Posted on 12/31/2001 12:33:44 PM PST by John Farson
Like millions of tourists, from the Ancient Greeks on, the Blairs may have been victims of one of the world's oldest confidence tricks when they walked round the Pyramids on the Prime Minister's holiday trip to Egypt.To the uninitiated eye, the 2.3 million blocks of stones rising to a 146-metre peak on the 4,500-year-old Great Pyramid near Cairo look as solid as pure granite. But French architects and scientists believe they are nothing more than weathered concrete blocks, moulded on the spot, stone by stone and layer by layer, from the ground upwards.
The theory, being explored by scientists at Montpellier University, has thrown Egyptology into turmoil. It could destroy thousands of years of speculation on the greatest of all riddles of the sands, one that has fascinated Hollywood and made fortunes for novelists such as Christian Jacq. Researchers believe that only the reluctance of the Egyptian authorities to allow more samples to be examined stands between them and final proof.
Joël Bertho, an architect and specialist in trompe-l'oeil, used his expert knowledge of reconstituted stone to explain how easy it was to pass off concrete and mortar for real carved stone. 'It needs a trained specialist to identify the basic material,' he said.
'The Egyptians had mastered many techniques of plaster and mortar and knew all about making bricks. There is no reason why they could not reconstitute stone into blocks weighing two or three tonnes layer by layer rather than try to heave huge weights up several hundred feet without even the benefit of crude cranes. I have even been able to identify frame marks left by some moulds.'
The theory, set out in a book called La Pyramide Reconsti tuée (Unic), is largely based on the precision of the joints between the stones. 'Joints are invisible and it would be impossible to pass a cigarette paper between them. To carve blocks of solid stone to tolerances of hardly a millimetre would need incredible skill without the benefit of machine tools.'
Montpellier was drawn into the research because Bertho is designing a scientific park in the city. At its Laboratoire de Tectonophysique, Suzanne Raynaud has cut samples of stone from the Great Pyramid into thin slices to examine under a microscope. 'I went from surprise to surprise,' she said. 'The arrangement of micro-fossils had been disturbed, which could be explained by the manipulation of reconstituted stone. The components of what appears to be solid stone could have been crushed or passed through a sieve before being put into moulds.'
Other tests are under way but another top scientist, Claude Gril, said they were unlikely to be conclusive without comparisons between the blocks of stone in the pyramid walls and material from quarries where they are found. 'Unfortunately, the Egyptian Antiquities office is opposed to more detailed research, which we are carrying out with a Belgian nuclear laboratory, and will not allow more samples to be gathered for comparison,' he said.
As a result, a hunt has started among Egyptology collections in Europe, including a Rouen museum which has a rock from the Great Pyramid in its reserve. A Paris laboratory has declared that the stone is a form of mortar, but there have been protests from several Egyptologists who say Bertho's theory is nonsense.
If the claim is proved, it would destroy pages of speculation on how the pyramids were built. But until the mould theory is proved or shattered, the dominant opinion will remain Cecil B. De Mille's images of slaves and whips.
I have less curiosity about the pyramids than the Sphinx. There is a theory that it was built at a different age and the pictures and writing were added waaaay after it was built. Some say it is pre-flood because of it's horizontal water damage marks. If rain wore it down it would have vertical marks.
The whole question was posed by Lavosier when during Napoleanic occupation of Egypt, the French discovered a finely made quarzite vase thousands of years old from Egypt, which could not be duplicated in 18th century France. He reasoned that it was molded from a plastic mass. Could be. They weren't dumb just limited in their resources.
So, what's the article trying to say? That the slavery of Hebrews is a myth? This should fit-in well with those who think the Holocaust was fantasy....
I can't decide which part of this comment is more grotesque: the elevation of the Holocaust to the status of Holy Writ, or the equation of non-belief in certain parts of the Bible with "Holocaust denial"....
There are extensive periods of time each year where a great deal of the population was out of work, due to flooding. They were put to work, paid, fed etc. by the Pharaohs. It kept them busy and happy with their rulers. Hence there was no need for slaves. wacsog10 (27)
DeMille could have used you guys when he was hammering together his epics.
OTOH, Cecil created history out in La-La Land where spectacle trumps accuracy.
A Quick Look at the Great Pyramid
... Granite blocks were used in some of the internal features, such as the King's Chamber,
while limestone blocks were used for most of the body of the pyramid. A ...
www.primenet.com/~kjohnson/quickgp.htm - 10k - Cached - Similar pages
Encyclopedia Smithsonian: The Egyptian Pyramid
... itself. Some of the limestone casing was brought from ... rooms were cased with granite
from Aswan. Marks of ... to build the Great Pyramid; modern estimates of the ...
Description: Short article tells how the pyramid evolved and explores how they were built.
Category: Kids and Teens > School Time > ... > Ancient History > Egypt > Pyramids
www.si.edu/resource/faq/nmnh/pyramid.htm - 12k - Cached - Similar pages
This is a great warm-up exercise, in between politicians.
I am have a hard time believing that the cast stones could carry the enormous weight of the above layers without reinforcement. Especially in the arid conditions. Do you know of any other examples of this style construction used in the same time period in the same general area? Are the quarries that have been discovered, not quarries?
The Egyptians were renowned for their magical practices. Maybe Gandalf did it.
I've actually done some faux rock/tile work with concrete. Getting the kind of consistent results we'd be talking about here is almost impossible, at least on the scale in question.
Now the hard part is how to explain the iron dagger blade found in one of the pyramids.
From the digging of ancient Roman ruins, one knows that approximately 95% of the concretes and mortars constituting the Roman buildings consist of a very simple lime cement, which hardened slowly through the precipitating action of carbon dioxide CO2, from the atmosphere. This is a very weak material that was used essentially in the making of foundations and in buildings for the populace. But for the building of their "ouvrages d'art", the Roman architects did not hesitate to use more sophisticated and expensive ingredients. These outstanding Roman cements are based on the calcic activation of ceramic aggregates (testa) and alkali rich volcanic tuffs (cretoni, pozzolan) respectively with lime. The excess of unreacted lime recarbonates slowly into Ca-Carbonate. Conventional mineralogical analysis does not provide satisfactory explanation of the hardening mechanism. Yet, owing to the powerful MAS-NMR Spectroscopy investigation of these archaeological cements, one was able to distinguish two geopolymeric archaeological Roman cement analogues, dating to the 2nd. c. AD. See the scientific analysis on these high-performance Roman cements in paper nr 28 of Geopolymere '99 and in Archaeo-Analogues.
Nowhere does the Bible say that the Israelites were involved in building the pyramids, which were already there a good many centuries before the Exodus.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.