
How to Build a Pyramid - aarestad
https://analog-antiquarian.net/2019/08/30/chapter-16-how-to-build-a-pyramid/
======
legitster
Historians proper get so caught up on the ramp, but by any metric they seem
ridiculously unfeasible.

I don't know why they are so quick to throw out the Herodotus Machine, where
you rock the block back and forth and place shims under it. They don't require
lots or resource or technology, or a backbreaking amount of labor, and two
people can move a single block - taking as many breaks as they need to. And
you know, it's how the locals told Herodotus it was done!

As opposed to a ramp that's bigger than the pyramid itself, take an insane
amount of uninterrupted work to haul up, and there is no archaeological
evidence to support.

 _Edit_ : Here's an example that seems to fit Herodotus's description:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hLQoD3Cwag](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hLQoD3Cwag)
I see no reason to believe that anyone sophisticated enough to design a
pyramid wouldn't be sophisticated enough to stack shims.

~~~
nitwit005
The first time I saw a compound bow, I assumed it was ancient, because it
seemed like surely they would have figured it out given that crossbows were a
thing. I was quite surprised that it was from the 60s.

People tend to make the mistake that ancient people were just primitives, but
assuming they'd produce ideal solutions can also be a mistake.

~~~
ezoe
Compound bow requires very precise metal work and advanced material. You can
invent the compound bow earlier, but you can't craft it without required tech.

Other example is the ski. We have to wait until 1970s for modern ski, metal
edge(good adhesive between wood and metal), polyethylene, modern wax, safe
bindings... all requires various technologies and we had to wait until 1970s.

~~~
nitwit005
If you take a look at the original bow, I think we'd agree they probably could
have managed:
[https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2017/28/63937289_148571...](https://images.findagrave.com/photos/2017/28/63937289_1485711836.jpg)

There are a lot of things ancient people could have made but didn't. People
have made gliders with only primitive materials, but no one was gliding around
the ancient world (except, very very quickly to the ground). It was not purely
a lack of materials.

------
JackFr
I love to imagine the life during the construction of the pyramids. While
Egyptologists can make pretty good guesses about the construction techniques,
it's amusing when they speak to the motivation or 'religious practices' of the
people.

Imagine how different the prejudices and outlook of someone 50 years ago look
to us today. And consider that the modern Western worldview is about 500 years
old. These things were built 4500 years ago. Cleopatra is closer in time to
today, than to the construction of the Pyramids. They were built 2000 years
before Plato. Maybe 10 or 20 generations before the Epic of Gilgamesh.

~~~
voldacar
It's kind of sad how much nuance and meaning modern humans are able to crush
down into words like "religious practices". It makes me wonder what parts of
our present world will be compressed or misunderstood or glossed over by
people in 1000+ years

~~~
derefr
"Religious practices" has always seemed like a coherent concept to me, the way
anthropologists use it—but one that doesn't really fit the label we've given
it. It's almost a diagnosis of exclusion: "religious practices" are everything
about a culture, _other than_ its economy (trade, productive marketable
craft), and its politics (tribalism, war, game-theory).

Most art and music in modern culture would fit neatly under the "religious
practices" anthropological aegis. Which isn't a bad or wrong thing, I don't
think! The category is a correct and natural division, and anthropologists are
right to group "all that stuff" together. The label on the grouping is what's
silly.

~~~
voldacar
No I think you are very right. It's just all too easy for us, who inhabit a
mostly secular public sphere, to apply our own mental/linguistic concept of
"religious || non-religious" when thinking about cultures that probably did
not apply such a rigid sort of filter to the world around them.

I guess that is a challenge in any kind of historical context.

~~~
derefr
I find it tempting to try to come up with better labels for the concept,
despite it being unlikely that the greater anthropology community will ever
shift to using them.

 _Spiritual zeitgeist_ might fit, I think—it describes the motivation behind
most art that’s not associated with a particular coherent artistic movement.
It’s “what people were feeling—and wanting to commiserate about feeling—at the
time.”

------
ncmncm
He doesn't say what happened to all the blocks that were dropped in the way of
grave robbers. Did they just batter their way through them, and haul the
pieces out? Maybe the archaeologists hauled them out?

I thought the "air holes" were supposed to be a way to fill the cavities with
sand, after it was all sealed. Grave robbers would have had to shovel it all
out before they could get anywhere.

I like the notion that they had wooden pieces shaped like the chord of a
circle, four pairs strapped on four sides of a block, and then the whole block
could be rolled. (Apparently there are pictures of the things on tomb walls,
misinterpreted as boats.) That only gets them to the base of the pyramid.

Of course, the methods used could have changed radically even over the period
of building a single pyramid. Doing something the hard way for a few years
ought to motivate some cleverness. But other pyramids had been built, so
methods were probably pretty mature.

I wonder how they got all those facing blocks off and hauled halfway across
the city to build mosques out of. They probably split them into pieces on site
and moved the pieces.

~~~
sintaxi
There are a few problems with your conclusions which perfectly highlight why
the pyramids are such a mystery.

> I thought the "air holes" were supposed to be a way to fill the cavities
> with sand, after it was all sealed. Grave robbers would have had to shovel
> it all out before they could get anywhere.

None of the pyramids on the Giza plateau were graves. It is a myth that any
bodies were found in those pyramids.

> I like the notion that they had wooden pieces shaped like the chord of a
> circle, four pairs strapped on four sides of a block, and then the whole
> block could be rolled. (Apparently there are pictures of the things on tomb
> walls, misinterpreted as boats.) That only gets them to the base of the
> pyramid.

There are roughly 2,500,000 blocks in the Great Pyramid with the quarries
being hundreds of miles away. That means to build it in 20 years you would
have to cut, move, and place a block every 4 minutes day and night without
stopping. So very unlikely they rolled the blocks around.

> Of course, the methods used could have changed radically even over the
> period of building a single pyramid. Doing something the hard way for a few
> years ought to motivate some cleverness. But other pyramids had been built,
> so methods were probably pretty mature.

The most impressive pyramids (by far) on the Giza plateau are also the oldest.
The pyramids got worse as they developed more of them, not better.

~~~
robbiep
The article itself mentions that modern understanding is that the quarry was
only 200-300 metres from the great pyramid

~~~
sintaxi
The Granite that this article speaks about came from the Aswan stone quarry
which was over 900km from Giza. Even with the distance of the limestone close,
my point remains that cutting and placing a block every 4 minutes around the
clock is impractical without sufficient technology. Technology which the
Egyptians did not possess.

~~~
robbiep
Must have been aliens then. I wish they’d come back.

------
fluxby
TL;DR

Pretty standard explanation of the construction of the great pyramid with the
ever expanding ramp to push up the blocks.

(No explanation where did the ramp go, and that volume wise it would have to
be bigger than the great pyramid itself)

The explanation for the many chambers in the great pyramid is that Khufu, was
changing his mind several times after naming himself son of Ra (God of Sun),
and wanted to be buried ever higher as apposed to previously accepted burials
underground, so construction workers had to abandon already built chambers and
architects had to design new chamber with ever higher elevation.

Pretty weak overall. Nicely composed narrative but has no critique or original
ideas.

------
figital
It's a large ram pump ...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6koHqPM_zxg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6koHqPM_zxg)

~~~
97b683f8
Meant to deal with the Sahara bassin abondant waterways of yore or their
sudden disappearance ...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0_Of0WGkEs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0_Of0WGkEs)

------
WalterBright
"The builders may thus have been perversely thankful for every inch of the
distance between quarry and construction site before all was said and done."

Or the pyramid was built at that exact distance from the quarry for precisely
that reason.

------
hnburnsy
Great show from Nova on this very topic...

[https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/decoding-the-great-
pyram...](https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/video/decoding-the-great-pyramid/)

------
moonbug
Reminds me of the shit pyramids of Pharaoh Sneferu

[http://swordsandsocialism.blogspot.com/2016/03/day-5-shit-
py...](http://swordsandsocialism.blogspot.com/2016/03/day-5-shit-pyramids-of-
pharaoh-sneferu.html?m=1)

------
aszantu
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Q7iyZfNa4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64Q7iyZfNa4)

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Tepix
I wonder if there‘s a market for modern day pyramids. They could be

\- Mausoleums

\- tourist attractions and even

\- permanent disposal sites for nuclear waste

all at the same time.

~~~
science4sail
It looks like there was a pyramid-building boom 20-30 years ago.

[1989]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre_Pyramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louvre_Pyramid)

[1991]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Pyramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memphis_Pyramid)

[1993]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Las_Vegas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luxor_Las_Vegas)

[1994]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pyramid](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Pyramid)

[2006]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Peace_and_Reconcilia...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palace_of_Peace_and_Reconciliation)

------
mattoxic
Robber’s Tunnel,” ... a forced entrance dating from some time after the
pyramid’s completion.

You don't say

------
WalterBright
The Egyptians used ramps to set the obelisks in place, and used fill & ramps
to build the columns. It isn't a great stretch to think they would have used
ramps for the pyramids. The size needed was huge, but they were building
something monumental already, and it was certainly feasible.

