Giza

[alrom]

There are 2.5 million stone blocks in the Great Pyramid averaging the weight of a car. The math is instructive.

2,500,000 blocks divided by 20 years = 125,000 stones per year
125,000 stones divided by 365 days = 342 stones per day
342 stones divided by 24 hours/day = 14.25 stones per hour
14.25 stones divided by 60 minutes'hour = 1 stone every 4 minutes...rounded off.

Hi you all!

I'd like to point out something that you might have not considered on your math. (I really mean it!, did you consider it?)

Speed on block transport from a quarry to the construction site is determined by the speed in which those blocks were quarried. Let me explain it.

Let's consider that it takes one month to move one stone block from the quarry to the site where the pyramid is being built. And suppose that we can build a block every 4 hours.

It will take 4 hours to build our first block. After it is built a team of carriers will take it and will start their trip to the pyramid. Then we start quarrying our second block... after 4 hours more another team will take the second block and start carrying it, etc.

It will take a month for the first team to get the first block to the pyramid, but from then on the guys at the pyramid will get a block every 4 hours.

Of course this is limited by the number of carrying teams. With x carrying teams you will get every month batches of x stones.

The conclusion is, the speed on stone transport depends more on how many people are moving stones at the same time and how much time does it take to build a stone, and less on how much time does it take a single team to carry a single stone from the quarry to the pyramid.

I don't know how many people worked on the pyramids but even considering this it doesn't fit much with the 20 years estimation.

Anyway, have you read this?

http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=376

It's a nice theory about the transport of large stone blocks for the pyramids.

[Frank Harrist]

There are 2.5 million stone blocks in the Great Pyramid averaging the weight of a car. The math is instructive.

2,500,000 blocks divided by 20 years = 125,000 stones per year
125,000 stones divided by 365 days = 342 stones per day
342 stones divided by 24 hours/day = 14.25 stones per hour
14.25 stones divided by 60 minutes'hour = 1 stone every 4 minutes...rounded off.

Hi you all!

I'd like to point out something that you might have not considered on your math. (I really mean it!, did you consider it?)

Speed on block transport from a quarry to the construction site is determined by the speed in which those blocks were quarried. Let me explain it.

Let's consider that it takes one month to move one stone block from the quarry to the site where the pyramid is being built. And suppose that we can build a block every 4 hours.

It will take 4 hours to build our first block. After it is built a team of carriers will take it and will start their trip to the pyramid. Then we start quarrying our second block... after 4 hours more another team will take the second block and start carrying it, etc.

It will take a month for the first team to get the first block to the pyramid, but from then on the guys at the pyramid will get a block every 4 hours.

Of course this is limited by the number of carrying teams. With x carrying teams you will get every month batches of x stones.

The conclusion is, the speed on stone transport depends more on how many people are moving stones at the same time and how much time does it take to build a stone, and less on how much time does it take a single team to carry a single stone from the quarry to the pyramid.

I don't know how many people worked on the pyramids but even considering this it doesn't fit much with the 20 years estimation.

Anyway, have you read this?

http://www.atse.org.au/index.php?sectionid=376

It's a nice theory about the transport of large stone blocks for the pyramids.

Good point, Alrom, I was thinking the same thing.
They could also have more than one team cutting the blocks so it could be possible with enough people to have a block arrive at the pyramid every few minutes. There are four sides to the pyramid so there could be several teams working on each side so with enough people the timeframe is possible. There would of coursae come a point when you have too many teams and they just get in each other's way so the speed would be finite.

[Minimalist]

You make a good point but I was approaching the problem from the other end.

In order to finish it in 20 years they had to lay one stone every 4 minutes for 20 years....

At some point, by deduction, that means that they also had to cut a block every 4 minutes and transport one every 4 minutes or there would have been a bottleneck.

Frankly, looking at it from the finished end or the starting point, the idea of positioning one block every 4 minutes is ridiculous.

[Frank Harrist]

You make a good point but I was approaching the problem from the other end.

In order to finish it in 20 years they had to lay one stone every 4 minutes for 20 years....

At some point, by deduction, that means that they also had to cut a block every 4 minutes and transport one every 4 minutes or there would have been a bottleneck.

Frankly, looking at it from the finished end or the starting point, the idea of positioning one block every 4 minutes is ridiculous.

Not if you had enough teams doing it.

[Minimalist]

I wonder.

Every picture of a quarry that I've seen shows workers starting on one face of rock and cutting in (meaning down). Then they put wooden wedges in the cuts until the face separates and the whole thing falls to the floor of the quarry. Then you step in and cut the stones to shape but while you are doing that you can't be knocking down any more rocks or you will kill the guys doing the cutting and shaping.

That would be bad for morale.

[Frank Harrist]

I wonder.

Every picture of a quarry that I've seen shows workers starting on one face of rock and cutting in (meaning down). Then they put wooden wedges in the cuts until the face separates and the whole thing falls to the floor of the quarry. Then you step in and cut the stones to shape but while you are doing that you can't be knocking down any more rocks or you will kill the guys doing the cutting and shaping.

That would be bad for morale.

But, the more surfaces you had to cut the more teams you could use at once. You're thinking too small. The quarry was huge and had room for several teams. Also they could cut slabs which were very large and then make several blocks out of them. I agree that dropping a huge megaton block on a team would be terrible for morale.

[Minimalist]

They think they know where the main quarry was and while it was large it was not that large. No matter how you slice it, you still have a two-step process where you have to knock down a rock face and then cut and shape and you can't be knocking anything else down while you are cutting and shaping. Then you have to pick the blocks up and put them on sleds and haul them out of there.

THEN, you can hack down some more rock.

IF (big if) a pyramid was built using the methods claimed by Egyptologists, it took a lot longer than 20 years and was not designed as a tomb for one megalomaniac.

[Beagle]

It seems that the story given by Herodotus is a bunch of bull. However, he didn't record his observations untill 2,000 years after the Great Pyramid was built.

To me then, he isn't any more credible than any of us.

[Minimalist]

Dear old Zahi showed up on tv last night and made some interesting comments.

First, he averred that the population of 4th Dynasty Egypt was 1.6 million people.

Second, there were no slaves used and the total work crew was 10,000.

The no slaves bit was no surprise since Egypt had no tradition of massive slave labor, unlike Rome. [Arch will now appear with some more bible bullshit about the poor Jews in bondage in Egypt but there is simply no evidence to support that.] The 10,000 total work force seems to be a number that Zahi pulled out of his ass, as he offered no basis for it.

Out of 1.6 million people, though, figure half would be female so figure they are out.

Thus 800,000 males. As median life expectancy was around 35, figure roughly 265,000 in the below 14, 265,000 in the 15-30, and 265,000 in the 30+ (old) category.

Assuming that some of the children and old people could help out with the farm work, you still could not utilize the bulk of your male work force for pyramid work and still feed the country, plus there would have had to be some deduction for military service and the nobility. So, assuming that Hawass knows what he is talking about it does not seem that there could possibly have been 100,000 freeborn Egyptians working on the pyramid without starting a famine.

[tj]

You make a good point but I was approaching the problem from the other end.

In order to finish it in 20 years they had to lay one stone every 4 minutes for 20 years....

At some point, by deduction, that means that they also had to cut a block every 4 minutes and transport one every 4 minutes or there would have been a bottleneck.

How about if those doing the quarrying and the transporting had a lengthy head start? Surely the design, planning, and preparation of the building site (be it on a hill or no) would have been non-trivial and they would have known that they were going to need blocks. Lots of blocks. It seems to me that, given an adequate head start at the quarry, they could have at least had some control over where and when they had a bottleneck. In other words, find the least damaging bottleneck in terms of time. It's essentially a minimum optimization problem.

Note that I'm certainly not claiming that the optimum solution would guarantee or permit construction in the allotted time with the allotted technology. I'm just trying to eek out a bit more performance from our workers.

Of course, this is dependent on exactly what is meant by "it took about 20 years to build". 20 years from conception to completion? 20 years from breaking ground at the site to completion? 20 years from the 1st block on the site to completion?

[Minimalist]

Who can say? I interpret it as 20 years from plan to capstone but it just makes no sense.

The same show that Zahi was on with his 10,000 workers they showed some "expert" on Egyptian tools showing how they finished the casing stones with a flint scraper. They used 5 times their four minutes right there.

They have logical mechanisms of doing all this stuff, except moving big stones uphill, but every step of the process belies the 20 year time frame. And, they have to adhere to that time frame because nothing else fits with the "tombs and tombs only" theory which is the basis of all pyramid assumptions. In an age when people generally died before the age of 40 they can't assume a 40 year period of time to build these things if they want to retain the tombs explanation.

The cathedrals of Europe were built by volunteer labor assisting a few specialists, just like the presumed model for the pyramids but those took centuries to build and medieval engineers had cranes and block and tackle which the Romans had perfected but which Egyptologists swear the Egyptians did not have. I don't know. It's mind-boggling.

[Beagle]

[img][img]http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h298/LL3850/th_meidump12.jpg[/img]
[/img]

Let's imagine for a minute that there was an older and smaller structure there pre-dating Khufu. Maybe a step pyramid or something like the picture above.

Chances are that it would account for around half of the total volume of the GP. So that should cut your figures in half. Maybe more.

Did you include the work on the outer casing? That would have taken a long time also.

[Beagle]

http://www.world-mysteries.com/mpl_2_1asok.htm


Here is the website that I got the pic from. It's pretty interesting.

[Minimalist]

[img][img]http://i67.photobucket.com/albums/h298/LL3850/th_meidump12.jpg[/img]
[/img]

Let's imagine for a minute that there was an older and smaller structure there pre-dating Khufu. Maybe a step pyramid or something like the picture above.

Chances are that it would account for around half of the total volume of the GP. So that should cut your figures in half. Maybe more.

Did you include the work on the outer casing? That would have taken a long time also.

Zahi Hawass would run you out of Egypt in a heartbeat for such a suggestion.

Sure, anything is possible but the Defenders of the Faith swear that it didn't happen.

I assumed that the outer casing was installed at the same time as the other stones.....of course, that would play havoc with the ramp, wouldn't it?

[Minimalist]

I hope Frank likes this picture of the quarry.




If it were so easy to move a 5,000 pound stone uphill on a sled why don't they just do it and prove that it is no big deal.

As one of Murphy's Laws states: "Everything is easy for the man who doesn't have to do it himself."