MYSTERIES OF ANCIENT EGYPT

At Giza and Abydos we see examples of truly massive stone construction. From Saqqara we have examples of the hardest rock exquisitely carved.

How did the Old Kingdom Egyptians quarry, dress, move and place these massive blocks? Shape vessels of the hardest diorite? And how did they do this with crude Copper Age tools over 4,500 years ago?

 

 

Conventional Egyptology holds that, like the many smaller pyramids in the region, the Great Pyramid was built around 2551 to 2528 BC by the Ancient Egyptians. It was built on the west bank of the Nile as a tomb for their magnificent King Khufu, to launch him on his mystic journey into the afterlife.

Much scientific and historic evidence supports this. But not irrefutably. And while it may explain the when and the why, it still leaves the how unanswered.

Some of the earliest history of the Pyramid comes from the Greek traveler Herodotus of Halicanassus. He visited Egypt around 450 BC and included a description of the Great Pyramid in a history book he wrote.

Herodotus was told by his Egyptian guides that it took twenty years for a force of 100,000 oppressed slaves to build the pyramid. Stones were lifted into position by the use of immense machines. The purpose of the structure, according to Herodotus's sources, was as a tomb for the Pharaoh Khufu (whom the Greeks called Cheops). Herodotus claimed that the outer casing was covered with "writing" or "symbols" of a language unknown to the Egyptians.

We don't know how much of Herodotus' account we can trust. After all, he wrote 20 centuries after the Pyramid was built. One thing was certainly not true - that the builders were slaves. Archeologists have found the "work camps" of the builders, and they were well provided for.

It makes sense - every year the Nile flooded, and for a month or two there was nowhere to live and nothing to do until the waters receeded. So the pharaohs gave the people a home and a job.

Current theories center around huge canals, giant ramps, and/or counter-weighted cranes (huge versions of the waterdippers used even today on the Nile). But none of these offer a full explanation for this stupendous engineering feat.

New theories concerning the origin and purpose of the Great Pyramid have been proposed . . . astronomic observatories . . . a center of cult worship . . . geometric structures constructed by a long-gone, unknown civilization . . . even extraterrestrial-related theories have been proposed. But there is little evidence for any of these.