Archaeologica.org

There are other parallels to a society reaching heights then dropping back Min.

Agreed...although it took the Romans centuries to perfect their road-building technique. The thing is, the Old Kingdom chugged along through the 5th and 6th dynasties merrily building pyramids until the droughts which hit in the 21st century BC took Egypt down along with Mesopotamia and pretty much everyone else. When the Middle Kingdom arose they went right back to building pyramids.

As the photos show....its not just the size its the quality of the workmanship. Sure, for a zillion reasons Userkapf might not have had the resources to build a big pyramid. But why would he build a pile of crap? He's still got gaggles of priests telling him he's a god and that this will be his home for eternity. One has to assume that they took such nonsense seriously.

But was it a pile of crap during the classical period Min, what we see now is many years later?
I'd ask the reverse question, why put so much effort into a structure that, from the builder's view point, will never be seen?

Roy.

That Userkapf image doesn't show up here.

And the contractor who built that crappy pyramid was quite obviously a fraud delivering substandard work for a king's ransom.
Par for the course!

The same is true of all the pyramids.

If we are stuck (and for the moment we are) with the Egyptology club's "tombs-and-tombs-only" hypothesis then we also have to deal with the idea that they were building for "eternity." So in the course of a century or so we go from Meidum...which collapsed to the Bent Pyramid (so-called because it starting cracking during construction...to the Red Pyramid to The Great Pyramid, Khafre's pyramid and Menkaure's pyramid then there were two short-reigned kings of the 4th dynasty who did not build pyramids and Userkapf who built kludge.

Possible? Yeah. Probable? Not so sure about that one.

Minimalist wrote:the Egyptology club's "tombs-and-tombs-only" hypothesis

That's where that hypothesis derails right there! Because if they were pharaohs' tombs, how come no pharaoh mummy has ever positively been associated with – let alone found in – anyone of those supposed tombs? In none! Beside the small matter of it – without help anyway – taking the better part of a millennium to build Cheops'/Khufu's pyramid, so his earthly remains would have long disintegrated to dust before it even had that final resting place!

So that "tombs-and-tombs-only" hypothesis is not just improbable, it is plain absurd.

And once you accept the idea that they were not tombs for a single individual, or more, the time scale ceases to be of any import.

Roy.

Exactly.

The time scale may be irrelevant to a pharaoh's burial, it's the opposite to the civilization that built them. As it is to us, as long as we also don't have answers to the who, why, and how. We don't even know if they were built in the holocene at all!
I will go so far as to accept that Cheops/Khufu probably cut the ribbon and started the national party when it was finished, as his cartouches were carved into its walls. But Cheops/Khufu had nothing to do with its raison d'ètre, its conception, or its design. That was determined centuries, nay millennia before he was even a gleam in his father's eye! Probably (long) before the sphinx was built too (which I currently estimate at before 11 KYA).

Actually RS that pyramid could have been built in a reasonable time, using known techniques, subject to how much labour they were prepared to use at any one time.

Roy.

If there were thousands of labourers on the construction site they would have only been massively in each others way (I've been there, seen the situation). But even if the whole heap was built at a rate of one block every 30 minutes (with a platoon of skycranes they didn't have!) that would mean they placed 16 blocks a day (8 hour work days; they were supposed to be free men, weren't they?). That's 143,750 building days! That's 4 centuries of uninterrupted building. That's 6 centuries, minimum, if we allow for weekends, wars, national holidays, inclement weather, union strikes, and other inconvenient interruptions! And that would have been at least 12 centuries if they were only seasonal labourers!
And that's a extremely conservative estimate since they didn't have skycranes... (or so we're assuming).

Ergo: whatever technology was used, at least millennia (plural!) were required to build the Great Pyramid!

If there were thousands of labourers on the construction site they would have only been massively in each others way.

Agreed.

since they didn't have skycranes

And didn't need them. Despite all the hoo ha the construction is a relative simple task.
Remember RS that the experts are so expert that they even have the Egyptians casing from the top downwards! A bit like building a house from the roof downwards. (makes the roof tiling easier though)
Cognito and I discussed this in detail recently on Ishtar's site if you wish to see how simple construction could have been.

Roy.

If it would have taken well over a millennium to construct the Great Pyramid with a squadron of skycranes, try to wrap your head around how long it took without them (or similar technology)!

I doubt it.

Roy.

I will go so far as to accept that Cheops/Khufu probably cut the ribbon and started the national party when it was finished, as his cartouches were carved into its walls.

That's not true. Howard Vyse found what amounts to painted graffiti in a relieving chamber bearing the name of Khnum Khufu which seems to mean something like Khnum Protects Us....Khnum being a very ancient Egyptian god...worshipped as early as the first dynasty and probably earlier.


There is a lot of argument about what the graffiti says/means but it seems to me it is like looking at a sign for the George Washington Bridge and concluding that George Washington built it.

Yep! And I remember Hawass climbing up there, complete with TV crew, to show that as proof that Khufu built the place!
(Kilroy was here!)

Roy.