Engineering the Pyramids E-Book

Dick Parry

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 153

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2005

Beschreibung

In Engineering the Pyramids, author Dick Parry - a civil engineer - assesses the design of the pyramids and the likely methods of quarrying, transporting and raising the stones. Basing his ideas on both the archaeological record and the basic principles of engineering - as well as the results from a series of model and full-scale tests - Dr. Parry provides a challenging answer to this mystery of the pyramids. He suggests that ramps were used and the huge stones were transported and raised by rolling them, rather than using highly inefficient sledges beloved of Egyptologists. Engineering the Pyramids provides a rich and accessible account of the design history of the pyramids, the techniques and organisation needed to bring about these heroic feats of effort and engineering and fascinating insights into the reasons behind the pyramid design.

Leseprobe

ENGINEERING

THE PYRAMIDS

First published in 2004 by Sutton Publishing

The History Press

The Mill, Brimscombe Port

Stroud, Gloucestershire, GL5 2QG

www.thehistorypress.co.uk

This ebook edition first published in 2013

All rights reserved

© Dick Parry, 2004, 2013

The right of The Author, to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

EPUB ISBN 978 0 7524 9513 2

Original typesetting by The History Press

Contents

Preface

Acknowledgements

One

Origins and Purpose

Two

Evolution in Pyramid Design

Three

The Tomb Chambers

Four

Basic Aids to Construction

Five

Construction Preliminaries and Operations

Six

Stone Sources and Quarrying

Seven

Herodotus on Pyramid Construction

Eight

Levers, Rockers and Cranes

Nine

Sleds

Ten

Rolling Stones

Eleven

Ramps

Twelve

The Workforce

Closing Remarks

Appendix: Sliding and Rolling: Some Simple Mechanics

Select Bibliography

Preface

The three stone pyramids on the Giza plateau, visible from central Cairo, are probably the most recognisable man-made creations on earth and the most photographed. To stand beside them, even as a civil engineer, is to be awestruck at their immense size and to feel disbelief that 4,500 years ago people like ourselves could have built such structures without the technology and machines we have today. No wonder ridiculous theories such as alien builders from outer space have found gullible adherents.

For whatever reason, the ancient builders left behind no indication of the construction methods for any of the seven completed stone pyramids, in written or pictorial form, or in the physical shape of tools dating from the pyramid age. This hasn’t prevented writers on the subject from disregarding the limitations posed by simple principles of engineering mechanics and making categorical statements about their construction; for instance that sleds were used to transport and raise the stone blocks, without presenting any supporting evidence and while glossing over the enormous problems attending their usage. It almost seems that something which appears in print often enough must be true, or certainly worth repeating. Of course, sleds may have been used, but they would have posed great difficulties in the creation of suitable haul roads and a practical ramp system. Any method to reduce friction, the bane of sled haulage, may have been simple in the hauling of a single sled, but could have been a nightmare with a hundred sleds or more in transit from quarry to site at any given time. Proposed ramps for raising the stones are sketched with absurd inclines of 1 in 2 or steeper, which could not have been negotiated by any method of stone haulage; and ramps are shown climbing up to 100m or more in height, having side slopes almost vertical, with no mention of what miracle material was used in their construction. The reason is simple. If sensible inclines and side slopes had been introduced into the sketches for the particular ramp configurations proposed, the ramps would have swamped the pyramids themselves. As the methods of pyramid construction were not recorded, they must have been transmitted by word of mouth and by practical demonstration, perhaps eventually coming to be known only to the priesthood, which makes the accounts of pyramid construction by Herodotus of particular interest.

The questions posed by the pyramids are endless. Were the bodies of the pharaohs really interred in them or were they an over-the-top diversionary tactic? What motivated Imhotep to extend his original mastaba for his king, to end up with the Step Pyramid? What happened at Meidum to cause its collapse and why is the Bent Pyramid bent? Why was the North Dahshur Pyramid built with much flatter slopes than the other stone pyramids? Were the shafts extending from the tomb chambers of the Great Pyramid really to facilitate the passage of Khufu’s soul to its celestial abode and, if so, why did his son Khafre not build in the same provision for his own soul? Why did Menkaure build such a small pyramid in the shadow of the much larger structures of his father and grandfather? Why are no two pyramids alike, at least in detail? Fortunately, many of these questions are unlikely ever to be answered and as long as these marvellous enigmatic structures keep at least some of their secrets, our fascination for them will not cease.

Unless otherwise stated, all images have been provided by the author.

Acknowledgements

My sincere thanks go to Tom Kimura for his efforts in arranging the field tests in Japan and, of course, to the Obayashi Corporation for financing and carrying out the tests. It was a great pleasure to work with such an enlightened organisation. I am greatly indebted to Mamdouh Hamza for his unstinting help to me in making my visits to Egypt both pleasant and fruitful, and also for his suggestion that I write this book. My sincere thanks, too, to Moustafa El-Ghamrawy for the many kindnesses he has shown me on my visits to Egypt. On one of my visits to Meidum and Dahshur, I was accompanied by fellow geotechnical engineer Max Ervin, whose observations have proved very helpful, and a comfort to me. Many thanks to him and also to Christopher Feeney, Jane Entrican and Clare Jackson at Sutton Publishing for making the book a reality, and to Sarah Flight for this paperback edition.

ONE

Origins and Purpose

Throughout the more than three millennia of pharaonic rule, those Egyptians of high status who could afford it concerned themselves to an obsessive degree with their welfare in the afterlife. Leading and wealthy citizens took elaborate precautions to ensure their continued existence after death, which they believed depended upon the preservation of their earthly body. Their tombs, often constructed of stone or excavated deep into solid rock, were much more elaborate than their homes and palaces, which, for the most part, consisted of sun-dried mudbrick.

An early form of tomb was the mastaba, the name deriving from the Egyptian for a bench which it resembled in outward appearance. It consisted of a burial chamber below ground level, which housed the body, surmounted by a squat superstructure of sun-baked mudbrick containing cells intended for storage of wine jars, food-vessels, hunting implements and other necessities for enjoying the afterlife to the full. A significant development in the IV Dynasty saw stone replace brick, the interior of the superstructure often consisting of a low-grade local limestone, with an outer facing of fine quality Tura limestone.

The unification around 3100 BC of the two greatly differing geographic regions of Egypt – the elongated narrow Nile valley of the Upper, or southern, largely arid region and the fan-shaped Lower, or northern, productive marshy region – gave rise to a remarkable civilisation lasting over 3,000 years under pharaonic rule. Although the two regions continued to be administered separately, the wearing by the pharaoh of both the separate white and red crowns of Upper and Lower Egypt symbolised their unification, which remained substantially intact throughout the pharaonic period – in part attributable to the wisdom of Menes, the first pharaoh, in establishing the capital at Memphis, some 24km south of modern Cairo, and near the junction of the two regions.

Menes put in hand major construction works to fortify the city, which helped serve his own glorification and, perhaps even more important, also required a workforce of several thousand people from various parts of the country, which may well have helped cement the concept of unification. According to the Greek historian Herodotus, writing around 450 BC and quoting information given to him by priests in Egypt, Menes had Memphis built on land reclaimed from the Nile by diversion of the river from a point some 100 furlongs (20km) south of the city. A dam or embankment gave protection against flooding from the river and the city was enclosed within a white wall of limestone. These efforts were the forerunners of the great construction works to come, to include pyramids and other tombs, temples and canals.

Of the one hundred or so pyramids built in ancient Egypt only seven completed pyramids were constructed entirely of well fitted stone, and all seven date from the III Dynasty (which was the last of the Early Dynastic period) and the IV Dynasty (which was the first of the Old Kingdom period). Approximate dynastic dates are given below, together with the names of the pharaohs associated with the construction of these major pyramids. Pyramids continued to be built for nearly one thousand years after the end of the IV Dynasty, but since most consisted of mudbrick with limestone casing, very few have survived in recognisable form.

Locations of the stone pyramids.

Djoser had in his court the first great polymath in history, whose accomplishments in the fields of astronomy, medicine and construction led to his deification by later generations of Egyptians. His name was Imhotep. Commissioned by Djoser to build his tomb, Imhotep first constructed a mastaba of limestone blocks 63m square and 8m high, each face of which he oriented towards one of the four cardinal compass points. Viewing the completed structure, Djoser may have been less than impressed with its unspectacular appearance; as god-king of a united Egypt he must surely have felt the need for something more imposing to satisfy his ego and to protect his mortal remains. Alternatively, Imhotep himself may have had grandiose ambitions to leave behind something to be remembered by (a sentiment not unknown among architects today), and on completion of the mastaba convinced Djoser – if he needed convincing – that a much larger structure would more fittingly match the great man’s stature. Imhotep extended the mastaba, first into a four-stepped pyramid and finally into a six-stepped pyramid. Technologically it was a great advance.

Once established, the pyramid form became the standard for the tombs of succeeding pharaohs. These were built largely from blocks of local limestone where available. A development after the step pyramid was an outer casing of fine Tura limestone, floated across the Nile and dressed to give a smooth exterior and thus a true pyramid. Increasingly elaborate precautions taken to thwart tomb robbers included the incorporation of multiple tomb chambers, chambers below natural ground level and within the structure, blind corridors, false entrances and stone portcullises which dropped down behind the burial parties after they had left the tomb chambers. All to no avail. Over the centuries the tomb robbers still managed to gain entry to the tomb chambers and carry off treasures of great value buried with the pharaohs – a bewildering array of priceless items intended for the pharaoh’s use in the afterlife, including gold knives and gold vessels, alabaster pots, silver trinkets, gold-sheeted couches and chairs.

The pyramids were not isolated structures. They stood in the midst of attendant constructions including, in some cases, subsidiary pyramids for the queens and mastaba tombs for nobles and the pharaoh’s close family members. Boat pits contained craft to convey the pharaoh to his heavenly abode and a massive limestone wall often surrounded the pyramid complex. An integral feature of each pyramid was the mortuary temple, the exact purpose of which is open to some dispute as the rooms and doorways seem to be too small for the funeral procession. Reflecting as they do some of the features of the royal palaces, they may simply have been intended to provide an eternal familiar residence for the deceased king. A sloping causeway linked the mortuary temple to the valley temple situated at the entry to the whole complex.

Whether in the mortuary temple or elsewhere, the pharaoh’s body underwent lengthy ritualistic and purification processes followed by mummification before interment. These served to ensure both the afterlife of the deceased pharaoh and the transfer of his physical and spiritual powers to the new pharaoh.

The seven completed stone pyramids of the 3rd and 4th Dynasties and three uncompleted pyramids are listed below with the corresponding pharaohs and locations.

Profiles and relative sizes of the seven completed stone pyramids H= height and B= base length in metres; S= slope in degrees.

Menkaure Pyramid

Giza

Menkaure

Stone pyramids of the 5th and 6th Dynasties were much inferior to their predecessors, with limestone casing covering poorly fitted smaller stones and mud mortar or debris in the gaps. Badly degraded, and some never even completed, they are not considered further here.

Apart from Djoser, the pharaoh of the Step Pyramid, the remaining four pharaohs associated with the other six completed pyramids were all in direct father–son relationships. The first of these, Snofru, was the son of Huni, the last king of the III Dynasty, a rather shadowy figure for whom the Meidum Pyramid may have been originally intended. Notwithstanding that the completion of three major stone pyramids (and one minor pyramid) during his 24-year reign must have placed an enormous strain on the resources of the country, later generations throughout pharaonic history revered the memory of Snofru, according him epithets such as ‘The Beneficent King’. Clearly a very energetic ruler with a strong hold on the levers of power, he not only provided a son to be his successor, but also two of his other sons served as viziers (in effect, prime ministers) during both his reign and that of his son Khufu. He is recorded as having conducted campaigns against Libya and Nubia, in the latter case taking 7,000 prisoners to be employed on the royal estates and possibly on pyramid construction. In one single year he had forty loads of cedar wood shipped from the Lebanon port of Byblos to Egypt, most of which would have been intended for ship building and for use in pyramid construction.

In contrast to his father, Khufu suffered a tarnished reputation at the hands of later priests, who claimed that he had brought all kinds of misery down on the country, forbidden his subjects to practise their religion and closed the temples. It is possible he was confused with, or seen in the same light as, the much later New Kingdom pharaoh Akhnaten, who recognised only one god, the sun-god Aten, and consequently earned the hatred of the powerful Theban priesthood. Herodotus makes it clear he is simply recording the accounts given to him by the priests, who also told him that Khufu forced his subjects to labour as slaves on his works. There is no evidence to support any of these claims. The sheer magnitude of the Great Pyramid may have influenced the belief that he enslaved the labour force to achieve his ends, but ironically the volume of pyramid building in the reign of his much revered father exceeded that of Khufu by 40 per cent. With tongue clearly in cheek and no doubt to entertain his audience, Herodotus relates a story of how Khufu sent his daughter to a bawdy house and instructed her to charge a specific sum in order to bolster the king’s dwindling finances. In addition to this charge, on her own initiative to ensure she would be remembered after her death, she asked each customer to donate a block of stone, managing to acquire sufficient of these to build the middle of the three subsidiary pyramids close to the Great Pyramid.

Khufu should have been succeeded by his eldest son Kawab, the issue of his senior queen Mertiotes, and who even married his own sister Hetpheres II to ensure his succession. But it didn’t happen. By somehow disposing of Kawab, Ra’djedef, another son but by an unknown queen, succeeded his father and immediately attended to the ceremonies required to ensure Khufu’s eternal life in the afterworld, and probably to buttress his own position. He reigned for only about eight years, to be usurped in turn by Khafre, another son of Khufu by yet another wife. Khafre did not see the need to complete the pyramid intended for Ra’djedef at Abu Roash, 8km to the north of the Great Pyramid, and chose to build his own pyramid immediately adjacent to that of his father, and only slightly smaller. Again, it may have been the sheer size of his pyramid which led later generations to conclude he was no less a tyrant than his father, in contrast to his own son, Menkaure, whose much smaller pyramid – and indeed the last Giza pyramid – may have served to give him a much enhanced reputation. According to the account by Herodotus, Menkaure reopened the temples, abolished slavery and had the greatest reputation for justice of all the monarchs who ruled Egypt. He obviously won the approval of the priests.

While there can be no doubt that the purpose of the pyramids was to protect forever the mortal remains of the deceased pharaoh, no identifiable body remains have been found in any of the major pyramids, added to which three pyramids are attributed to the one pharaoh, Snofru. However, two of these may have been deemed unsatisfactory to receive the remains of the god-king, the Meidum Pyramid having partially collapsed, apparently around the time of its completion, and the Bent Pyramid showing signs of settlement and structural distress during construction, to the extent that the builders hastily finished it off at a flatter slope angle to try and limit further movements. They must have been in two minds about what to do, as the structural movements continued to increase. It would have been more logical to have finished it off as a mastaba-like flat-topped structure at the height they had reached when they realised some change in design had to be instituted (presumably the height where the change in slope occurs), but the compulsion to achieve a pyramid-like shape apparently took precedence over the more logical solution. Clearly anticipating the likely reaction of the pharaoh, or perhaps by order of the pharaoh, the builders immediately put in hand the successful construction of the North Dahshur Pyramid, about 2km away from its southern neighbour, adopting the flatter slope used to finish off the Bent Pyramid. Unusually, human fragments were found in the burial chamber, but these have not been positively identified as remains from a royal mummy.