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Gathering 'concrete' evidence

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Oracle of Delphi
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« Reply #15 on: April 16, 2008, 02:57:39 am »

Concrete Pyramids

By Isabel R. Harris and Matthew W. A. Bruder V

 

 

Over four thousand years ago, modern man built one of the greatest construction marvels of all time, the great pyramids of Giza.  The awesome technology to create these structures developed in a few hundred years and disappeared just as fast, never to be duplicated.  By about 500 B.C., during Herodotus’ visit to Egypt, the methods of construction were obscure, even to the Egyptian priests consulting their records[1].  Conventional wisdom states that the three great pyramids are made of stone blocks quarried, hauled over the Nile, and maneuvered up great ramps to their present positions.  It is becoming clear, however, that the great pyramids are actually made of concrete.  Even today with mounting evidence, people still cling to conventional ideas as to their construction. 

The pyramids were constructed during the reigns of three pharaohs about 2500 BC.  The great pyramid was built for a pharaoh named Khnumu-Khufu during his 20-year reign. The pharaoh ruled over an essentially agrarian society.  This society was entirely dependent on the fall inundation (flood) of the Nile annually to fertilize the flood plain, on which they grew their crops.  Various major construction tasks were undertaken only during these three months of the year, starting relatively small, reaching its zenith with the great pyramids, and dying away by about 500 BC.  Although large constructions were undertaken, after the building of the great pyramids, none equaled them in magnitude and quality.  The Egyptian priests told Herodotus that the great pyramid was completed during the reign of the pharaoh, 20 years[2].   

To complete a pyramid within the lifetime of the reigning pharaoh was a monumental task.  Masons designed the structure, selected and cleared the site, and laid out the orientation.  As the site was being prepared, other groups of masons quarried stone blocks at twenty quarries throughout Egypt[3].   These blocks were then hauled to the Nile, floated to the construction site, hauled up a ramp, and put in place.  The pharaoh, to complete the pyramid being constructed, drafted one hundred thousand laborers, including slaves for labor, an impressive mental picture.  For most people, thousands of labors and its associated stone theory are easy to conceptualize.  A child’s blocks can be used to mimic the operation on a small but deceptive scale.

At the same time as the pyramids were being constructed, another intriguing development occurred.  Fine alabaster vases with delicate, narrow throats and other artifacts were created in the same meticulous precision as the casing stones[4].  How could the Egyptians hollow out the bottom of the vases through the narrow throat without a highly advanced technology, which has disappeared in the mist of time?  Little if any indication of their manufacture remains.

There is evidence, in the quarries, of incomplete stone blocks and stele (obelisks) in various stages of completion, from later eras, abandoned for one reason or another.  Also, there are chisel marks left from the era when the pyramid blocks were being extracted from the quarries.  The marks vary considerably from era to era as the tools used to quarry changed[5].  Clearly, the stone was removed from the quarry.

Various authors including Herodotus, talking to Egyptian priests thousands of years after the completion, spoke of machines for raising the blocks[6].  It stands to reason, if you did not have a stone block, you would not have to raise it.  Later construction by the Egyptians themselves, Greeks, Romans, the masons of medieval Europe, and including the masons of today used the same basic method of cutting the blocks at the quarries and hauling them into place.  The blocks are rough-cut with tools on site, the rough ashlar (rough cut stone) is removed, finished, and it is hauled to the structure location and is installed, a simple enough procedure to understand.

Each of these arguments support the concept that the blocks were; as is commonly thought; cut, hauled, floated, hauled, and placed.  They are simple and straightforward, but there are certain problems with this theory. 

Another theory has been put forward periodically since the 18th century.  That is the pyramids were constructed of concrete.  Le Chatelier (a French chemist) did some serious investigation into the matter but failed to answer all of the questions.  His failure to determine the chemistry being used, coupled with the fact that hieroglyphics could not be read at the time created gaps, brought the theory into question.

As the climate changed different construction materials had to be developed.  Egypt was fairly moist until historic times (about 4000 BC). Wood all but disappeared and from pre-dynastic times had to be imported from Lebanon.  Mud brick held together by straw and baked in the sun fell apart during the infrequent rains and could not support the weight of very large structures.  All of their structures crumbled in a few years, nothing was permanent

Around their campfires, Egyptians noticed that the heat caused some of the rocks to melt and form colorful beads.  A small select group of laborers initially started making the beads and experimented by mixing and heating various combinations of minerals and ores.  They also found that some of the rocks powered to dust when heated; but when water was spilled on them, they resolidified.  Additionally, they found the powder could be mixed with water and before it hardened, could be placed in a container (a mold) and the rock, when hardened, assumed the shape of the container.  The cast rocks, when placed in water, did not fall apart.  Instead of structures that would fall apart in the periodic rains, buildings of these materials would last forever.

The Egyptians continued development of this process next making fine alabaster vases.  To this day no one conventionally can figure out how they were made.   They were molded, using concrete.  An inner mold of wax was made and positioned in a plywood outer mold.  (The Egyptians knew how to make plywood from the earliest times[7].)  After the concrete set but before it hardened, the wax inner mold was melted and removed, the outer mold was separated, the seams smoothed, and the vase became an enigma. 

The Egyptians, with an eye to the practical and each succeeding pharaoh wanting to outdo his predecessor, transformed the accidental diminutive beads into ever-larger blocks and experiments with basic pyramid designs begun.

If the small beads are kept distinct from the casing stones, another question arises.  How were the stones cut so precisely without scrap?  The era when the great pyramids were constructed was before the Bronze Age (The Bronze Age started about 800 B.C. in Egypt).  The Egyptians had only sticks, stones, and copper tools with which to quarry the blocks[8]. Nevertheless, given enough time, a block could be quarried and finished. The remaining pyramid casing stones are so precisely shaped that a piece of paper cannot be slid between the blocks[9].  Incredibly careful cutting or was the wall of the adjacent block also used as a wall of the mold?  A lot of time would be necessary to cut blocks this precisely, even today.  In 1984, Joseph Davidovits measured very precisely thousands of blocks on a pyramid where the casing stones had been removed 150 years ago.  Why are there only ten sizes, within two thousandths of an inch[10]?  Was it careful cutting or only a limited number of molds to cast the blocks?  Obviously if the blocks, some 30 feet in length, had to be cut and shaped to within two thousandths of an inch two new dimensions are added to the problems associated with carving stone blocks, how were they measured and additional time would be required for the increase in precision.  If laborers were cutting the stones, where is the scrap from the trimming, bad blocks, and the blocks that fractured or were damaged in transit?  There are not any[11].  With concrete, the rocks were beaten to a powder, hauled to the site, burned, mixed, and cast.  Everything is consumed and can be reused by powdering and heating it again.

To move the size of blocks used in the pyramids, some weighing 500 tons[12], in one piece, ramps with ample foundations would be required.  Where are the ramps to transport the blocks or where are their foundations?  There are not any.  The causeway, which according to Herodotus took 10 years to build and ran from the mortuary temple at the river’s edge to the pyramid itself, was built of polished stone, engraved, and covered[13].  The causeway, even when completed, would not support large blocks, but would support labors carrying buckets of concrete.  It can be simply handed up the pyramid, a bucket at a time, until the mold is filled. Concrete doesn’t require ramps. 

Herodotus says the priests told him the great pyramid was completed in 20 years[14].  With 2,500,000 blocks in the pyramid[15] this is no small undertaking.  If you are cutting discreet blocks and moving them, a focused infrastructure, well beyond the resources of today let alone the ancient Egyptians, would have been required.  The construction infrastructure shrinks substantially, to a manageable size of about 1,400 people, if a concrete process is used[16].  Since the work was carried out during the 20 years for only three months of the year (Thirty Egyptian calendar days.  The temples were closed and the Egyptians did not even get the traditional tenth day to rest.[17]).  The Egyptians worked only eight hours a day, therefore a stone block had to be placed every 3.5 minutes.  With ten molds, they only had to cast one block every half-hour.

In a microscopic study a human hair was found in a piece of a block taken from one of the pyramids[18].  How did a hair get into a rock?  It could have easily fallen from a worker into the concrete slurry.

Today, rocks and concrete can be easily distinguished from one another.  Concrete contains microscopic air bubbles from the slurry preparation and pouring.  A certified sample from one of the pyramid blocks was examined and the bubbles were found[19].  Granite does not contain air bubbles, concrete formulated similar to granite would.

If the Egyptians came up with this marvelous process, why did the Egyptians stop making concrete, start carving blocks of relatively softer stone, and lose the technology?  The answer is they simply ran out of known deposits of minerals and ores to form the high quality concrete.  From hieroglyphs and chemical analysis, the composition of the minerals and ores required were determined.  Locations of these ores were examined throughout Egypt.  It was found that some of the minerals and ores necessary for the process were completely consumed.  In one particular location, in the Sinai Peninsula were the mineral changed but the color of the rock did not, the miners stopped extracting the mineral precisely at the point where it changed[20].  After the great pyramids, very soft-core blocks were mined since they could easily be cut with the tools at hand.  The casing blocks were made from destroying earlier structures and reprocessing them.  Since the Egyptians worshiped the dead and long dead pharaohs continued to have large numbers of priests, only a limited number of structures could be consumed.  As iron tools developed, it was easier culturally and practically to cut softer rock than to reprocess the old and the craft died out.

We have two theories with significantly different technologies and similar results.  The conventional theory suggests a fantastic technology, which was lost as fast as it was developed and even with modern methods, many facts cannot be adequately explained or duplicated.  The concrete theory simply explains all of the observations and allows the eclectic craftsmen to complete the job in the time allotted.  As their raw materials were consumed, the workmen adapted and developed different technologies to carry on their tasks, the old practices disappeared, and their results became an enigma.


 

Please back to BML

 



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[1] Herodotus, The Histories, Oxford University Press, 1998, p145

[2] Herodotus, The Histories, Oxford University Press, 1998, p145

[3] Davidovits, D. and Morris, M., The pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p18-19

[4] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M, The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p124

[5] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, p55

[6] Herodotus, The Histories, Oxford University Press, 1998, p145

[7] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p72

[8] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p10

[9] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p 11

[10] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p 12

[11] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p12

[12] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p51

[13] Herodotus, The Histories, Oxford University Press, 1998, p145

[14] Herodotus, The Histories, Oxford University Press, 1998, p 145

[15] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p10

[16] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p 80-81

[17] Herodotus, The Histories, Oxford University Press, 1998, p144

[18] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M., The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p 90-91

[19] Wenskus, J., ”Did the Pharaohs Cheat with Concrete?” R&D Magazine, Dec 1990, p5

[20] Davidovits, J. and Morris, M. The Pyramids, Dorset Press, 1988, p 76

http://www.bonisteelml.org/ConcretePyramid1.htm
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Qoais
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« Reply #16 on: April 16, 2008, 09:36:05 am »

I copied some of Prof. Davidovits' video - missed the last few seconds but it gives the overall explanation.

http://s162.photobucket.com/albums/t267/Qoais/?action=view&current=ari-kat-eng.flv
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HereForNow
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« Reply #17 on: April 16, 2008, 03:18:43 pm »

http://www.rajon.com/egypt/egypt_research_1.htm


Regaurds.....
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« Reply #18 on: April 16, 2008, 11:58:16 pm »

Hi Josie
Oh, I agree, they can still cut rock to a certain extent with copper and bronze.  But they wouldn't  have had enough of it available to keep replacing the tools since both copper and bronze are very soft.  You're right.  It would take a very long time to cut the number of stones needed for the GP. A lot longer than the 20 years or so we're expected to believe it took.  We see pictures depicting the making of bricks - or so the orthodox folks say - and yet they can't accept that the Egyptians could have taken that a couple of steps further, and made BIGGER bricks - blocks.
I think the workers were conscripted also.  All the food was brought into central graneries, and in the winter months, the food was doled out.  I think somehow they kept track of who worked on the construction and who didn't, and if you didn't, you didn't get your food allotment.  Control the food - control the people.

That's true, and, if it was the case, they may as well have been slaves, right?

I can only look at the subsequent pyramids, many of which lie in rubble, and think hat there was something very special about the ones on the Giza complex, and I would also add the Red Pyramid and the Bent Pyramid, too!  All of them are also within a few miles of each other.
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« Reply #19 on: April 17, 2008, 10:38:26 am »

Thanks for the link HFN.  I have read before, where if proper harmonics are applied within the pyramid, information is revealed.  Perhaps we will figure this out someday. 

Personally, I think the "people" of Egypt were force-fed the religion and didn't have any choice but to work on whatever project was happening.  Not un-like Communism, whereby the people work on communal farms, but have to turn all the produce over to the government, and the government gives back what they feel people need and no more.  Yes, they may as well have been slaves, since they really didn't have a choice if they wanted to eat.
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« Reply #20 on: April 22, 2008, 06:26:11 pm »

If you take note of the way all world systems are today, we are no better off then any slaves at any time in world history. If we don't have money, we don't have anything.
How do we get money? Work or serve the system that enslaves us all.

Back on topic, The Egyptians were forced to serve the beginninig of everything that we are doing wrong now.
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« Reply #21 on: April 24, 2008, 01:35:09 am »

Did the Great Pyramids' builders use concrete?
By Colin Nickerson The Boston GlobePublished: April 23, 2008

 
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts: It is a theory that gives indigestion to mainstream archaeologists. Namely, that some of the immense blocks of the Great Pyramids of Egypt might have been cast from synthetic material - the world's first concrete - not just carved whole from quarries and lugged into place by armies of toilers.

Such an innovation would have saved millions of man-hours of grunting and heaving in construction of the enigmatic edifices on the Giza Plateau.

"It could be they used less sweat and more smarts," said Linn Hobbs, professor of materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

"Maybe the ancient Egyptians didn't just leave us mysterious monuments and mummies. Maybe they invented concrete 2,000 years before the Romans started using it in their structures."

That is a notion that would dramatically change engineering history.

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 It has long been believed that the Romans were the first to employ structural concrete in a big way, although the technology may have come from the Greeks.

A handful of determined materials scientists are carrying out experiments with crushed limestone and natural binding chemicals - materials that would have been readily available to ancient Egyptians - designed to show that blocks on the upper reaches of the pyramids may have been cast in place from a slurry poured into wooden molds.

These researchers at labs in Cambridge, Philadelphia and St. Quentin, France, are trying to demonstrate that Egyptians of about 2,500 B.C. could have been the true inventors of the poured substance that is humanity's most common building material.

At MIT, Hobbs and two colleagues teach a course called Materials in Human Experience. Over the years, undergraduates in the program have recreated from scratch such artifacts as samurai swords, tinkling Meso-American bells and even a swaying 60-foot, or 20-meter, plant-fiber suspension bridge like those built by the Incas.

Now a scale-model pyramid is rising in Hobbs's sixth-floor lab, a construction made of quarried limestone as well as concrete-like blocks cast from crushed limestone sludge fortified with dollops of kaolinite clay, silica and natural desert salts - called natron - like those used by ancient Egyptians to mummify corpses.

The MIT pyramid will contain only about 280 blocks, compared with 2.3 million in the grandest of the Great Pyramids. And no whips cracked overhead last week as Myat-Noe-Zin Myint, Rachel Martin and three other undergraduates stuffed quivering, just-mixed "Egyptian" concrete into cobblestone-sized wooden molds marked "King Tut Plywood Co."

"It feels like Jell-O but will turn rock-hard," Myint said of the sharp-smelling concoction.

The aim of the class is to teach engineering innovation, but the project may also prove that ancients, at least in theory, could have cast pyramid blocks from similar materials, which would have been available from dried river beds, desert sands and quarries.

Hobbs described himself as "agnostic" on the issue but said he believed mainstream archaeologists had been too contemptuous of work by other scientists suggesting the possibility of concrete.

"The degree of hostility aimed at experimentation is disturbing," he said. "Too many big egos and too many published works may be riding on the idea that every pyramid block was carved, not cast."

Archaeologists, however, say there is simply no evidence that the pyramids are built of anything other than huge limestone blocks. Any synthetic material showing up in tests - as it has occasionally, even in work not trying to prove a concrete connection - is probably just slop from "modern" repairs done over the centuries, they say.

"The blocks were quarried locally and dragged to the site on sleds," said Kathryn Bard, an Egyptologist at Boston University and author of a new book, "An Introduction to the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt."

"There is just no evidence for making concrete, and there is no evidence that ancient Egyptians used the stuff," she said.

The idea that some pyramid blocks were cast of concrete-like material was aggressively advanced in the 1980s by the French chemical engineer Joseph Davidovits, who argued that the Giza builders had pulverized soft limestone and mixed it with water, hardening the material with natural binders that the Egyptians are known to have used for their famous blue-glaze ornamental statues.

Such blocks, Davidovits said, would have been poured in place by workers hustling sacks of wet cement up the pyramids - a decidedly less spectacular image than the ones popularized by Hollywood epics like "The Ten Commandments," with thousands of near-naked toilers straining with ropes and rollers to move mammoth carved stones.

http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/04/23/mideast/pyramid.php
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« Reply #22 on: April 24, 2008, 01:41:47 am »

"That's the problem, the big archaeologists - and Egypt's tourist industry - want to preserve romantic ideas," said Davidovits, who researches ancient building materials at the Geopolymer Institute in St. Quentin.

In 2006, research by Michel Barsoum at Drexel University in Philadelphia found that samples of stone from parts of the Khufu Pyramid were "microstructurally" different from limestone blocks.

Barsoum, a professor of materials engineering, said microscope, X-ray and chemical analysis of scraps of stone from the pyramids "suggest a small but significant percentage of blocks on the higher portions of the pyramids were cast" from concrete.

He stressed that he believes that most of the blocks in the Khufu Pyramid were carved in the manner long suggested by archaeologists. "But 10 or 20 percent were probably cast in areas where it would have been highly difficult to position blocks," he said.

Barsoum, a native of Egypt, said he was unprepared for the onslaught of angry criticism that greeted peer-reviewed research published two years ago by himself and his fellow scientists, Adrish Ganguly of Drexel and Gilles Hug of the National Center for Scientific Research in France.

"You would have thought I claimed the pyramids were carved by lasers," Barsoum said.

Ancient drawings and hieroglyphics are cryptic on the subject of pyramid construction. Theories as to how the Egyptians might have built the huge monuments to dead pharaohs depend heavily on conjecture based on remnants of rubble ramps, as well as evidence that nearby limestone quarries contained roughly as much stone as is present in the pyramids.

Zahi Hawass, head of the Supreme Council of Antiquities in Egypt, minced no words in assailing the concrete idea. "It's highly stupid," he said via a spokesman. "The pyramids are made from solid blocks of quarried limestone. To suggest otherwise is idiotic and insulting."

Hobbs and his students are undismayed by the controversy.

"It's fascinating to think that ancient Egyptians may have been great materials scientists, not just great civil engineers," Hobbs said.

"None of this lessens the accomplishments of the ancient Egyptians, although I suppose pouring concrete is less mysterious than moving giant blocks. But it really just suggests these people accomplished more than anyone ever imagined."

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« Reply #23 on: April 24, 2008, 01:42:30 am »

The idea is certainly getting a lot more publicity!
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« Reply #24 on: April 24, 2008, 03:03:51 pm »

Ok then we'll say that the pyramids and the sphinx according to "experts" were made within around the same time.  Smiley Right?
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« Reply #25 on: April 24, 2008, 03:18:50 pm »

The Assyrians and Babylonians used clay as the bonding substance or cement. The Egyptians used lime and gypsum cement. In 1756, British engineer, John Smeaton made the first modern concrete (hydraulic cement) by adding pebbles as a coarse aggregate and mixing powered brick into the cement. In 1824, English inventor, Joseph Aspdin invented Portland Cement, which has remained the dominant cement used in concrete production. Joseph Aspdin created the first true artificial cement by burning ground limestone and clay together. The burning process changed the chemical properties of the materials and Joseph Aspdin created a stronger cement than what using plain crushed limestone would produce.

Now take note of this time line for the length of time concrete has been around.

12,000,000 BC
 A natural deposit of cement compounds forms due to the reactions between limestone and oil shale during spontaneous combustion near present-day Israel.
 
5600 BC
 The first concrete structures were built.
 
"3000 BC"    Wink
 The Egyptians began to use mud mixed with straw to bind dried bricks. They also used gypsum mortars and mortars of lime in the building of the pyramids.

The Chinese used cementitious materials in the construction of the Great Wall.
 
800 BC
 The Greeks used lime mortars that were much harder than later Roman mortars. This material was also in evidence in Crete and Cyprus at this time.
 
300 BC
 The Babylonians and Assyrians used bitumen to bind stones and bricks together.
 
299 BC to 476 AD
 The Romans used pozzolana cement from Pozzuoli, Italy near Mt. Vesuvius to build many famous Roman structures including the Appian Way, the Roman Baths of Caracalla, the Basilica of Maxentius, the Coliseum and Pantheon in Rome, and the Pont du Gard aqueduct in south France. They used broken brick aggregate embedded in a mixture of lime putty with brick dust or volcanic ash by the Romans. Many structures that used stone. They built ~5,300 miles of roads. The current U.S. Interstate Highway System has 4,200 miles.
 
27 AD
 Pollio Vitruvius completes his books on architecture including a discussion of the properties of concrete.
 
64 AD
 Nero's Golden House is built in Rome with concrete walls, domes, and vaults during the rebuilding of Rome.
 
540 AD
 Concrete is used in the construction of the vaults and arches on the lower levels of St. Sophia's in Constantinople.
 
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« Reply #26 on: April 24, 2008, 03:22:13 pm »

Given that small amount of information, all we need to do now is find this straw reinforcement in the blocks of the pyramid and hope that the pyramids weren't constructed around 10,500 BC.....

That would mean that we either have the history of Concrete wrong or that the pyramids were made from carved stone blocks.

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« Reply #27 on: April 25, 2008, 12:21:36 pm »


















                                         Egypt's Pyramids Packed With Seashells





Jennifer Viegas,
Discovery News
April 25, 2008

-- Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study.

The study's authors suggest that the stones that make up the examined monuments at Giza plateau, Fayum and Abydos must have been carved out of natural stone since they reveal what chunks of the sea floor must have looked like over 4,000 years ago, when the buildings were erected.

"The observed random emplacement and strictly homogenous distribution of the fossil shells within the whole rock is in harmony with their initial in situ setting in a fluidal sea bottom environment," wrote Ioannis Liritzis and his colleagues from the University of the Aegean and the University of Athens.

The researchers analyzed the mineralogy, as well as the chemical makeup and structure, of small material samples chiseled from the Sphinx Temple, the Osirion Shaft, the Valley Temple, Cheops, Khefren, Osirion at Abydos, the Temple of Seti I at Abydos and Qasr el-Sagha at Fayum.

X-ray diffraction and radioactivity measurements, which can penetrate solid materials to help illuminate their composition, were carried out on the samples.

The analysis determined the primary building materials were "pinky" granites, black and white granites, sandstones and various types of limestones. The latter was found to contain "numerous shell fossils of nummulites gen." At Cheops alone, "(they constituted) a proportion of up to 40 percent of the whole building stone rock."

The findings have been accepted for publication in the Journal of Cultural Heritage.

Nummulites, meaning "little coins," are simple marine organisms. Shells of those that lived during the Eocene period around 55.8 to 33.9 million years ago are most commonly found in Egyptian limestone. Fossils for the organisms have also been unearthed at other sites, such as in Turkey and throughout the Mediterranean.

When horizontally bisected, a nummulite appears as a perfect spiral. Since they were common in ancient Egypt, it's believed the shells were actually used as coins, perhaps explaining their name.

Fossils for ancient relatives to sand dollars, starfish and sea urchins were also detected in the Egyptian limestone.
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« Reply #28 on: April 25, 2008, 12:23:43 pm »










Liritzis and his team argue that since the fossils are largely undamaged and are distributed in a random manner within the stone, in accordance with their typical distribution at sea floors, the large building stones used to construct the monuments must have been carved out of natural stone instead of cast in molds.

To further their argument, the scientists say the X-ray patterns detected no presence of lime, which would be expected along with natron, a salt found in early cast materials. They also point out that no references about molds, buckets or other casting tools exist in early Egyptian paintings, sculptures or texts.

Joseph Davidovits, professor and director of France's Geopolymer Institute, formulated the theory that natural limestone was cast like concrete to build the pyramids of Egypt.

Davidovits told Discovery News that Liritzis and his team "should have taken into account the scientific analysis" conducted by himself and other researchers before backing the carved-not-cast theory.

Robert Temple, co-director of the Project for Historical Dating and a visiting research fellow at universities in America, Egypt and Greece, has also studied Egypt's monuments. He agrees with Davidovits about the casting.

"There is no evidence known that suggests the ancient Egyptians had cranes," he said. "Without cranes, it is difficult to imagine how they could have lifted giant stones, some as heavy as 200 tons."

Temple, however, agrees, "Egyptian pyramid blocks of limestone tend to contain fossil shells and nummulites, often huge quantities of them, many of them intact, and many of them of surprisingly large size."

He added, "Frankly, not many people pay attention to the shells, which I have always thought was a shame.


'Seashells in the Desert'-- a good story."
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« Reply #29 on: April 25, 2008, 07:57:18 pm »

Whats your take on this B?

 Smiley Cast or carved?

Many of Egypt's most famous monuments, such as the Sphinx and Cheops, contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils, most of which are fully intact and preserved in the walls of the structures, according to a new study.

« Last Edit: April 25, 2008, 07:59:11 pm by HereForNow » Report Spam   Logged

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