Pyramids
The great Pyramid of Giza built over 4500 years ago were built in Egypt. With the height of 147 m, it was the first tallest structure built by humans. Heavy stone were used and it is said to weight about 6 million tonnes. The tallest structure today "burj khalifa" weights about 5 million tons. When we talk about pyramids the biggest question we face is;
How were they built ?
4000 years ago people didn't had modern technology such as bulldozers, cranes etc. In fact the wheels were not even invented yet. They were used for pottery purposes. How did they built such a strong structure 4500 years ago that stayed through some harsh summers, storms etc.
We actually don't know how they were built but there are some conspiracy theories and some logical reasoning for it. Nevertheless nothing till now explains it clearly.
It is estimated that the great Pyramid of Giza was built around 2506 BC, by Khufu. He was second king of the 4th dynasty of Egypt.
The pyramid of Giza is located on the west bank of the river Nile, and if you see photos or videos of it you see that Giza isn't the only pyramid. You see 2 other pyramids built on the same site. The tallest among the three is Giza also called pyramid of Khufu. The second largest Pyramid in Egypt is "Pyramid of Khafre" built by Khufu's son Khafre. The third and the smallest is the Pyramid of Menkaure. There are in total 118 pyramids of wearing shapes and sizes.
Why were they built ?
They will built as a tomb. The Pharaohs where buried inside the pyramids. Ancient egyptians believed in afterlife. They believe that after death the soul of person travels to the underworld, where it is jujed by gods. Those who lived a life of goodness remained immortal in the afterlife. A large amount of food, clothes and jewellery where to buried with them in the pyramids. So they would be used in afterlife. After they died, their body where mummyfied and then sealed in a wooden or stone sarcophagus.
How do we know that there were built for this?
There are two reasons behind it:-
1. we have discovered scripts written on several other pyramids that tells us about their customs.
2. A majority of the historical pyramids in Egypt and Sudan, have been used as tombs.
Specifically speaking, in the Great Pyramid is Giza, no substantial evidence was found. So people came up with their own conspiracy theories, When the archaeologists entered the Great Pyramid, they found 3 relics and an empty sarcophagus. The sarcophagus is believed to be of Khufu and the treasures that must have surrounded it, is believed to have been looted before the archaeologists got to it.
Conspiracy theories
1. The Great Pyramid was a power plant that could generate electricity. People who believe this claim that the ancient Egyptians were very technologically advanced and they had already learnt how to use electricity. As evidence for this theory, some of the ancient artwork are presented. On the walls of some ancient Egyptian temples such artworks have been discovered
that are used to claim that they were building a light bulb. They say that the Egyptians had invented but then the technology was somehow lost later. As I've said repeatedly, such conspiracy
theories are cooked up when there's a lack of substantial evidence in a matter. But the conspiracy theories are often so bizarre, that they make no logical sense.
If light bulbs did exist in ancient Egypt, why have we not found any evidence proving it? In reality, this artwork depicts an Egyptian mythological story. Another popular theory claims that the pyramid was a granary to store the crops. This theory was proposed by American politician Ben Carson in 1998, according to his "personal theory" the pyramids were built by Jesus Christ's father.
How were the pyramids built?
How did the people build a 147m tall structure? Using these enormous rocks,
that weigh anywhere between 2.5 tonnes to 80 tonnes. Each stone is carved so meticulously and evenly, when there were no standards tools for carving. How were the stones stacked on top of each other? When people didn't even use wheels? All of this, within a period of 20 years.
There are several theories regarding this. I won't be talking about bizarre conspiracy theories here. But before we discuss the theories, let's look at the
misconception regarding pyramids
Films show slave labour being used to build the pyramids. Poor slaves, forced to work here all day and getting brutally abused and whipped by the supervisors. and getting brutally abused and whipped by the supervisors. You would've seen this in some film or the other. For a long time, people believed that slaves built the pyramids. A Greek historian from the 5th century BC, Herodotus, was the first to suggest that slaves built the pyramids.
Reality
But now we know this is not true. People who built these pyramids were highly skilled labourers. They weren't starved and abused, infact they were given good food. They were fed so well that they were stronger and more well-fed than the average Egyptian citizen back then. They lived in cities near the construction site. Various communities supported them across the seasons. Such as farmers, when the farmers weren't actively engaged in their fields, they would help them with construction in their free time. About 20,000-30,000 workers were involved in its construction, working 10 hours a day, to build Pyramid of Giza.
Construction materials and how they constructed it
About 5.5 million tonnes of limestone, 8,000 tonnes of granite, and 500,000 tonnes of mortar were used. Most of these materials were sourced from the nearby areas. At most, they were brought in from the region of Southern Egypt,
that was around 800 km from the site. The question is, how were these rocks cut? Copper was the most common metal used then, the tools were made of copper.
The harder rocks of granite were broken with Dolerite. They used some unique methods. Such as finding cracks and holes in the rocks, putting in wooden wedges soaked in water in those cracks, when the rocks absorbed the water, the wedges would expand and the rock would break apart. Now, a major question is how were these stones moved? Back then wheels weren't used in carts.
A theory suggests that they built rafts that floated on the river, to move the stones from the quarries. And once the stones were at the Pyramids, they were stacked on top of each other
using sledges over wet ground. This is an interesting theory discovered recently in a study in 2014.
The basis of this theory is this painting,
This tomb was built around 1900 BC, In this painting, you can people pulling this statue on a sledge. Ropes were used to pull this heavy statue. If you look closely at the painting,
you'd see that a man is pouring water on the stand in front of the statue. At first, archaeologists believed this was a part of the ritual.
When this was tested out by physicist Daniel
Bonn and his team, they found that having a certain amount of water in the sand, reduces the friction between the ground and the thing being pulled. This is a specific ratio, about 2% to 5% of water into the sand. It makes it easier to pull things on wet sand. Once we understood this, the next question is how were the stones stacked on top of each other? Normally, a system of pulleys can be used to lift them, but as I told you, wheels, as we know it, didn't exist in Egypt during the 4th Dynasty. It existed for pottery only. They had built an efficient system of ramps. In 2015, a team of English and French archaeologists uncovered a 4,500-year-old wooden ramp in a quarry. They suggest that a ramp must've been built like this,
a straight slope from the ground to the top. To move the stones up the slope, they installed a system of wooden pillars on the sides of the slopes, And then they used the ropes around the pillars, to pull up the stones. As you can see in the artwork on the screen. This was suggested by physicist Joseph West in 2014. According to this theory, after completing a level of the Pyramid,
They would've created a new slope, And to ensure that the angle of the slope wasn't steep, They would've built a long slope. By building a long slope, the tilt of the slope could be reduced.
These theories sound fascinating, but the inconsistency arises in the form of construction time. We know that the Pyramid was completed within 20 years. If 20,000 people transported each stone like this, a stone needs to be placed every 3 minutes, each day all around the year.
It seems quite unlikely that they would've worked so rapidly. but they do not completely explain what had happened exactly. We do know that the layers at the bottom were placed without mortar. And then mortar was added to the layers on top, that increases the stability of a structure.
This is why, throughout thousands of years, the Pyramid of Giza still stands, despite several earthquakes. There's also a mystery regarding the mortar, though scientists know the chemistry of the mortar used, they have not been able to recreate it. And finally, the last step of the construction was the outermost layer of the pyramid, it was made of fine, whiteish limestone.
It meant that when sunlight fell on it, these pyramids would shine white brilliantly. This was lost over thousands of years. The outermost layers have worn off from the Pyramids of Khufu and Menkaure, but in the Pyramid of Khafre,
you can see a part of the layer at the top. Moving on from the construction to the design of the pyramids, it is utterly fascinating.
Did you know
that the pyramids are designed in a way that the directions point exactly towards North, East, South, and West? an error of one-fifteenth of a degree.
How could that be? There was no compass back then No modern technology such as GPS. Once again, researchers tried to give their theoretical explanations. About how the Egyptians could achieve such a high level of precision. A popular theory is said to be by following the Autumn Equinox. When the tilt of the Earth allows the day and night to be equal.
The shadow on the ground is in a straight direction towards East and West. Using this method, the degree of error in the calculations of the pyramid would be the same degree of error in the shadows during the Autumn Equinox. The second theory is believed to be the constellations.
That the stars in the sky were used by the Egyptians to align their design. In 1989, Robert Bauval, an author and Egyptology enthusiast,
came up with the Orion Correlation Theory.
He claimed that the three pyramids in Giza,
were aligned similarly to the three stars of the
Orion's Belt. He believed that the alignment was
intentional. And that the ancient Egyptians knew Astronomy. That they would track the stars at night, and study them. And accordingly, they harvested various crops at certain times. Historians believe this to be a Fringe Theory
Aliens
Some people claim that the pyramids were built by aliens, because they believe it wasn't possible for humans to create this. This is the shortcut method of somehow coming up with an answer when we cannot find any.
0 Comments