eastern canal a canal;


"From this remarkable forking, it [p. 50] is evident that the trench cannot have been made with any ideas of sighting along it, or of its marking out a direction or azimuth; and, starting as it does, from the basalt pavement (or from any building which stood there), and running with a steady fall to the nearest point of the cliff edge, it seems exactly as if intended for a drain; the more so as there is plainly a good deal of water-weanng at a point where it falls sharply, at its enlargement."

http://www.ronaldbirdsall.com/gizeh/petrie/c6.html

[CanadysPeak]

I frequently see reference to the difficulty of cutting the large blocks of stone so accurately. It is worth noting that I think the surviving blocks are all sandstone and soft limestone. Soft limestone typically has a Mohs hardness of about 2.5. Sandstone is usually harder following lengthy air exposure, but is sometimes reported as being soft enough to be cut with wood cutting saws when freshly quarried. I don't have the information to judge the pyramids sandstone, so I must say it may have been that soft, or not.

But, I see no great difficulty with cutting the bulk of the pyramids. Generally, anything under 3 Mohs is pretty straightforward to shape, even with bronze tools.

The facade is obviously another matter, though I'm not sure we really know that much about that.

As for getting the stones up there, most engineers, given a suitable pile of cribbing, would have little difficulty raising the stones. It should probably require a crew of 10 to 15 men per stone, and you could do perhaps a stone every thirty feet or so.

[cladking]

I have read this a couple of times and I am still not 100% sure what your point is. As an archaeologist who sometimes teaches a bit about Egypt (usually no more than one lecture per year) I am perfectly happy to look at anything that might bring something new or interesting to the table. This would especially be the case with some complex societies like Egypt because so much of the past research has been fairly boring, IMHO, focused more on simply establishing sequences of pharaohs, etc., without really telling me much about where that leads. It seems that you are suggesting an alternate method of constructing the pyramids. You have not really shown that there is a problem with the ramp idea, not that some kind of water system works better. I would want to know about the labor investment in constructing the water system, whatever it is you have in mind, where the water came from, how much water, etc. There are a lot of potential red herrings here (because I am not sure what difference this interest in names, etc., has) so, in short, I am not sure what I would learn about Egypt even if you were 100% correct. Rhetorically, you could have some great idea about the name of the first person to sit on the very top of one of those things but I would still be shrugging and wondering what difference that really makes.

There’s no reason that the actual manner in which the pyramids were built would have to be of much import today. But if I’m right then this has tremendous ramifications to today’s world and strikes not only at the philosophy of science but the very nature of man. If they really used geysers to build then there is an implication that most modern thought and understanding as well as all western religions came down to us from the Egyptians and through the Greeks. The Greeks venerated this ancient society and tried to copy them in many ways. They also recorded much of their literature and adopted their Gods. The hermetic writings appear to have been at the heart of much of the Bible. Ironically this makes the Pyramid Texts which was a sort of instruction manual for building pyramids the root of Christianity.

But the ramifications might not end there. Linguists have told me that there may be extensive connections in language. For instance the word for God in most western languages comes down to us from “shining forth”, “opening the mouth”, or “light”. I believe these are all of Egyptian origin and specifically to a handy little device that was invented to tell the pyramid builders when to report to work. This was a floating oil lamp that burned on the structure that collected the water (mehet weret cow)(M[].t-wr.t-cow).
The fuel was supplied from the water surface itself and the lamp was constructed so that if the water wasn’t being violently disturbed the lamp would burn out. The builders would wake before sunrise and if the lamp were burning they’d report to work. The Egyptians called it the fire-pan (per Mercer) and there was a feast when it was brought out on the five epigomenal days when seasonal Osiris stood and another feast when it was put away. One of these made of greywacke sandstone was found in the 31st century BC tomb of Sabu. The Pyramid Texts say that when the fire-pan burned that those with ready hands stood to make an offering to the king. The king was the pyramid. The pyramid was the ka of the king and this is stated in many ways as well as the fact that the king’s tomb was in the sky. The king ascended right on the pyramid which was the “instument of ascension”. It built itself just as Atum who was the conically shaped mineral accretion around the natural vent of the geyser built itself on the primeval mound. Atum was an extension of the primeval mound who built himself just as the pyramid was an extension of the primeval mound which “built itself”.

Even the Egyptian Gods are probably wholly misunderstood. The word that gets translated as God is “neter”. It appears that “neter” could be the root word of “nature” (per the linguists). Rather than understanding and worshipping the “Gods”, the pyramid builders were concerned more with nature. They most obviously had a good command of an observational science.


The amount of work necessary to build the system to make a pyramid is quite nominal. The largest single part is the M[].t-wr.t-cow which soared 80’ above the pyramid base and extended to 10’ beyond the edge of the pyramid proper. This might seem like a huge investment in itself despite requiring a very tiny percentage as much effort as building ramps but in actuality almost all of the effort building this could be salvaged simply by using this stone to fill in the steps as the work is nearing completion. Once a stone is lifted it is used to build the pyramid. This goes for the number one labor saving device as well; the track upon which the ascenders and counterweights rode. These would be composed of tura limestone which was recut and used as cladding stone when the project was complete. This is what caused the visible vertical lines in the great pyramids. When these stones were removed one or two layers of core stones had to be pieced in where they had been. These pieced in stones tend to be smaller and of a different composition since they are out of their proper sequence from the quarry.

The rest of the effort to build the pyramid is even less. The counterweight was shaped like “the dorsal carapace of a grasshopper” (http://www.sidney.ars.usda.gov/grasshop ... s/fig8.jpg) and was composesd of “short pieces of wood” and was described by Herodotus. The ascender was simpler yet though the one the men rode in was probably enclosed. They’d have used significant quantities of rope which would be an ongoing expense. Ropes were in 100’ sections and were configured as slings in all probability. The main ropes for the counterweight would have been several ropes braided together to about 5 1/2” thickness.

Almost all the work necessary to lift the stones was done by the Gods. There was still an incredible amount of work quarrying the stone, marshalling the resources, and maintaining the equipment. It appears that most or all of the ancient megalithic building worldwide may have been done by essentially the same means.

[cladking]

I frequently see reference to the difficulty of cutting the large blocks of stone so accurately. It is worth noting that I think the surviving blocks are all sandstone and soft limestone. Soft limestone typically has a Mohs hardness of about 2.5. Sandstone is usually harder following lengthy air exposure, but is sometimes reported as being soft enough to be cut with wood cutting saws when freshly quarried. I don't have the information to judge the pyramids sandstone, so I must say it may have been that soft, or not.

But, I see no great difficulty with cutting the bulk of the pyramids. Generally, anything under 3 Mohs is pretty straightforward to shape, even with bronze tools.

The facade is obviously another matter, though I'm not sure we really know that much about that.

As for getting the stones up there, most engineers, given a suitable pile of cribbing, would have little difficulty raising the stones. It should probably require a crew of 10 to 15 men per stone, and you could do perhaps a stone every thirty feet or so.

The limestone in G1 is relatively soft stone with a density of 2.7.


They did use granite extensively in the interior however and this is a very hard stone. All the interior joints are very fine with optical precision and would be air and water tight. There is no sandstone in any of the great pyramids to my knowledge. There is believed to have been some marble used as a decorative stone. Tura limestone that was used as cladding is a somewhat harder limestone. (still fairly soft)

The problem with all the lifting theories isn’t how to get a 2 ½ ton stone from the bottom to the top. The problem is how do you get 2 ½ million 2 ½ ton stones up an average 120’. All other theories fall on their face because the delivery rate is so high. The only practical limit to lifting with water is the amount of water available. This water would have fallen 305’ by the time the builoders were done with it meaning each gallon could do more than 2000 ft lbs of efficient work. It could do even more work if it were relifted and lifting water would be far easier than lifting 2 ½ ton stones.

There’s also a huge amount of work lifting stones to the pyramid base. It appears that about two thirds of the stone came from the main quarry so needed to be raised only about 100’ on average but one third came from the Sphinx quarry and were lifted about 150’. This work alone is quite significant and possibly beyond the capacity of an ancient economy. Any method could have been used to get stones to the pyramid base since there’s ample room but it appears they were pulled up by the cliff face counterweights.

[CanadysPeak]

I'm afraid I don't see how lifting water is any easier than lifting stone. Lifting is lifting.

But, a little back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that, if you give me 20 years to lift those blocks (after they're up from the quarry - another issue altogether), I only need 5 000 hp, assuming OSHA lets me work a 12 hour day, no weekends off. So, that's 50 000 men, more or less, and fewer if I have some draft animals. Figure about a 7:1 ratio to sustain that work-force and I need a third of a million people total. I don't see any problem with this.

And, that's not even trying to make this efficient.

[cladking]

I'm afraid I don't see how lifting water is any easier than lifting stone. Lifting is lifting.

But, a little back-of-the-envelope calculation tells me that, if you give me 20 years to lift those blocks (after they're up from the quarry - another issue altogether), I only need 5 000 hp, assuming OSHA lets me work a 12 hour day, no weekends off. So, that's 50 000 men, more or less, and fewer if I have some draft animals. Figure about a 7:1 ratio to sustain that work-force and I need a third of a million people total. I don't see any problem with this.

And, that's not even trying to make this efficient.

You'll find you can't design a ramp large enough to hold the men required to do the work. A single straight on ramp requires ten times the lifting that the pyramid needs and has to be dismantled. If it required 50,000 to lift the stone then it required 500,000 to lift the ramp. The effort of lifting their own weight to the pyramid top for hundreds of millions of man trips. Even for an economy the size of the US it would be a significant project to get everyone to walk up 125' even without dragging a stone with them.

There is no evidence for ramps. There was no God of ramps and there was no "Overseer of the Builders of ramps. There are no depictions of ramps in their art. There are no texts or writing mentioning ramps in connection with pyramid building. Manpower was available starting in the height of summer in a near tropical desert. The sun would be blistering and reflected from white surfaces all around. A hundred and five degrees centigrade is not unusual and anywhere around the pyramid would be like a toaster oven if built with ramps. These are hardly ideal conditions for the most laborious type of work there is. Heat stroke might usually prove fatal if there was no water source at hand and this would include all the higher reaches of the pyramid since water would get hot by the time it was lifted up. This was also peak growing season and a very poor time to have a large percentage of the population occupied consuming vast resources that might be needed to get the people through to the next crop which wasn’t even planted yet. Caloric intake for builders would multiply several fold. Vast amounts of protein and sugars would be needed as well as the water necessary for such work. These were ancient times before there were innumerable means to store food. Most foods could not be efficiently stored so would have to be used for animal feed.

Hundred of job titles for the elite are known yet these titles are indicative of an advanced people and not of primitive bumpkins dragging stones up ramps. Job title that might be associated with pyramid building include such things as “Overseer of the Metal Shop”, “Weigher/ reckoner”, “Inspector of Craftsmen”, “Director of Draftsmen”, “Overseer of Masonry”, “Inspector of the Metal Workers”, “Controller of the Work Shop”, “Priestess of the Sycamore”, “Builder of the Boats of Neith”, etc, etc. There are hundreds of titles in the nobles and workmens cemeteries yet not a single one related to ramps.

These titles are related to building with water though. The Egyptian sycamore fig was used to build the “djed”. This word means “stable” and “enduring” in ancient Egyptian and it was made of a hollow log of sycamore which was set over the geyser to be used in aiming the water into the “Upper Eye of Horus” which was in the meet weret cow. You can see one of these in operation today about half way through this three minute clip;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wdxpPxu9RhA

If you’re lifting stones with counterweights it’s extremely important to know stone sizes since you want each load to be approximately equal. This facilitates hitting the unloading area on the pyramid top. Overshooting is inconvenient and undershooting might be a disaster. “Inspector of Metal Workers” implies there were lots of metal workers. It implies they were doing something more complicated than making wedges for stone pounders or copper chisels.

“ALL” the evidence points right at using water and none points toward ramps. There is sufficient evidence in the visible lines to exclude ramps.

Osiris was cool effervescent water that tossed on the Giza Plateau and was adorned with a rainbow according to the pyramid builders. I believe the builders knew exactly what they were saying and meant every word of it literally.

http://www.sacred-texts.com/egy/pyt/

[cladking]

I should have pointed out that the counterweights and ascenders were called boats. They were all "boats of maat" which means boats of balance. The counterweights were []nw-boats and Seker sat in these to provide the "pdws". "Seker" means "come to me" so when the geyser was in the []nw-boat it pulled up the ascender it made it "come to me (Osiris)". Isis was the Goddess of the northern counterweight and Neith was probably the Goddess of the eastern ascender though may have been more generic.

The []nw-boat, shaped like the dorsal carapace of a grasshopper, was built similarly to river going boat except the timbers which held the water were on the outside. These were criss crossed with structural and the whole thing filled with the short pieces of wood and then pitched (coated with tar) on the inside. This made repairs quite easy. A worker might even be able to make a patch as the counterweight was being reset.

1347b. his forward cable is taken by Isis; his stern cable is seized by Nephthys.
1348a. Ḳbḥ.w.t places him at her side, and puts him among the ḫnti.w-š,
1348b. as the herdsmen of (his) calves.

The forward cable is held by the counterweight and the stern by the ascender. Ḳbḥ.w.t is "top pressure" the daughter of Anubis who was the intelligence that operated the pyramid top. w-š was a "sceptor" that operated the djed and the "ḫnti.w-š" is the limit of this which is the []b[]w (80'). 80' is the level at which the counterweight is being filled at the double rail end of the ladder. It is critical that this process is done properly since people ride in these quite often. The men are often assured that the God wears a skin around them as they ascend.

[CanadysPeak]

Please note that I have not used a ramp. I describe how the pyramids could be built with men simply lifting the stones.

Are you saying there were geysers in the area that were used to get sufficient water up high enough to use as counter-weights? Is there any evidence of such geysers? Is there any volcanic activity in the area?

[CanadysPeak]

Wait a cotton-picking minute. I'm old and tolerable slow, so I just caught it. You're arguing that supernatural forces (Gods) did all the lifting? Is that right?

[cladking]

Wait a cotton-picking minute. I'm old and tolerable slow, so I just caught it. You're arguing that supernatural forces (Gods) did all the lifting? Is that right?

"Superneteral forces. Gotta love it.

Yes. The Gods did all the heavy work. There simply isn't enough room on the pyramid to use cranes, or pry bars, or ramps, or anything else. Imagine trying to get a stone up the side when there are hundreds above you and all it takes for a cascade failure is one to fall.

The counterweights would have been filled with water from a natural process at the 80' level and it was attached by a rope slung across the top of the pyramid and down to a load on the opposite side. When the counterweight out weighed the load it would begin falling and lift the load of several stones.

Osiris was the D[].t (the geyser) and he did the lifting in his name of Seker according to the pyramid builders. They are really very explicit all the way across the board but this wasn't noticed because the referents are lost and the Egyptians had a different way of expressing ideas. Also the Pyramid Texts are written as a cross between The Raven and Ode to Spot;

Felis Cattus, is your taxonomic nomenclature,
an endothermic quadruped carnivorous by nature?
Your visual, olfactory and auditory senses
contribute to your hunting skills, and natural defenses.

I find myself intrigued by your subvocal oscillations,
a singular development of cat communications
that obviates your basic hedonistic predilection
for a rhythmic stroking of your fur, to demonstrate affection.

A tail is quite essential for your acrobatic talents;
you would not be so agile if you lacked its counterbalance.
And when not being utilized to aide in locomotion,
it often serves to illustrate the state of your emotion.

O Spot, the complex levels of behaviour you display
connote a fairly well-developed cognitive array.
And though you are not sentient, Spot, and do not comprehend,
I nonetheless consider you a true and valued friend.


I think they should have solved this but can understand how they did not.

[cladking]

Is there any evidence of such geysers? Is there any volcanic activity in the area?

There's a great deal of question of what evidence would have been left and what would survive. It's also doubtful that such evidence has been sought. I all probability the pyramid was built right on the primeval mound which would hide most of it. The accretions through which the water sprayed were removed according to the Pyramid Texts and taken away and some might have been used as capstones on the pyramids and no longer survive. None of the capstones survive in place. Only one from a much later era survives at all.

Most cold water geysers are drilled and these probably were as well. The drill was invented in Egypt in 3500 BC. The PT refer to it as the "follower of the Gods with long claws and sharp teeth" and probably as "opener of the way of the God". The well drilled was the arm of Nut (the sky) who embraced the earth and all within it.

This area is near the conjunction of three plate boundaries and one (the Great African Rift) is supposedly a transform plate boundary that is beginning to open up and will be the new site of much of the sea floor spreading in the near geologic future. There are warm springs 180 miles south southeast of Giza and two volcanoes in the northern Sudan adjacent to the Nile. Fifteen thousand years ago the Nile drainage basin extended all the way past present day Lake Kivu which is carbonated.

The PT refer to water springs in the desert (Libya) and a crown;

455c. after thou hast taken possession of the white crown in the water-springs, great and mighty, which are in the south of Libya,

I don’t believe such evidence is being sought even today. There are no experts in extinct cold water geysers and many geologists are not familiar with even with existing ones. I believe this will take a concerted effort to locate and it will be chemical fingerprints that will prove it.

Incidentally both the word chemistry and the word alchemy are probably derived from the ancient Egyptian city of Chemmis near the Great Pyramid. A significant amount of chemistry was known to the Egyptians and such things as CO2 (yeast gas), natron, (and its chemical reaction with carbonic acid), emetics (probably copper sulfate), iron compounds (especially red ochre), “gas”, iron, and bronze are all mentioned in the Pyramid Texts.

[CanadysPeak]

Thanks for the entertainment. I'm outta here.

[cladking]

Thanks for the entertainment. I'm outta here.

I sense you might be concerned about the level of chemical knowledge I ascribe to the ancients. remember these were good observational scientists and learned early on that adding things like sweets and natron to the water under the ground would cause an eruption. I'd be happy to cite the relevent passages for this and their understanding of CO2.

718c. N. lives on sweet-wood (i.e. sweets), and from fumigations which are in the earth.

... His name lives on account of natron-offerings and he is divine. ...

The evidence says these people were very sophisticated and this can be seen in reading the Pyramid Texts as well as the structures and evidence they left behind.

[kudayta]

Where, exactly, are the geysers you postulate cladking? If you don't know, that's cool. But your entire hypothesis does hinge on there being geysers in the area.

[edy420]

This youtube clip doesn't really show much about geysers but it does show how water can be used to manipulate large objects into place 5:55min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs

Something else it shows is that it could be possible to build large structures using large blocks with little effort.

Something that we can't let escape our minds when thinking about the builders is the tools and technology they had at the time.
If you try to convince me that they cut marble as smooth as glass with their copper chisels then you would be wasting your time.

Can you make a replica geyser to the one you think helped build the pyramids?
Its all good to say that geysers have the power to lift heavy weights or even do all the number crunching but I for one need to see the evidence in action.
Maybe you could make a sink size replica or something?

[cladking]

Where, exactly, are the geysers you postulate cladking? If you don't know, that's cool. But your entire hypothesis does hinge on there being geysers in the area.

The original natural geysers were on the primeval mound. This was a red mineral accretion from the water which spurted, spit, and gurgled up from below. On this primeval mound was a conically shaped accretion which channeled the heaviest flow. This accretion was called the ben ben. Atum was the original God who created himself and was the ka of the ben ben. Despite being the original God, “Nun” the God of water already existed when he came into existence. The Egyptians didn’t seem to have any problem with this logic. It almost makes sense seen in this light. Shu was “sneezed” out by Atum and Tefnut was spit out. Shu was the God of Upward who held up the sky without getting tired and Tefnut was the Goddess of Downward who “fed” the king (by affecting the counterweight). The king “rests in heaven as a mountain, as a support”.

The primeval mound at Giza was centered on the grotto which is 20’ above the base of the pyramid and 30’ east and 45’ north of the vertical centerline. There was most probably a drilled geyser here at one time and it or one within about 50’ (probably to the north)(still under G1) was actually used to construct a small pyramid (about 55’)(still there and subsumed by G1). This little pyramid under here probably predates Djoser’s Pyramid (the “first” great pyramid).

There is very little in the Pyramid Texts about the primeval mound despite its huge importance in the later religion. I believe this is because all the primeval mounds in the Land of Horus (the geyser field on the west side of the Nile) had been destroyed when our copy of the PT was written. The geysers had already dried up by this time and the PT continued to evolve. It does appear though that the pyramid isa an extension of the primeval mound literally. Just as Atum created himself so too did the mound and the pyramid.

The geysers themselves were probably always on the north side of the pyramid. They needed to communicate and would use “signalmen” with polished bronze mirrors for the main part. These operated in crews and only the crew which didn’t need to send messages was the lower counterweight crew. They would merely need to send a signal for ready for rest. This would have to be done with flags since the north side was in shadow. Other communication would have to be adjusted through the day. There were long brightly painted logs sticking out the back of the M[].t-wr.t-cow which would wave wildly when the water flowed and stop when it quit. This would allow the operator on the top to know when he would have to stop so he could finish or not start crucial lifts.

On G1 the geyser is about 40’ east of the N/ S centerline and about 10’ north of the base. This was drilled at a slight angle so that the waterspray sprayed to the south east as it gained pressure and was almost straight up and slightly south when erect. Vyse excavated a huge fissure here but gave up when a ten year old boy could dig no deeper. The main norther counterweight rode in the middle of the north side so the geyser had to be offset somewhat.

The Egyptians had some control over the placement of geysers according to the evidence and PT. There are man made passages with water erosion in them and they said “men bury themselves, the Gods fly up”.

[cladking]

This youtube clip doesn't really show much about geysers but it does show how water can be used to manipulate large objects into place 5:55min
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-K7q20VzwVs

Something else it shows is that it could be possible to build large structures using large blocks with little effort.

Something that we can't let escape our minds when thinking about the builders is the tools and technology they had at the time.
If you try to convince me that they cut marble as smooth as glass with their copper chisels then you would be wasting your time.

Can you make a replica geyser to the one you think helped build the pyramids?
Its all good to say that geysers have the power to lift heavy weights or even do all the number crunching but I for one need to see the evidence in action.
Maybe you could make a sink size replica or something?

Tipping stones back and forth to lift them would absolutely not work for building the great pyramids. This may be an efficient way for a single man to lift a single stone straight up but it doesn’;t work for 2 ½ million stones. There are two problems; first is that once you get these up you still need to have a means to push them over onto the pyramid. There’s nowhere for men to work and any machine that might do this probably could have lifted it in the first place. The second problem is the real killer. Trying to lift thousands of stones at a time on the pyramid face would be far too dangerous. If a stone falls it will take out hundreds of stones below it and at great cost of life and limb.

It seems obvious beyond the need to say it that the ancients were far more sophisticated than Egyptologists will allow. They began culturing yeast in 4400 BC and invented the drill in 3500 BC. They were sailing up and down the Nile well back into prehistory and transported 60 ton stones all the way from Aswan to build G1. The Egyptrians are usually painted as superstitious bumpkins who did nothing not driven by an incomprehensible religion. Even the pyramids were mere headstones for a dead king who could walk through walls.

I haven’t put much thought into all their tools and accomplishments yet but I certainly agree they weren’t sawing limestone and smoothing marble with nothing but primitive tools like stone pounders.

I don’t endorse this concept in any way but here’s something I found on the web;

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/2250719/b ... terweight/

Most of my experiments have been thought experiments or very simple ones to estimate total friction and the like. The concept has to work. The simple fact is that there is no problem which wouldn’t be easily overcome by anyone paying attention. This is really exceedingly simple technology I’m proposing (the Pyramid Texts propose). Like boat technology this simply evolved and was tweeked and improved as time went on. The last great pyramid required fifteen times as much lifting as the first great pyramid and the later Egyptians never again ever achieved the size of the very first of the great pyramids. The evidence is right there today staring us in the face but most are choosing to look away.

[cladking]

I should have mentioned that the greap pyramid builders used balance scales which are essentially the same technology. There was even an ancient standard weight found in one of the queens chamber's air shafts. This provides a big clue about the intended usage of the shafts and the interior design but this should wait for now.

Osiris is depicted in the art standing in a djed with the sign of the ankh above. Osiris was the geyser and the geyser stood in the djed. The ankh is a representation of the geyser. The descending section is Set the God of the geyser under the earth and chaos. The crossbars are the horizon where the geysers stood. Not down in the valley but in the uplands at Giza.

1944a. + 2 (Nt. 777). The time of inundation comes, the wȝg-festival comes, to the uplands, it comes as Osiris.

The w[]g-festival was held at the Giza uplands and the inundation was called Osiris.

1553b. They tremble who see the inundation (when) it tosses;

I don't know how they could have been more explicit. This is it in plain English.

445b. bring this (boat) to N. N. is Seker of R-Śtȝ.w.
445c. N. is on the way to the place of Seker, chief of Pdw-š.
445d. It is our brother who is bringing this (boat) for these bridge-girderers (?) of the desert.

R-Śtȝ.w. is the ancient name for Giza and the pyramid builders need a boat. Which boat?...

494a. bring this (boat) to N. Which boat shall I bring to thee, O N.?
494b. Bring to N. that which flies up and alights.

The Pyramid Texts contains everything you need to know to build a pyramid and nothing else. No one ever bothered to look for a literal meaning in it because they had already assumed that the pyramids were tombs built with ramps. 150 years of contrary evidence to these assumptions have not swayed them and they don't want to be distracted from trying to prove their assumptions.

[cladking]

Here's one scientists should appreciate;

1455a. for N. is a star, the light-scatterer of the sky.

In the same vein;

1680b. the apertures of the (heavenly) windows are open for thee;
1680c. broad are thy steps of light;

1078a. To say: The door of heaven is open, the door of earth is open,
1078b. apertures of the (heavenly) windows are open,
1078c. the steps of Nun are open,
1078d. the steps of light are revealed


There are also numerous mentions of "bows" by Mercer which more modern translators call "sky arcs". These are all rainbows. Imagine how dramatic the rainbows would be in the clear desert summer sky.

This might mean nothing but perhaps it will spur an idea. The angle of G1 is 52 degrees which is about the angle of red in the secondary rainbow. The arris angle (down a corner) is 41 degrees and red in the primary rainbow. I suppose this is coincidence or the nature of reflection of light in a sphere but I thought I'd throw it out there.

The bottom of the heiroglyph for pyramid is red (siderite staining?) and the glyph for water is the profile of a row of pyramids.

[dragslaye]

Here a couple of things that it comes into mind,

1 Egyptian weather : I will assume that the process which you describe would be done while the Nile river is on high season. this bring the question if people were busy building the pyramids then what happen with the harvest?

2. as per my understanding from your post, they(Egyptians) use gazers in order to elevate the block into their respective positions. Now this method would significantly weaken the foundation of the pyramid. So inclination such as the one found at the Tower of Pizza should be to in order

[cladking]

It's probable construction took place in the Nile flood at the height of summer no matter how it was built. The crops were grown during the winter. The big difference between with the new theory is that far less manpower would be needed and therefore far fewer resources would be consumed. The amount of effort to support construction of a ramp and pyramid would be staggering. In ancient economies these huge surpluses that would be required would normally translate almost immediately to higher population which would erradicate the surplus.

The Tower of Piza is built on sand with changing water level. The Giza Plateau is bedrock of the Mokkatum formation. This stone is, indeed, severely weakened by the caves and fissures but stone rarely collapses. There is one of the largest sinkholes in the world on the southern side of the "Land of Horus" near the Fayuum Depression.

[cladking]

There are numerous reasons the egyptologists went wrong but chief among them, of course, is that they assumed their conclusions. They assumed ramps were used and it followed that these must be tombs. They knew the book of the dead was a book of incantation so it seemed to stand to reason that an earlier version must also be a book of incantation and magic. Even before they were done translating the Pyramid Texts they "knew" it was essentially the same thing as the coffin texts and book of the dead.

These three assumptions are the root of egyptology as it applies to the great pyramids and they are all in error. There's almost no surviving record of any sort that predates Khufu's pyramid so it was very easy to make these errors. There are very few historical records from later times that apply and these are all somewhat suspect because there was a tendency of the Egyptians to "clean up" their history a little. When you're working with very little information a small erroneous assumption can throw you off and these are not small errors. It is a small wonder that they never noticed that what the builders actually wrote in the PT didn't agree with their assumptions. A lot of this is in very "plain English" yet they interpreted the meaning out of it.

Here's a little snippet from a later time. It's the Hymm to Osiris but preserves the ancient meaning.

"He leadeth in his train that which is, and that which is not yet, in his name Ta-her-sta-nef; he toweth along the earth by Maat in his name of 'Seker'; he is exceedingly mighty and most terrible in his name 'Osiris'; he endureth for ever and for ever in his name of 'Un-nefer.'"

“Seker”, as previously mentioned, is Osiris when he’s funneled into the counterweight. “His train” is a line of stones tied together with pie-shaped wooden couplers. Here it clearly says that Osiris is moving the earth to make what will be using “balance” as the means. “Un-nefer” probably means to bring good into existence. “Ta-her-sta-nef” is more obscure.

[xris]

I am very much the interested observer on this thread. I thank for your knowledge and your very interesting theory. Can I ask? did not the Nile have a very important part to play in all of the pyramids? Did they not transport the stones by barge using the flooded Nile and canals dug for that purpose? I do believe you may have a very important theory with the use of water as a counter balance but the idea that geysers could or would be conveniently be found at ever sight of a pyramid, is destroying its credibility. The Niles ability to raise water by its passing may be what you should be looking at. I hope you don't mind my views being expressed and thanks again for your posts.

[cladking]

I am very much the interested observer on this thread. I thank for your knowledge and your very interesting theory. Can I ask? did not the Nile have a very important part to play in all of the pyramids? Did they not transport the stones by barge using the flooded Nile and canals dug for that purpose? I do believe you may have a very important theory with the use of water as a counter balance but the idea that geysers could or would be conveniently be found at ever sight of a pyramid, is destroying its credibility. The Niles ability to raise water by its passing may be what you should be looking at. I hope you don't mind my views being expressed and thanks again for your posts.

No. Not at all. I very much appreciate the input. [removed feedback] I've stumbled on some new ideas in the last couple weeks that are distracting me from this thread though I will eventually try to tie the ends together and will add the new stuff if it pans out as well as expected. Please bear with me.

I've considered the idea that they were able to harness the power of the river to build and it is an attractive idea. It could explain the presence of the causeways which required extreme effort to build and it is nearby to most of the sites. There are some serious problems as well primarily the need for even vaster amounts of rope than my own theory. The idea shouldn't be cast out but the evidence appears to point elsewhere.

The Nile was of huge importance to the people by this time. A few thousand years before the valley was always flooded so there was little room for crops but by the great pyramid building age at least most of the food production was in the valley and the fields were watered by the flood and the retained water from it. But the Nile likely wasn’t overly critical to the building of pyramids. This is a popular belief since the tura limestone cladding and the granite all arrived by river. At least in theory though these could have arrived by another means or substituted for other materials. The vast bulk of the Great Pyramid as well as all of the great pyramids came from on site. At least some of the supplies did come by road but, no doubt, the men, most of the supplies, and some of the stone did come by river. There was a large port at Giza and a village where the builders lived nearby.

But the evidence screams that the Nile was not of great importance to the builders. Religion in Egypt was local so varied from city to city and nome to nome. The Pyramid Texts are obviously intended to be something along the lines of the “Hymns of Ascension”. These were read aloud to the crowds at the ceremony when the king ascended to heaven upon the pyramid. But these “hymns” were special to this area. The same work if it existed elsewhere (and it probably did) would read much differently because the Gods had distinct roles that varied by place and time. This is one of the causes of the present day confusion.

In the PT there is almost no mention of the river whatsoever! Even those at Giza would have been closely tied to the river so the lack of mention of the river is quite stunning and quite telling.

The river is most probably too low to have been used directly for lifting. The base of G1 is at 225’ which is some 209’ above the river. Any means of lifting water to the pyramid base would take even more energy than building the pyramid itself. It’s not a natural progression either. No one would dream up the idea of hauling water to use for construction in such a situation. There also would be no natural progression that would lead to larger and larger pyramids as is evident.

All the great pyramids are actually in a relatively small region that extends from Giza to the Fayuum Depression. I believe this was just the largest geyser field there may have existed on the planet in a million years.

Of course it’s quite possible that some other mechanism provided water pressure at Giza. Most such natural forces tend to be much too temporary and much too localized to exist over a 35 mile area for at least two centuries though. Artificial means of obtaining pressure seem improbable due to the vast quantity of fuel that would be needed. If they had water at the pyramid base as is nearly certain then there are various means to use its weight to provide the requisite energy such as a simple ram pump. But we’re right back to square one; if they had water at the pyramid base then having it at 80’ is just a tiny leap.

I’m finding more and more evidence for a fairly sophisticated understanding of natural processes by the ancients and our misunderstanding their words.

[xris]

From an objective view point your whole theory depends on you proving geysers, that have now disappeared, could have existed in large numbers, with a regularity that lasted for more than one century. Till you can convince the skeptic this actually occurred, you are I am afraid going to get a negative response. Even so, I do believe we still know very little about the building of these impressive structures. They certainly impressed me and I personally believe the present explanations are failing to explain the time frame and the man hours required to construct them.

[cladking]

Nehebkau the "harnesser of kas" or "appointer of positions" is the representation of the hydraulic cycle. The ka is the essence or life force of a thing which is independent of it's physical or temporal manifestation. According to the builders of the great pyramids the pyramid itself was the ka of the king which existed after he shuffled off the mortal coil. Since many of the Gods were water then harnesser of kas is what's left of these Gods after they have dried up.

1140c. (he is dried) by the wind of the great Isis, together with (which) the great Isis dried (him) like Horus.

The wind dries. This observation is just short of the water comes back as rain.

1146a. N. is the pouring down of rain; he came forth as the coming into being of water;

So the rivers flow to the seas but never fill them.

1146b. for he is the Nḥb-kȝ.w-serpent with the many coils;

Nehebkau is a serpent, a leak, and his coils are the clouds in the sky.

It certainly appears these lines were meant literally.