Sunday - July 13, 2008
The Pyramids and How They Were Built.
Okay, I've been bugged by a silly question for
some years now and I don't know the answer to
it.
If you read most any book about the
Pyramids of Giza and how they were built you'll get any number of theories of
how they dragged those blocks of granite to the top of the heap as it was being
built. There is any number of theories and there is evidence that there was a
ramp or causeway leading from a canal to the pyramids themselves. That's all
well and good. I don't have much problem imagining how they could manually drag
even the largest of blocks up a
ramp.
But what they never seem to
explain is how the heck did they get these massive stones on and off of a boat?
No one has explained it yet that I've seen. To me, this is a much more
difficult question to answer than simply dragging the stone along the ground.
On a boat you have to lift the stone over the gunwhale, lower it onto a boat
large enough to displace more water than the weight of these stones, and have
enough structure in the boat to support this concentrated weight.
I don't know what kind of boat the
Egyptians had four thousand years ago that could hold that much tonnage, but I
imagine that they had such a boat, for holding grain or wine jugs, etc. What I
don't understand is how they could move this stone onto the boat without
crushing it, swamping it, or toppling it over.
And even more crazy, once it was on
the boat, how did they get it back out
again?
I don't have any educated theories to offer, I'm
not one who can claim any expertise in the matter. I imagine that they might
have built the boat around the stone and then flooded the area around the boat
to float it. At the destination they could run aground and dismantle the boat
again.But here's my question. If you
could get a stone onto a boat and float it with relative ease to any place with
water, why wouldn't you keep that stone in the boat as long as you could? Why
remove it from the boat when still a few miles from the pyramids? Or even a few
feet? I'd be running that canal right to the inch of where I needed
it.In fact, if I could get it on a
boat and could move it anywhere there was water, I'd be sorely tempted to lift
the stone in its place using the boat. It can't be that hard to build a series
of locks to lift the stone all the way to the top of the pyramid. The locks
could even be moving. That is, imagine a ramp in place that rises to the
necessary level of construction: couldn't you have three locks always in place?
One for where the stone just left, one for where it is, and one for the next
level. Once it moves to the middle level they dismantle the lower lock and move
it above the third lock. I would
think it's a lot easier to move an empty lock and pump water into it than it is
to drag a stone up a ramp so dangerously. If I were there and already knew how
to put a stone that large into a boat, that would surely be my method of lifting
it to where it needed to be. And if it's at the level needed, why not release
the water and lower the stone onto the exact position at the same time. I mean,
if it's already floating, why not use that in your favor to the
utmost?But I still just can't
understand how they got the stones into the
boats.Addendum 14 July, 2008: I found
an explanation
of how the stones were transported by boat. I still think it makes sense to use
locks to lift them to their final height.
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