#History & #Culture
One of the biggest mysteries of the ancient world is just how did Egyptians manage to build something as huge and magnificent as the pyramids. To put it in context, they built it at a time when pulleys, wheels, and iron tools were not yet invented/discovered! Most sources agree that the pyramid consists of about 2.3 million blocks, and the workforce took 10 years to put each individual block in place at a rate of 180 blocks per hour.
The first challenge was to get the material to the construction site. We have long known that the granite came from a town 553 miles south of Giza called Aswan, and that the limestone came from Tura, which was located about 12 miles south of Cairo on the Nile. The limestone blocks, used in the outer casing of the pyramid, were shipped from quarries to the pyramid sites within a few days using boat transport via the river Nile and then through man-made canals. To push the stones on land, gangs of workers pulled large sledges over sand lubricated by water to reduce friction.
However, the biggest unknown of pyramid construction chiefly center on the question of how the blocks were moved up the superstructure. Most hypothesis involves functional possibilities that are supported by limited historical and archaeological evidence. The traditional solution offered by Egyptologists are ramps. A single straight ramp would have had a volume up to three times that of the pyramid itself and awfully long, so a more plausible explanation is a ramp zigzagged up on one of the faces of the pyramid or a ramp wound around the entire pyramid. Another alternative is the use of wooden levers — lift up the blocks & swing them into place. Another theory is the water shaft theory — Each block was wrapped in floats & then floated or lifted along water elevators and canals. [watch this video for more details on the water shaft theory].
— — — — — — — — — —
For such daily insightful articles, subscribe at polygyan.com
