Brier took Houdin out to see the (somewhat younger, but still Old Kingdom) temple out in the desert, to show him an example of the very kind of internal ramp that Houdin had posited as part of the solution to the construction.
One of the problems with any of these explanations — other than Davidovits’ geopolymerization — is the need for lots of dressed stone to fit basically perfectly with the adjacent stones; another problem is, getting those stones to the very top.
Having an internal ramp is perfectly compatible with the geopolymer approach. Those gi-normous granite blocks used for the internal chambers (”King’s” and “Queen’s”) had to be hauled up there on a ramp, and I can easily accept that the Grand Gallery was used in some way shape or form to pull those stones up an opposing ramp.
Houdin says the opposite ramp was torn down when no longer needed, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it, too, remains to be found, internal to the Pyramid, or at least the top half of the ramp is in there, although filled in when no longer needed, and in the Davidovits scenario, poured full.
It’s worth noting that almost 90% of the mass of the Giza pyramid(s) is found in the lower 50% of the structure; it’s not a bad idea, Houdin’s internal small ramp, but it’s more likely that other, small ramps were also used and filled-behind as the first 89% of the mass was constructed, even with a more conventional carved stones model. Only one of the internal ramp lines appears to be visible (probably due to moisture, early in the morning) on one side of the Great Pyramid.
That notch that Brier explores (see the vid links above, anyone who’s interested) may be consistent with Houdin’s theoretical explanation, which requires a crane on the corners to turn the stones. That part of his idea is frankly ridiculous to me; the blocks of the Great Pyramid in particular are not all one size or shape. I could accept that some kind of block and tackle, capstan, etc was located at that corner to pull the blocks up the ramp.
The problem with this idea is, one ramp, one block at a time, and there are millions of blocks to place. Unless one accepts the geopolymerization model of Davidovits, those bottlenecks are always there.
It started to make much more sense to me years ago when I saw a documentary about Amazon gold miners; they had started out with a small mountain, and were at that time working in a pit about the same distance down as the mountain had been up. Thousands of miners had done this 40 pounds at a time. Reverse that and it becomes obvious that construction would be greatly eased.
At a minimum, a quarried block model would require the use of many routes up into the structure, just to build the structure. It needs to be said also that half of the mass of the structure, and therefore the first ten years of work, would occur in the first, hmm, what, 1/5 or 1/6 of the total final height?
I guess for now I will have to go with the idea of a skilled work force. Seriously, the amount of labor goes down exponentially as the structure goes up and didn’t Jean Pierre Houdin reason the the first 1/3 or so have a standard ramp built as it was raised. That could have been a wide,no very wide, ramp being used with multiple tracks, some for fill some for face blocks and some for structural blocks. Just a thought.
A friend of mine was a Dutch Engineer building a sugar mill in Java after WW2. His problem was to get a 60 ton Steam Engine 85 feet into the air to they could slide it on a platform built on a ledge, no crane.
Solution: a log crib, levers, and a lot of people. After seeing photos of the lift I have never doubted what can be done if you throw a lot of people at a job with crude tools.