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Pyramids: Cast, Poured, or Both?

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Author Topic: Pyramids: Cast, Poured, or Both?  (Read 9409 times)
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Qoais
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« Reply #105 on: November 13, 2009, 06:15:01 pm »

With respect to a resource impoverishment, starting from the twelfth dynasty (1,990-1,780 B.C.),
Pharaoh Amenemhat I and his successors built crude brick pyramids. But here also, only the
funerary room is built, with great care, out of re-agglomerated stone. However, the Egyptians did
not choose to carve stone for the body of the pyramids, preferring crude bricks, even though they
had harder and more efficient bronze tools had they wished to use them.
We note, then, that the technology of re-agglomerated stone, after a formidable rise, a perfect
mastery of the process, an intense exploitation of its resources, went on to an extremely rapid
architectural decline. A mining exhaustion of the chemical reagent resources, and an ecological
and agricultural disaster explain this decline. [16] [17]
3. Religious context:
Why did they maintain this need to build out of agglomerated stone or to preserve the
agglomeration system, while they could carve stone?
For ancient Egyptians, stone had a sacred quality, used only for religious purposes, that prohibited
its use for secular buildings (built rather out of crude bricks, clay and wood, never out of stone).
It is only under the Ptolemys, 2,000 years after the pyramids, that stone became a trivial building
material. The reasons for this distinction come from religion.
Egyptian civilization lasted more than 3,000 years and, contrary to what the general public
thinks, it was not homogeneous. Thus, there are 2 geneses explaining the creation of the World;
two distinct gods claim the creation of the World and man: Khnum and Amon.
The god Khnum was worshipped during the Old and Middle Kingdoms (3,000 to 1,800 B.C.). He
is depicted as a man with a ram’s head and horizontal horns. He personalizes the nutritious Nile,
and at Elephantine, Thebes, Heracleopolis, Memphis, he is the god of creation. In the act of
creation, he "kneads" humanity on his potter's wheel with the Nile silt and other minerals (mafkat,
natron) as in the Biblical and Koranic genesis. This does not give an unspecified clay, but a stone
called "ka", i.e. the soul that is not spirit, but eternal stone. Khnum and all the divine incarnations
of Râ appear by the act of manufacturing stone. His hieroglyphic sign is a hard stone vase like
those of the Nagadean era (3,500 to 3,000 B.C.). Thus, under the Old Kingdom, the purpose of
the agglomeration act was to reproduce the divine intervention at the time of the creation of the
World and the human soul.
For the two main Pharaohs of the Old Kingdom, Zoser and Kheops, the relationship with Khnum
is proven by archaeological discoveries (cf. the Famine Stele). Also, the true name of Kheops is
Khnum-Khufu (may the god Khnum protect Kheops). Would Kheops have attached his name to
an inferior god? No, Khnum is a major god. It is simply the perception of the Egyptian Pantheon
which is not correct.
Amon is the second god of creation. In the beginning, he was only an average god. He became a
dynastic god in the twelfth dynasty (1,800 B.C.), but he was not yet the god of creation, this role
still being the privilege of Khnum. Then, he became the "king of the gods" and the priests gave
him the ability to create the world. In the genesis myth, Amon is identified as a sacred mountain
and he "carves" each human being in a part of himself, i.e. in this sacred mountain. Amon and all
the divine incarnations of Amon-Râ appear by the act of carving stone, and are at the origin of the
New Kingdom monuments, like those of Ramses II, 1,300 years after the pyramids.
Thus, we understand why the tombs were no longer under pyramids, symbols of agglomeration,
but under a sacred mountain, the Valley of the Kings, symbol of Amon. In the same way, the
temples are built out of stone hewn with great care and the obelisks are called "Amon's fingers".
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