How Were The Pyramids Built?
How Were The Pyramids Built?
How Were The Pyramids Built?
The rivers of ink have flowed in the debate over the system of
construction used to raise the pyramids. Architects, engineers,
archaeologists and scholars of every persuasion have expressed
their ideas in merit and made their contribution to finding a
solution to one of the greatest unsolved mysteries of ancient
Egypt.
Unfortunately, the copious iconography regarding daily life in
ancient Egypt is not matched by a similar store of
documentation regarding the construction of the most
important monuments of Egyptian architecture.
Most certainly, the stone was quarried, cut into blocks, loaded
onto sleds runners, or rollers, and dragged to the pyramid
construction site.
Once there, however there arose the problem of how to lift these
gigantic stones. The most highly credited theory is now that
involving ramps, wide inclined planes, built of mud brick or sand,
that gradually increased in slope and height as the pyramid went
up.The ramp may have been straight and perpendicular to the
pyramid, built up to one side of it and becoming narrower at the
top and longer as the pyramid grew in height.
Or the ramp may have been helicoidal. spiraling around the
structure. Concerning the construction of the pyramids
Herodotus wrote "it look ten years to make the causeway for the
conveyance of the stones, a work not much inferior, in my
judgment, to the pyramid itself .... It is built of polished stone, and
is covered with carvings of animals.
To make it took ten years, as I said or rather to make the
causeway, the works on the mound where the pyramid stands,
and the underground chambers.
The Pyramid itself was twenty years in building. It is a square, built
entirely of polished stone, fitted together with the utmost care.
The pyramid was built in steps. battlement wise as it called or
according to other, alter wise.
After laying the stones for the base, they raised the remaining
stones to their places by means of machines formed of short
wooden planks.
The first machine raised them from the ground to the top of the
first step. On this there was another machine, which received the
stone upon its arrival, and conveyed it to the second step,
whence a third machine advanced it still higher.
Either they had as many machines as there were steps in the
pyramid, or possibly they had but a single machine, which being
easily moved, was transferred from tier to tier as the stone rose,
both accounts are given, and therefor I mention both.
The upper portion of the pyramid was finished first, then the
middle, and finally the part which was lowest and nearest the
ground.
The Machines
Obviously the machines were differently built according to the
varying heights involved and the weights to lift. For blocks of
around two tons that had to be lifted to a height of six meters, a
machine eight meters high at most might need not much more
than half an hour. so that it would take a block six hours to be
hoisted to a height of a hundred meters.
With a series of
machine of machines
on all sides, about two
hundred blocks a day
could then be
unloaded on the
uppermost work yard.
A series of machines was not required for the fairly limited
number of blocks weighing forty or fifty tons and one or two
specially built pivoted levers sufficed, aided by levers and
counterweights like those used later to erect the obelisks.
These particular pivoted levers used used for heavy loads would
certainly have been of appropriate dimensions and beams of
Lebanon cedar, like the masts of boats, measuring up to fifty
meters in length were employed.
The Function Of The Pyramid
When the king died, the lengthy ritual of embalming and burial
began at the temple dwelling of the King.
Once the body had arrived with the procession of sacred
boats, the purification ceremonies began at the Valley Temple and the
preparation of the mummy was completed.
The principal ceremony was the purification by water,
comparable to that of the Sun which is reborn every morning
from the Lake of the lily.
Purified and covered with propitiatory amulets, the mummy
passed the "Guardian of the threshold" then began his journey of
ascent, hidden from profane eyes, through the gallery and
reached the upper temple for consecration.
As the body proceeded from one columned hall to the next, the
number of initiates and the purified who accompanied him
"consisting of priests and relative" dwindled.
When it reached the large central court only the great initiated and
the King's heir continued into the "sancta sanctorum" of the
mortuary temple where the fundamental ceremony of the
"opening of the mouth and eyes" took place.
The royal heir presided over this ritual which "opened" the
communication of the deceased with the after world, in front of
the five chapels, the five statues of the god king one for each
attribute given to the king at the time of his royal consecration .
Officially reunited with the gods, the deceased was taken
through secret ways to the subterranean chapel.
Once sealed, the precious sarcophagus was set among his
dearest possessions and treasures after which the worker
priests retracted their steps, closing the marble shutters and
obstructing all the passageway so that no one might disturb the
king as he waited for his final ascent to the sun .
The last secret ceremony was that of placing the statue of the
king in the serdab the small bricked cell at the heart of the
mortuary temple, from which the image of the king would "see"
the ceremonies and offerings made in his honor for the rest of
time.
An "Architectural Absurdity"
The Oldest tombs of the kings resemble the palace castle of the
first Dynasty, followed later by the stepped pyramids, and lastly
those with smooth sides.
while it may be easy for us to see how the palace of the living
king could become the "palace" of the deceased king "Just as the
house of the living prince became, with the mastaba, the house
of the deceased prince", it is more difficult to grasp the
relationship of the pyramid with the world of the living and with
the after world.
With the arrival of the pyramids, the image of a house was swept
away and any connection with the real world or with tradition
was abolished.
It was in Djoser's time "2700 BC" with the works designed by
the great architect Imhotep that this Sudden, apparently
inexplicable, leap ahead took place.
Indeed, in the marvelous architectural complex at the center of
Saqqara, three substantially different structure types are found,
the beautiful enclosure wall which echoes the architectural
traditions of the royal palaces, the stupendous massive
buildings and colonnaded vestibules which represented
completely new perspectives in architecture for the entire
ancient world, the hermetic mass of the stepped pyramid which
looms up in the center of the complex, and for which no
reference either to traditional architecture or to the
architecture invented by Imhotep himself, can be found.
How can we explain the conceptual abyss between Imhotep's
most important work and other structures, this apparent
rejection of all architectural forms and furnishings previously
attempted or invented?
The abandoning of tradition becomes clearly evident on
examining the construction of the pyramid.
Initially the structure was a "mastaba" with a square ground plan.
The house tomb was in fact twice enlarged. but still in keeping with
tradition.The king's burial chamber lies under massive mastaba, at
the end of a shaft sunk in the rock.
While the second enlargement was in course, the programmer
was abandoned for no apparent reason and the first pyramid
with four steps a great protective shell appeared over the
mastaba and subsequently three sides of this disappeared under
the final six step pyramid.
The question again arises, why was the traditional tomb, that
image of a living person's dwelling swallowed up by a form that
was completely new, even for the inventor himself? This is all the
more problematical in view of the fact that barely a hundred
years later the stepped pyramid was replaced by one with
smooth sides.
The leap from the stepped pyramid to the smooth pyramid is to
be found in Maydum, and is encapsulated in the original
structures of the pyramid built by Sneferu, founder of the
Fourth Dynasty.
In terms of construction, the difference is not great.
Indeed it seems almost natural that s stepped pyramid should
eventually be protected by a sloping surface so as to resist the
wear and tear of time. moreover the concept of flat sides is an
integral part of all the great pyramids, starting with Djoser's
where the construction developed with a series of sloping flat
walls around a central core "the core of the pyramid of Khufu is
like a giant obelisk 146 meters high , without a point ".
The stylistic alteration is, however of much greater import as
one passes from an outline which has at least some tenuous
relation to the architectural concepts of the time, to another
where all contact with reality is lost.
It should also be remembered that his latest "novelty" was not
the result of a momentary caprice, but endured until the end of
the sixth Dynasty, and a magnificent example was built at the end
of the third millennium.
The golden age of the stepped pyramid lasted not much more
than a hundred years, while that of the geometric pyramid lasted
five hundred years.Whatever were the reason that caused Khufu
to attempt, this "architecture absurdity" a macroscopic pyramid
even further removed from reality than Djoser's a costly
undertaking that stretched the limits of human possibility, they
must have been forceful and imperative.
Since we have absolutely no precedent for this extraordinary
form in earlier Egyptian works, no hint at what the stimulus might
have been, the answer must be sought in the world of religion
and in experiences that cannot be explained by history alone.
"Spiritual pyramids" are to be found in Egyptian theology and
cosmogony, in that "science" of the world before and after the
land of the Nile ,.
These mysterious pyramidal forms have powerful echoes in
the primordial tumult arising out of Chaos, the source of the great egg lotus which opens to give
birth to the sun.
There is a strong formal analogy in the pyramid shape with rays
of light, a great stream diminishing to a point in infinity that
transports the elected to a true Egyptian Nirvana, which is
reached by crossing the bridge uniting heaven and earth.
Akhenaten, the king prophet of the revealed religion, continually
reproduces this pyramid of infinite arms which reach out from
the sun to benefit all men, none excluded, arms outstretched
almost as if to embrace mankind as a whole and carry it back into
heaven.
The pyramid texts themselves, which transcend history, tell us "I
have walked on the rays as if an a stair of light to ascend to the
presence of Ra .... heaven has made the rays of the sun solid so
that I can elevate myself up to the eyes of Ra ... they have built a
staircase leading to the sky by which I can reach the sky "
The Great pyramid as well as the sphinx is thus none other than
a gigantic ideogram derived from the past, which signifies the
staircase which par excellence leads to eternity.
