How the Great Pyramid Was Built by Craig B. Smith & Zawi Hawass & Mark Lehner

Author:Craig B. Smith & Zawi Hawass & Mark Lehner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Smithsonian
Published: 2018-02-20T05:00:00+00:00

Ramps and causeways at Giza and other sites.  Credit 51

TOP: Khafre’s pyramid causeway, right background; old quarry, left center; Menkaure’s causeway, left foreground.

BOTTOM LEFT: Ramp to mastaba, west side of Khufu’s pyramid, Giza.

BOTTOM CENTER: Ramp retaining walls, south of Khufu’s Queens’ Pyramids, Giza.

BOTTOM RIGHT: Causeway at the pyramid of Unas, Saqqara.

Arnold suggests that construction ramps were built with timber sleepers, or balks, possibly made from old boat lumber. These sleepers were placed on ramps and transport roads perpendicular to the direction of travel, like railroad ties. The spacing was such that the runners of a large wooden sledge would always be resting on at least two or three successive timbers. He includes photographs or drawings of this type of ramp at the pyramids of Amenemhat I and Senwosret I at Lisht, and in the quarry used by Senwosret II at Lahun.5

On the east face of the Meidum Pyramid, high up on the fifth and sixth steps, are two distinct vertical lines marking depressions in the finished stonework. They appear to indicate where an inclined ramp leaned against the east face. The ramp height suggested by these marks is 55 meters.6 Other writers describe the use of ramps at a number of locations.7 In addition, there are tons of debris on the Giza site, including vast amounts of talfa, the calcareous clay that archaeologists believe may well be fill material from ramps.8

In summary, the evidence for the use of ramps—written records, ramp drawings, and the physical remains of dozens of ramps built in several different styles—is overwhelming and compelling.

But what about the alternatives? Could the builders of Khufu’s pyramid have moved and placed the stone blocks by other means? Not unless they had developed some type of highly advanced technology or equipment that vanished into history without a trace. Khufu’s pyramid is not only enormous, it is also intricate in plan. Its upward progression involved much more than the stacking of block upon immense block in a perfect pyramid formation; it entailed a complex integration of interior and exterior architectural schemes, parts of which involved the placement of massive beams and blocks of stone weighing upwards of 50 metric tons. It is hard to imagine that any of the alternative methods could have provided this integration. And even if these methods had somehow been combined with some other method that enabled workmen to construct the interior of the pyramid, the use of a jacking system or counterbalanced lever system would have been impractical for a construction effort of this magnitude. Imagine trying to balance a 3-ton block of stone on blocks of wood, then levering one side of it up another 2 or 3 centimeters. Now suppose you are doing this thirty stories in the air and the block slips: carnage would ensue. The seesaw concept is intriguing, but it would have involved a huge quantity of good lumber, which was in short supply in ancient Egypt. No illustrations of this concept have ever been found, and there are no archaeological remains that indicate lumber was used on a large scale in this construction.

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