Egypt's Pyramids Packed With Seashells

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                                         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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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."