Articles Great Pyramid Main Message Board News
The following message was posted to Egyptology online Group:
New theory for the building of the Great Pyramid
The
following important message has been posted online on Isis-Moon Club taken after the
original Theory on the website of Ossama Alsaadawi, I find it proper to include
it here for the sake of good Egyptology.
Best Regards,
Ossama Alsaadawi
Date: Sat, 14 Jun 2003
19:32:07 -0000
From: "clubsmoderator"
Subject: NEWS ARTICLE: New theory of the building of the Great Pyramid
To travel from the USA to Egypt in just few hours is a real wonder, but using a
Boeing 747 is a much more wonderful fact. Both are true wonders that no one can
deny. However, when one arrives to Giza Plateau in Egypt and looks to the Great
Pyramid of Khufu, he or she stands at once astounded, knowing that he or she is
facing a real True Fact that dates back to immemorial ancient civilization. The
mind is sparkled immediately by three questions:
1- When?
2- Why?
3- How?
Unfortunately and surprisingly, modern humans have failed to answer these three
logic questions for more than 4000 bygone years. Even Herodot failed to answer
it when he visited ancient Egypt in 430BC.
In this article, we'll try to shed light on the primary answer of the third question only, that is:
How the Ancient Egyptian Great Pyramid of Khufu has been constructed?
There are remnants of nearly 80 pyramids that stand alongside the path of the
river Nile in Egypt. Some of them are still in good condition but we are mainly
interested in GP because it is the highest and most interesting one.
Knowledgeable archaeologists and Egyptologists explain that: The Main bulk of
the GP is composed of 2.5 million stone blocks, each weighs 3 tons in average.
This colossal mass of stone blocks is compiled in a pyramid-shaped construction
with a maximum height of 146 m and base side-length of nearly 230-m. It stands
on top of a plateau, or big rocky hill, the roof of which is raised 60m above
the water level of the Nile, known as Giza Plateau.
Up to now there is no real problem. However, one little bit of technical data is
really interesting. Architects assert that the King's Chamber (KC) only is
roofed by 9 vast massive granite stone blocks, each weighing 75 tons.
Egyptologists say that they are no more than 40 tons according to their rough
estimations.
Archaeologists say that that each weighs 55 tons. KC is placed at a height of
nearly 70m from the base of the GP or nearly 130m from the water level of the
Nile.
Here, we reach the real problem of the GP construction, which is
summarized by the following very simple question:
How could engineers of King Khufu raised-up 55 ton stone blocks to a height of 130 meters?
To clarify this
question in a better way, let's ask: How could modern humans raise a 55 ton
truck up to the roof of a skyscraper, like the Empire State Building for
instance, without using any kind of machinery or self-propellant engines?
Egyptologists answered this question by bringing forth the ramp-theory, which
states that the ancient Egyptians raised up these 55 ton stone blocks by
dragging them up a ramp with a slope of 6-8 degrees, made of dust or hard mud
using no rollers but only manpower and some lubricants! Many people believed
them but a few believe it to be impossible.
Why do they believe it impossible? Well, let simple mathematics speak: Work done
= mass x gravity x height - that is - (W = m x g x h). Therefore, work done to
raise up one 55 ton stone block is: W = 55000 kg x 10 x 130 = 71,500,000 joules
(nearly 71 million joules). 1 horsepower = 750 joules/sec. Therefore, energy
needed to raise up only ONE granite beam is equal to nearly 95 thousand
horsepower/sec, or nearly a million manpower/sec, which is IMPOSSIBLE to attain
by human force alone.
Then, what if we calculated the whole work done necessary to build up the whole
Great Pyramid? Alsaadawi
says that it is given simply as: Total work done = 0.22 x total mass x gravity x
maximum height. So, total work done used to build the Great Pyramid is: 0.22 x
7.5 billion kgs x 10 x 146 > 2.4 Tera Joules. Therefore, calculations indicate
that King Khufu needed billions of horsepower to realize this historic world
wonder that has survived for long thousands of years!
Conclusion: No way with ramps and No way with manpower alone to build the GP.
There must be some kind of external natural active-power to realize the job.
The question now is; what was this active power?
One new
theory is that this active
power was Water. That is, hydraulic force of successive inundation waters that
was used within a highly organized state project to raise up the main massive
stone bulk of the Great Pyramid within a big hydraulic complex, using ascending
wells, leakage water tunnels, heavy wooden floats, boats, etc.
So, the question of how 5 ton stone blocks could be raised up to a height of 20
meters without using modern machinery or human labor, could be answered that it
could be done by Hydraulic Lifts. If this new theory is true, Pharaoh Khufu used
ascending wells, hydraulic lifts and hydraulic techniques for building his Great
Pyramid,
power = water mass / area of ascending well. This would be the golden
hydraulic rule on which Khufu may have relied, to design very effective
hydraulic lifts and to raise-up colossal heavy stones up to high altitudes. This
leads to the assumption that nearly all pyramids and even mastabas were built
using the same technique, that is Hydraulic Lifts.
Those people who agree with this modern theory also state that,
'Ossama is right': If friction is
ignored then the work done (energy spent) is
m*g*h, no matter what path is taken
by the mass; it is only the change is height that is important. This is a result
of physics that applies to many different situations. Including the effect of
friction can only increase the required amount of work, and now the path taken
to raise the mass is important. The least work would be done by lifting the mass
straight up (pushing the mass up a slope, even if it were on wheels, would take
more energy). No matter what method of construction they used (ramps, pulleys,
cranes, counter-weights or levers) this is the amount of energy that had to be
spent by the workmen, if no other source of power was harnessed.
The granite beams would destroy these ramps, so these blocks may have been
lifted by some other method. Inundation power would greatly simplify this, as
the problem becomes a matter of buoyancy which invalidates the use of m*g*h.
Furthermore, these granite beams had to have been lowered into position. Surely
sliding them into position would pull the King's chamber apart.
Some people try to ignore all scientific and physical evidence to prove that
their imaginary wrong assumptions are correct. They insist that a group of men
is able to raise up a 50 ton granite block up a muddy ramp to a 50 meter height
using only their hands and manpower. When we told them that physics and science
proved that this is impossible, they said we'd prove it practically!
They brought 1-ton stone block (using a truck) to the location and used
about 20 men to drag the stone up a very small pre-prepared ramp that extends to
only 2 meters height in 2 hours hardworking. Then they said, you see: the
experiment has succeeded!
But what if they tried another only additional eight meters of height? In, fact
the stone weight will not remain 1 ton. It'll be 1 ton plus its new
gravitational weight, which is (1+m*g*h). It means the new stone weight is,
(1+1000*10*10/10/1000/2) = (1+5) = 6 tons.
Now they need much more men to raise-up the new weight, which is (6 tons), not
only 1 ton!
Then what about only additional 20 meters?! or at upper courses of the GP at an altitude of 130 meters for instance?
As one might expect, those who do not agree with the old theories of pyramid
construction call the experiment a BIG FAILURE, even using only a 1-ton stone
block.
Followers of the new theory also have further stated:
Our calculations convinced
us that most of the ramp concepts would have been impractical because they
involved a construction effort greater than that required for the pyramid
itself. We assumed that the ancient Egyptians would not commit resources to
building anything more than minimally required given the fact that the ramp had
to be demolished at the conclusion of construction.
According to the new theorists: The Lehner-Hawas ramp theory failed to find
`any' scientific proof further than faint traces of some small ramps used for
labor traffic and water motion control.
Meanwhile, the new Hydraulic Theory
of Alsaadawi has
not denied evident scientific and archaeological facts. One example only is that
archaeologists found more than 10 ships and barges preserved inside `airtight'
pits ON TOP of Giza plateau. Some people said that those barges were used by the
pharaoh and his inferiors to ride the sunbeam to go to the sky to meet sun-god
(ra). Scientifically these boats were used as an integrated part of the
massive hydraulic system.
The major reason for rejecting the theory of a ramp was the geographical
limitation of the Giza Plateau. All kinds of mathematical estimations and
physical evidence proved that it was IMPOSSIBLE to use high ramps in raising-up
massive stones of the GP.
In other words, the builders had to
wait for the water level to reach the required course, place the stones in the
same pace of the water rising, and stop working as soon as the level exceeded
the desired level. The next year, they still had to wait idle until the water
level reached where they have stopped previously, and race against time again
fulfilling the 9-10 courses quota before the water level changed again.
This had to be repeated over several years, until the Nile could not reach the
required original height of 481 ft. Then they would proceed by using an
engineering system means to `control'
waters motion and levels by some well-known hydraulic techniques like
the case in shipyards using water locks. In fact, working on GP construction
never stopped because of differentiation of inundation power. Raising up was
only one small operation of the whole project.
An interesting fact: The stones of the initial 18 courses average 2-6 tons
apiece. Starting the 19th course, the stones became huge (10-15 apiece) for the
next 203 courses. The rule of logic dictates a progressive diminution of mass as
one goes upwards.
That's why Hydraulic Theory is believed by some to be the only one that Works.
This would be the real Genius of Khufu and the GP. For this reason 8 major
armies failed, in the long history of Egypt, to demolish the GP.
*****************************************
AnkhIwiEmHotep
Articles Great Pyramid Main Message Board News
