Clues Reveal How The Great Pyramid Was Built | Ancient Architects
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- Опубликовано: 31 июл 2024
- The pyramids are arguably the greatest structures ever built by human hands, thousands of years old, and still standing mightily above the Giza Plateau; yet to this day, with all the research that’s gone into them, there is no consensus as to how they were built.
But maybe one of the reasons we don’t get close enough to finding out, is because some of the details we’re told are actually incorrect.
Pyramid experts and enthusiasts tell us the Great Pyramid is made up of 2.3 million large blocks of stone, the vast majority being limestone, but some granite, and that these blocks were all accurately cut and fitted together to build this incredible monument.
But what if the pyramid actually does not contain 2.3 million blocks of cut and dressed stone, precisely fitted together? What if a large proportion of the pyramid is rubble?
There are so many Great Pyramid construction theories out there and in this video I'm taking a look at the materials used, which should always be the starting point.
I look at the mastaba of the pyramid architect, Hemiunu, the work of Jean-Pierre Houdin and also @nightscarab5802. To try and understand how the pyramids were built, we need to start with the materials and then we can start unlocking the secrets of the Great Pyramid of Giza.
All images and video are taken from the below sources, are my own assets, or are taken from Google Images for educational purposes only. Please subscribe to Ancient Architects, Like the video and please leave a comment below. Thank you.
0:00 Intro
2:14 Great Pyramid Assumptions
4:52 The Mastaba Tomb of Hemiunu
9:21 Rubble Used in Pyramids
10:48 JP Houdin's Pyramid Core Masonry
13:11 Night Scarab's Great Pyramid Analysis
16:50 Benefits of Using Rubble
18:20 The Great Pyramid Notch
19:31 The Bent Pyramid Masonry
20:48 Voids in the Pyramid
21:52 Outro
Sources:
Night Scarab Video: • How to Build the Great...
Digital Giza Archive: giza.fas.harvard.edu/sites/999...
Dieter Arnold, Building in Egypt: archive.org/details/buildingi...
Mastaba of Perneb: www.metmuseum.org/art/collect...
Egypt Travel Blog: egypttravelblog.com/is-the-gr...
Khufu Revealed documentary: • The Khufu Pyramid Reve...
Jean-Pierre Houdin, Constructing the Pyramid: • The construction build...
John Romer, The Great Pyramid: archive.org/details/greatpyra...
Airpano: www.airpano.com/360photo/egyp...
#ancientarchitects #greatpyramid #pyramid
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The queen shafts might show there are blocks all over the way up , also there are different drills large drills in the large pyramid, they must be examined first
Also scan pyramid project should have been detected this if its was True
0:38 Science is not about achieve consensus but always to be questioned. 5:00 However fact is Kufu had manlyboobs.
The passageway in the Queen's chamber alcove looks like it's just dug thru dirt 'n rubble or do we know if that's chiseled thru blocks?
"[Rubble]..it would speed up some of the elements of the building process." I would disagree, If they are mortaring the pieces of rubble in place we are slowing down the building process.. insane mortar production increase, more trips from the quarry, instead of only having to place 2.5mil blocks we have ten bazillion to now fully mortar into place etc...
I don't doubt the builders used rubble/fill in the construction but I don't think we've actually seen any of it yet and I always appreciate your videos no matter what I think, thank you.
To me the sand that they found behind the walls should have been a big clue to this. It wouldn't surprise me if they used sand in a lot of places since it's closer, plentiful, and easier to transport than giant rocks.
The queen shafts might show there are blocks all over the way up , also there are different drills large drills in the large pyramid, they must be examined first
Also scan pyramid project should have been detected this if its was True
@@mohammadtoficmohammad3594 The pyramid scans detect mass and lack of mass. rubble and sand are mass, so they appear the same as larger masses of blocks. They are not empty space.
@@mohammadtoficmohammad3594 How exactly the thing works, because I don't recall it detecting block vs. sand, just voids, where muons have no resistance of a solid material?
Sand can’t support millions of tonnes as it’s not compacted. We use stabilized sand today which is effectively concrete without the aggregate
You must have never heard the saying: everyone who hears these words of mine and does not put them into practice is like a foolish man who built his house on sand.
In other words, the ancient Egyptians could have built the pyramids in much the same way as we build structures with gabions today. This is a pretty clever idea, as you can also reuse the material that is produced when cutting and dressing the large blocks and casing stones.
Edit: You said at 17:57 that this "gabion technique" would not speed up material transportation, but what if larger blocks were processed directly on site and the leftover material was also used for backfilling?
obv the gyptians were the smae as the arabs today, building immaculate huge buildings showing off, using slaves, cheap workers that done what they were told
I've ALWAYS questioned that 2.3 million blocks figure and how it was calculated. It was such B.S. stating every block was "PERFECTLY CUT AND PERFECTLY PLACED" when you could look at it and see that statement wasn't true. THANKS for your input Matt and GOOD LUCK on your next video.
Jinn built them , not aliens
The queen shafts might show there are blocks all over the way up , also there are different drills large drills in the large pyramid, they must be examined first
Also scan pyramid project should have been detected this if its was True
@@mohammadtoficmohammad3594 Sigh…
@@mohammadtoficmohammad3594 Not Jinn, but Nephilim
ok everyone is wrong about the amount of blocks lol
Also in support for this method in pyramid building, Peter James, the engineer who was tasked with restoring the ceiling of the burial chamber in the Step Pyramid, said his team put anchors in to secure the ceiling, but while they were drilling 4-m (13-ft) holes into the stone, he noticed they never drilled through stones more than 400 mm (16 in.) wide. This contradicts the current theory the large stones seen on the outside were used all the way through the pyramid. This led James to conclude "The internal core and filling would never be seen, so why fill it with quarried blocks that took time and presumably money to extract and transport to the site?”
One can actually just study all the other pyramids to infer how the more intact ones are built.
@@D3adCl0wn Exactly.
But “Egyptian “ history is backwards. The step pyramid is younger and therefore more primitive then the great Pyramid which is pre history .
@markmarcinik5818 wrong. This is not the channel to be espousing nonsense. Nobody around here will be entertaining crazy debunked theories.
@@M13x13M No, it's your pseudo makey-uppy bs history that is backwards.
Intriguing. What I like about your channel is you are not afraid to present your own ideas even if they go against dogma and your ideas are substantiated through the obviously considerable amount of research you do (ie translating obscure papers from German). You and History for Granite are rocking the staid boat of Egyptology through the medium of RUclips and we get to learn and be entertained by the results.
stands to reason a lot of infill was used. Always been surprised the community has had such trouble seeing it.
Thank you A2 for some of the most interesting videocasts that I have ever seen. You have increased our knowledge and through your countless hours of research and work on your videos, you have shown us new insights into the marvels of our past. What is so astounding for me and I am sure for many others is that we are still trying to piece together how some of these megalithic monuments were constructed eons ago. I have seen interviews with some of the top construction company owners in France and they have said that they could not replicate i.e., build The Great Pyramid of Giza today. Another said that the 8-sided-pyramid of Giza is so precise, that if they were just one centimeter off at the bottom of the pyramid, it would have resulted in a disaster reaching the top. This tells us that incredibly able architects were on the job and had knowledge only people like you are uncovering all these millennium later. A very special Happy Christmas to you and your family and colleagues and a well-deserved Holiday Season to you and all of your subscribers.
Merry Christmas 🎄
Presumably you would only need to get the measurements ‘right’ once, on the very bottom course, as every layer above that could easily be made to fit what was known to be the correct course.
@@TheGreatest1974 GGGGGGreat to hear from you. Here is my research on The Great Pyramid of Giza
1. It is 3/60th of a single degree of true north 2. It weighs 6 million tons 3. Its footprint is 13 acres 4. It is more than 755.9 feet along each side 5. The Great Pyramid is 146.75 m high, its height X a million equals the distance from the Earth to the sun 6. It has more than 2.3 million individual blocks of stone 7. It is locked into the Cardinal dimensions of our planet; The dimensions of the Earth are incorporated into its dimensions 8. If you take the height and multiply it by 43,200 you get the polar radius of the Earth 9. If you measure the base perimeter of the pyramid accurately and multiply that measurement by 43,200 you get the equatorial circumference of the Earth 10. The scale is not random, the number 43,200 is derived from a key motion of the Earth, which is called the precession of the Earth’s axis 11. The Earth wobbles on its axis very slowly at the rate of 1 degree every 72 years; 43,200 is a multiple of 72; 600 X 72 12. The Great Pyramid of Giza gives us the dimensions of the planet on a scale defined by the planet itself 13. There are several 70-ton blocks of granite from a quarry 500 kilometers away, one of hardest stones, raised 300 feet above the ground 14. It has eight sides, and at the spring equinox and the autumn equinox one side of the pyramid is in the shade in the morning and again in the late afternoon and can only be seen from the air 15. It is a calendar 16. It has expansion joints 17. It is located at the exact intersection of the longest line of latitude and the longest line of longitude of the Earth, in other words The Great Pyramid is located at the precise center of the Earth’s land mass 18. The builders possessed highly sophisticated knowledge of mathematics and geometry and they had knowledge of the true dimensions of the Earth to extreme precision 19. The builders possessed exceptionally advanced technical instrumentation (laser guided surveying tools?) to site The Great Pyramid 20. Pi = C over D Phi = Divided by 5 + 1 over 2. Archimedes discovered Pi about 250 BC, but Egyptians knew of it 2,250 years earlier 21. If you subtract the inner circle of the base from the outer circle around the base (the circumference of The Great Pyramid), you get the speed of light in meters to four decimal points: 299,792,458 meters per second 22. The weight of The Great Pyramid is 5,273, 000 tons and that multiplied by a billion is the weight of the Earth 23. The three inner rooms; the king’s chamber, the queen’s chamber and the unfinished chamber under the pyramid are proportional to the distances between Mercury, Venus and the Earth 24. The distance from The Great Pyramid to the North Pole is the same as the distance from The Great Pyramid to the center of the Earth 25. If you divide the perimeter of the pyramid by 1/2 its height the result is 3.14 Pi h/2 = Pi 26. The base side length is 364.242 which is exactly the time in days it takes for the earth to orbit the sun 27. The high chamber is built on a double square, which leads us to the golden ratio geometry 28. Pyramids in China, Mexico and Egypt align with the Orion star system
Thanks for this video, Matt. You merely are pointing out features which have been plain to see for 'ever'. As you illustrate, there are many structures, including pyramids, to be seen, back filled with rubble. I agree with every point you make. I noticed this as a boy 60 years ago, and have many times been 'shouted down' by ''What do you know?''. One only has to look.
Another great one Matt, logical and practical. I believe you have nailed it. Lots of huge stone buildings around the world are the same, fine dressed outer layers and backfilled inner core. My nephew is a stonemason and works on cathedrals around the country and told me of this method.
Thankfully someone that thinks!! There are two things that made the great pyramid construction easier: one was the use of rubble to fill in the gaps between the chambers and the outskirt, and the other one was the hill where it was built that provided a good volume to carve in some of the chambers at the time it saved a lot of volume to be filled in with rubble and bloks
Yes, we still don’t know the exact size of the hill beneath it
Thank you. Finally a discussion about what the core is actually made from. Unworked limestone with mortar has always been my theory but I never found it put forward as well as this.
Thanks, Matt, for another fascinating Pyramid themed video. You have mentioned irregular, sometimes "repurposed," material between inner and outer walls in past videos. This time, however the view reminds me of something much closer to home. Here in New England there's a joke that the biggest annual crop is stones. Called "stone fences" [stone walls], they are made of usually uncut/undressed stones. The wall shown in your photo looks like what a typical old farm wall here would look if made of sandstone instead of granite [fieldstone?].
Look closely and you can see that they are no haphazard, but are wedged together and layered so as to support the structure. In this climate, with lots of rain, snow and winter freezing, they can suffer damage and might tumble if not taken care of, problems not faced by the Egyptians. Considering where the colonists came from, I presume that similar structures can be found all over the British Isles, and believe I have seen pictures of ancient examples in the Orkney and Hebrides.
Definitely a very interesting and thought-provoking video.
Yes, it’s a very effective building method if done properly, and walls can stand for hundreds of years. It’s called ‘dry stone walling’. I have tried it. It’s not easy finding the right stone to place in the right spot, and that’s when you are simply rebuilding part of the wall, and the whole of the previous build is lying there at your feet!👍🇬🇧
@@TheGreatest1974 When the American revolution happened, the area around Boston was covered with towns surrounded by farms, with stone and wood fencing. Now the towns can have populations from 700 to 1000 people per Sq.mi. But the farms are often replaced by new forests or copses. When walking through forests with respectably old trees, I have stumbled onto dilapidated but still identifiable stone walls and the similarly built but usually mortared foundations of houses and barns. In the more rural and less densely populated areas there are still farms and preserved areas with the traditional architecture.
I am sorry if you live here or have been here and know all about this. This is for others who might find the information new and somewhat interesting.
@@JMM33RanMA thanks for that. I am in Scotland and we have them literally all over the country here, and many in England too. Many have stood for centuries. The wind just goes through them. But sometimes they fall from cattle rubbing them and need rebuilding, which is a definite skill. 👍🇬🇧
I think you're right on with this, it makes a lot of sense, and it's not the only time we see this style of building in history.
Medieval castles employed this method in the thick outer walls, solid and reasonably well shaped oter masonry, with a mortared rubble backfill in the middle. They're even using the method on the Guédelon castle project in France,and I suspect there's many other examples in historical buildings of different ages too.
Night Scarrab has nailed it, IMHO.
Great video Matt! It made me wonder though, doesn't the pyramid of Menkaure have a giant slot cut out of the front of it? It's also an old kingdom pyramid from the same dynasty, no? Admittedly, I could probably google this myself and get a good idea of what that looks like in detail, and judge for myself based on your own methods whether or not they may be a rubble interior. You're one of my favorite researchers though, and I'm curious if you looked into this already?
Menkaure does indeed - but it’s also a much smaller pyramid, 200 ft tall with a base of 356 ft. The GP has a 481 ft height and a 755.75 feet base. Life spans are the same, but the Khufu project is far more challenging, so some corner cutting and efficiencies would likely be required. Menkaure’s pyramid, although still amazing, is a smaller build. The scar is also in a central position, and if the pyramid has a masonry skeleton, the scar could have missed the pockets of rubble.
@@AncientArchitectsthanks mate . Just what I wanted to know
@@AncientArchitects In the cutout of the Menkaure pyramid, you can see 7 courses of a precise inner core, and below it is rubble exactly according to your definition.
I was waiting for you to mention the sand for pretty much all the video. Thanks again for the content.
Can’t forget the sand! 👍
Thank you Matt! This video is a great Christmas present! 😍 Merry Christmas to you and your family! 🙏🏻😊💖
I always look forward to your videos. Been a sub since your first 50. Keep up the great content.
Gah, you beat me to it. I was going to mention Night Scarab's video examination of the Robber's Tunnel. It is an incredible video that I highly recommend. You can quite clealry see the pattern of large cut stone walls with mortared fill between them. That insight into the internal structure of the Great Pyramid is wonderful.
Love your videos. Been a fan for years now! Keep ‘em coming:)
Ive built a handful of shale walls in my time. I built solid structural grids of rock and then fill the created void with loosely cemented stuff saving time and materials. The outside would have the most attention paid to it. I think it's just one of those common building techniques seen through time.
Great video
Analysing Egyptian Pyramids in the Digital Age also has nice info showing the internal stones at NE corner amongst other scans of structures on the plateau.
Very good points. I like to take up another one: Everyone knows the Great pyramid took 20 years to build, right? What is our source for that?
Actually it is Herodotus who claims it took 20 years and 100 000 workers to build it. The next question is: Is Herodotus a reliable source? Not only did he write this 2000 years later, not everything else he writes even about things happening even around his own life time is spot on.
We never found an old kingdom description of how long it took to build it, so how do we know it didn't take, say 30 years to build?
We don't really know. We think Khufu reign between 23 and 34 years and if it is the longer number I think the range we actually have to work with probably is up to 35 years, having it started when he became Pharaoh and the final touches being done after his death.
That together with this hypothesis is way more doable then it being built in 20 years with 100% worked blocks of a standard size.
The people who claim Khufu couldn't have built the great pyramid and even professional Egyptology experts use a lot of assumptions to how the Great pyramid must have been built and how long time it took. That is not really good science and it bloody well doesn't make figuring out exactly how it was built easier.
The topic is very interesting and I think we really need to look on the facts a bit closer. As for Herodotus, I don't think he got a single thing right that far back. We kinda assume that a Greek traveler (maybe H himself) visited Egypt and got his information by an Egyptian priest but even if that is true, how would the priest know in the first place? 20 years do sound a bit randomly picked and while it certainly could be true, I don't think there is another single example of historians believing 2000 years old hearsay.
You've got me wondering about the sand filled voids now. What do you think of the idea that the sand might have been a quick way to level an area off, if you wanted to start building with fitted blocks on top of a lot of uneven rubble? Though admittedly, the phrase "castle built on sand" comes to mind, but if the sand was contained between walls, then it might not be an issue. I watched Night Scarabs video a while back and it is excellent.
Sand is from the water they were purifying. It accumulated over time, may have clogged it up after no one was left to fix the issue. Then they forgot.
@@efdangotu Water purification....?
@@efdangotu I haven't ever read that before, but I've seen evidence of it, sort of, in the form of a row of blocks near the ground that have been badly damaged but damaged from the inside, not the outside. I concluded that tons of water must have come down from the inside up above and jetted between those blocks to do that kind of damage. But I had no other similar photos so I never shared it online.
I remember a few years back a French engineer had proposed this as how the pyramids were built.
Yes, Jean-Pierre Houdin - the famous internal ramp theory. It’s probably the best explanation out there. I mention him in this video 👍
Houdin's theory was the best to date. He nailed it on the Grand Gallery and Kings Chamber build internal ramp theory and Counterweight
Imagine a ramp on the outside trying to be so precisely placed
@@MONG... I reckon the outer ramp which I believe there was was spot in the middle of the construction sort of where you see those faint middle lines on the ariel view. It would have to be placed in tge middle due to the shape of construction going narrower as they went higher up the build.
Isn't he an Architect?
Anyone who thought that ramps were built on the side of a 51 degree structure is extremely ambitious.
Even dragging heavy loads up a 3 to 1 ramp is testing using modern machines.
Night Scarabs hypothesis is one of the best to be put forward and is head and shoulders above the rest.
great information Matt , i've often wondered where all the accurately cut and placed blocks that make up the pyramid are , to my eyes they're a bit rough and ready , Videos always show the fine joints of the casing stones and ignore the fact you could get your arm in some of the gaps further up . I built some curved steps to the rear of my house in exactly the same way you suggest the pyramid might have been built , it was also a great way to dispose of stones and rubble that i couldn't use for anything else , and i've watched so many videos on the pyramids and come away wondering where they disposed of all the waste it must have created , great solution use it as back fill . Dry stone walls have been used for centuries without cement , i don't see massive amounts of cement being used on the pyramids it wouldn't be needed , a good mason could build the core and an excellent mason could build the outer casing .
Looking at the math at 3:50. The time constraint of 2.27min per block over 20yrs doing 12hr shifts is correct (using those constraints) however the amount of work per person on site to achieve this isn't really looked at. The number of blocks cut and moved needed per shift is 26.4 blocks, which sounds impossible if only one person was building it. Using a conservative estimate of 10,000 workers on site each worker would only have to contribute to placing 26.4/10,000 = 0.00264 blocks per shift. In every 12hr shift you get 12x10,000= 120,000hrs of work done. If they used shortcuts, like filling with rubble/sand then even less output per person would be required.
Your vids are always very insightful & well researched 👌. I thoroughly enjoy your content . Cheers
the pyramids never get boring! thanks again!
Cheers! 🎄
Excellent as always Matt. Happy holidays!
Even oldest mounds known to man show that we have always understood how back filling (the filling of large volumes of spaces not intended for use with a filler material) is a time saving technique, so I don't see why the Egyptians wouldn't do so when they've already been found to use it in other structures they've built. Even in modern day we use back fill on large structures in areas that aren't going to be used for anything, it's just usually concrete or agitate and in much smaller volumes, but that's because we have steel to reinforce structures and generally wish to use more of the structures overall volume then they did.
In simpler terms, it's no surprise and actually helps better understand how we could today build an identical structure in even less time with modern machinery. 3 tons is a lot, but it's less then most quarries move on the regular these days, especially when a lot of those 3 ton chunks don't need to be carefully handled.
People forget that modern equipment doesn't do mericles, it does the same work that manpower and animals could do, just more efficiently, so given a large enough labor force (which they had) the ancient Egyptians could easily pull it off over a longer period of time then it'd take us.
Extremely possible and most likely answer my friend. Good points, why waste all that time making perfect heavy blocks that no one will see behind the face bricks / blocks? Just easier to make it look prettier on the outside. Would also save years and years of slow construction. Would probably explain also why all the outside blocks have fallen off over the years and exposed the rubble and poor quality under blocks that were mashed together, with their own version of mortar. Looking at most of their other pyramid structure, quality varies and some were built in poor materials.
It does make sense that the core masonry wouldn't necessarily have to be precision cut like the outer layers. But I'm not sure why people think it had to be built in 20 years. We know of buildings later in history that took much longer to build. It took over 600 years to build Cologne Cathedral. Construction of the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona began in the 1800's and they still haven't finished building it. So it might have taken a long time to build the Great Pyramid. I think one possibility is Khufu was originally placed in the descending passage, then moved to the so called "Queen's chamber" at a later point of construction and then to the so called King's chamber when it was completed or near completed. It possible he may have been moved to unexplored big void at the end of construction.
I have been saying this for years. If you design the pyramids and the chambers snd shafts before you start, a great deal of the interior areas would be filled with rubble.
Very good as always- Merry Christmas!
Great stuff as always
Merry christmas man and a happy new year
Happy Christmas to you Mr Matt and thanks for the videos.
Merry Xmas Matt, and an Excellent report and analysis!
Exceptional information! There is a lot going on under the surface of the pyramids. Thanks Matt!
Makes way more sense great video and Happy Xmas.
Night Scarab is going to hecome a great content creator for Ancient Egypt. I already consider him in the top three along with you and History for Granite. i can't wait to see how his channel develops.
This is one of the biggest issues with these theories, and examinations into other pyramids in Egypt and around the world shows that various in-fill techniques were employed to avoid that headache.
Stone cold discussion. Have a great Christmas season!!
You too!
Quite a lot of rubble and rough stones seems reasonable to me, and the clues you showed shouldn't be ignored. Great vid👏🏻
I remember a documentary on History channel a few years ago about a British builder and expert in stone masonry commenting on the lack of rubble piles that would be left when so many blocks are quarried, leading to the postulation the pyramid is filled with the rubble. Makes sense, but nobody has taken up the examination to prove it.
Thanks Matt, I enjoyed your video and am glad you refered to the Night Scarab contribution I liked too.
Limestone is quarried in large blocks , transported to site for final cutting and shaping . The blocks are precisely cut and the wastage provides rubble stone and fines . The fines slaked into lime mortar . The rubble stone back fills the voids between the visible and the structural . This would then account for the complete lack of stone waste in the vicinity would should be measured in hundreds of thousands of tonnes . We still do the same today .
This is funny to me. I didn't realize this was still being discussed and debated, lol. I'd seen many documentaries that had shown many sections of the pyramids filled with different types of sand and quartz sand. I figured they figured it out already. When building a retaining wall, you put up big boulders and rocks to make your shape, fill in the gaps of those boulders with small rocks and then sand to keep it from shifting, finally putting a nice stone or brick wall on the front to hold it all in.
Great work as always.
Thanks mate
Another awesome insightful vid. I learned some new stuff so thanx.
Great vid, Matt. Really good.
Cheers
Well every lego master knows the best strength comes from alternating directions in blocks so what looks like rubble could simply be blocks in another direction, also blocks that broke would still need to be used somewhere. The core could only stand if the blocks were structured.
OK - I now see he added a reference to it, well done.
Night Scarab has a great video detailing a convincing hypothesis on how the great pyramid could have been built under 9 months (it's an extreme figure, of course, using 3 shifts, which was unnecessary - but the point is the 20 years estimate is way off, it could have been done).
This faced stone parts for structure filled with undressed stone and mortar is similar to how thick stone walls were constructed in the middle ages and even before that, so it can make very sturdy structures.
I wish that you had put forth this theory at the start of your channel. It is so obviously correct. I am in my sixties and have believed this was the obvious construction method ever since I first got interested in Egyptology in my teens. It is the Occam's Razor construction method. Build a central square column of cut masonry to support the kings, queens and relieving chambers. Build a lattice work of cut masonry walls (similar to a bee's honey comb) to provide vertical structural support. Fill the voids in the lattice work with rubble. Then pour in sand to fill up the remaining air gaps.
Since you referenced Night Scarabs channel in your analysis. You should make a follow up video examining his "Fractal Ramp" theory. I personally don't like the label "Fractal Ramp". It could also be called the "Donkey Kong" ramp method. Which is easier to visualize. It has a lot of merit. Reference: ruclips.net/video/nlchEBh7RHM/видео.html
I really like the multiple ramps theory, it makes a lot of sense. However, he should have limited his theory to the benefits of the multiple ramps. But he unnecessarily veers off into the engineering abstractions of wooden draw bridges on the ramps and ropes with knots used for pulling and postulating a system of fabricated rolling cylinders. These methods are a big stretch. Why he didn't just stick with a simple solution, like; small sleds with walls (picture a minecart) for transporting small blocks, loose material and sand?
Think about when you have to walk up a steep hill. Do you scramble straight up on all fours or do you walk back and forth in a zig zag pattern at an incline angle that is comfortable to you? You naturally and instinctively walk up a steep incline in a zig zap pattern. Why wouldn't the Egyptian's do the same?
The multiple parallel pathways for materials movement has many more benefits than the serial pathway spiraling ramps theories (including the internal ramp theory). One advantage of the parallel ramps hypothesis is the amount of material that can be moved in a given amount of time. With one ramp you can move "X" units a materials. With multiple ramps you can move "X" units times the number of ramps.
The multiple ramps hypothesis also solves a major construction problem. With a single ramp an accident on the pathway causes a work stoppage along the entire length of the ramp. With multiple ramps work only stops on the one ramp. All the other ramps remain operational.
As an aside, the main issue that I have with the internal ramp theory is the huge amount of extra labor it would take to construct the tunnels. Having to build the walls and needing to cut and build some kind of lintel system to support the tunnels ceilings.
So I just watched all the Night Scarab vids.... WOW is all I have to say. That is probably the highest quality and most indepth analysis I've seen done on several popular Ancient Egyptian topics. I do feel like the channel goes after Ben from Uncharted X a little bit, so I would be interested in seeing if he has any rebuttals. I am a member in his Discord channel and I have been toying with the idea of asking him personally to respond because I think the only way we outsiders who don't have time to research ourselves will be able to see the full picture and hopefully the truth.
UnchartedX is not interested in answers. He's only interested in selling mysteries. That's his business model. That's why he bans people from even mentioning the names of channels that challenge/debunk his claims and arguments. What does that tell you? "Truth seeker" my ass.
His main sources are frauds like Dunn and that "Khemitology" spoofer Yousef. They are the source for most of the misinformation he regurgitates as fact. Please expand your research beyond all those snake-oil salesmen.
"Lost Ancient High technology" is a scam.
I wish you well.
Instead of using rubble, perhaps “under refined filler”. There is no doubt in my mind that the builders of the pyramids thoroughly planned their builds and were hyper efficient with all their building materials.
Great video though, as usual. Keep up the good work!
Happy Christmas Matt❤
Merry Christmas Lynn!
Another great video. Has one been done for the top of the great pyramid? All the high res photos show some stones slightly recessed straight lines with 90 degree angles like if the capstone or pyramidion was set into it. But with the missing casing stones missing, not sure if that is what those recessed stones are.
Or to say, the Pyramid is a man-made mountain. Its shape is its strength; no need for meticulously crafted blocks, just some "kinda squarish thing" to go in there and let compression do all the rest. Obviously don't want rolly blocks because then it'd crumble like a pile of gravel, but you don't need anything more than crude-cut boxes on the interior i.e. just make sure it has 6 faces however rough ...
An excellent and intelligent hypothesis / analysis. Thanks for making this. The idea makes a lot of sense and would seem to be supported by the available evidence.
You can literally see bubble pockets in the stones. That means they poured the blocks. Which would also explain how they were able to keep the material easily mobile. Grind the stone in the quarry and have camels carry the powder. It works like calcium.
From a logical construction view point, i suggest the primeter was set out,followed by the quarrying of the bedrock,erect the walls and passage ways from individual chambers from the centre outwards as the project raises. The visable stones behind the limestone would need to be under construction in conjunction with inner works, At this point the "rubble" can be used to infill between the inner and outter structure with the linestone cladding being placed also. Unfortunately it sounds like it all has to be super co ordinated, so the planning and supervision is emence.
Ancient aliens👽
👽 shhh. Don’t let the truth out. Humanity isn’t ready.
14:26
This figure makes me wonder if large vertical support pillars were built along with the rubble in between them to add structure to the pyramid (like if the pillars were supporting the outer layers of the pyramid). since if it was built only with a casket of masonry -> rubble -> cut stone and then rubble again the pyramids would've collapsed on itself by the time (since there would certainly be pockets where the stones were not rightly fitted), and we would be able to see these collapsed parts from afar as small/big dents in the limestone sections
I always love your vids on the pyramids!
Also at Angkor Wat we can see the megalithic basalt blocks are holing the sand which is the core of the building, and the decorated sandstone layer was the finishing outer layer the skin of the structure, like the casing stones at the pramids. And the same with the mounds or tholos tombs in Europe.
One note regarding the statement at roughly 18:00: "of course it would not speed the transportation, since you still have to move one Ton of rubble". Thing is, it would be speedier to move the same weight in rubble than to do it in huge blocks. You can load 20 men with a 50kg (that's ~110lbs or ~245 Big Macs, for our metric impaired friends) and send them on their merry way quite faster that to have them move a one Ton block, since there is no need for coordinating efforts and using any more complicated or robust technology than a backpack-like basket. Hence, moving the same weight in rubble, handled by individual workers with relative ease, can be quite faster than the comparable mass in single blocks. This also compounds the heavier the comparison block gets.
Thank you so much for another great vid! We sure be waiting for the footage you record over there. Have a great trip and keep educating us.
You can add to that the idea that the pyramid was enlarged at least twice, over a longer period of time, hence the other chambers inside, and the outer walls of the smaller pyramids are still inside there as well.
I feel like this is old news. That said, great job bringing it to attention! It’s still perplexing how they did it even with the rubble.
Could it be that the voids are simply there because the people building it didn’t want to get buried alive and filled the space with the rubble they could at the time?
Wow! I think you cracked the case, @AncientArchitects ! This construction style would make so much sense. Bravo, Sir!
LOL!
Oldest form of stone veneer. They’ve been having us on for centuries.
Garden State Brickface!
Can someone make a 3D model and share it via thingsverse to 3D print the Khufu pyramid? We would use the filler (grid or whatever pattern) for the rubble filling. This would be so much more telling to see it in physically how it's done.
This suggests then, that the big void above the Grand Gallery may be just that; a rubble cell that has collapsed, or, possibly a sand-filled cell whose contents have drained away in some fashion, maybe even intentionally, leaving an empty space. The probability is low, as only one void has been found, but not zero. Getting a look at the void would be very helpful.
It all makes perfect sense, and I would venture to guess that the Pyramid builders would probably have a good laugh at how we have tried to figure out how they did it. Great video.
The rubble, or tailings, is what us crazy stone carving sculptors usually use. Less expensive than dressed blocks. Thank you for the great videos.
Thanks for pointing this out. Somehow, despite knowing that ancient city walls had a rubble interior which made up most of the volume of those walls, I never connected this with how the pyramids could have been built.
Excellent video. Straightforward, no speculation, just a presentation of evidence plainly viewable. You allow the viewer to consume the evidence written in stone and ponder the probable methods. This is a testable hypotheses and you presented solid evidence that can be examined. Great job. Well done! Gold star ⭐️
Great presentation Matt, thank you. When we are ready we'll find the black box of knowledge that will tell us everything.
Finally someone who said it. It is obvious that this is the case, otherwise it would not have taken them only twenty years to build the pyramid (Snefru actually built two if not three). Also keep in mind that they only worked in daylight and therefore for approximately eight/nine hours maximum per day. The teams alternated and definitely had days off although they could obviously work every day in turns. At the beginning there must have been a larger workforce, but as the pyramid became taller, fewer and fewer workers were needed. And there couldn't even be too many workers because they would get in each other's way. A papyrus clearly says that the teams were divided for each side of the pyramid and this is certainly true in the initial phase of construction. Thank you.
Massive! Great vid!
fantastic video mate
It is mind-boggling that such a basic fact was not discovered in the 200-300 years of archaeological research.
well, to be honest, this theory brings up more questions than answers. according to night scarab the looter´s tunnel had a partial "rubble" ceiling but why not walls? this doesn´t make any sense because looters would have noticed the rubble/mortar parts which would be easier to overcome and not chisel through solid limestone.
second - the sheer stability issue. considering the fact that the inner rooms of pyramids are well designed to withstand an enormous pressure, but what about "rubble areas" with overall different density and their reaction to such pressure? over time this might have brought the largest pyramids to collapse or weather the same way the pyramids of newer dynasties did. especially if the builders didn´t manage to level each floor of rubble perfectly with the level of the regular limestone blocks. in that way i can imagine some core areas be filled with dressed blocks, but not that perfect as the outer parts, and filled with smaller amounts of mortar. in case of random rubber blocks there would be too much space filled with mortar (and yes - there would be impossible amounts of mortar needed...) and thus softer areas would be created with risk of inner collapse.
and last but not least - what about the air shafts of the great pyramid? they are shaped by u-formed blocks which need an equally solid foundation along their whole length otherwise they would slightly move or shift over time (which didn´t happen). and this applies to any corridor or room within the structure above ground - every one needs an equally solid and regular base.
therefore, with huge respect to your channel and your work, this theory doesn´t seem extremely convincing (except applied on far smaller buildings).
Very good point. I recall watching a documentary on the pyramid of Khafre a long time ago. It claimed that this pyramid was - unlike the Great Pyramid - indeed built of blocks and material of very different size and quality. The masonry of Khafre‘s pyramid overall lacked the perfection of it‘s predecessor standing next to it, the Great Pyramid. And guess what Khafre‘s pyramid is also lacking (as far as we know today, at least)? Right, a large, elaborate and intertwined system of chambers, corridors and shafts.
In theory a rubble or undressed stone core could have seismic resistance benefits because the complex and irregular structure can resist stresses better than a regular geometric structure.
Thanks Matt. Well expressed. I am so very bored of people repeating that bad info(still) and this does explain clearly and fairly the reasons why its wrong. I wish I had your patience and humility mate,but I've been hearing this sort of mis-information since the 90's and it does wear you down after a while. Great woik,keep it up. Have a great holiday All ;)
The gash in the Menkaure pyramid shows a neatly organized internal structure.
Rather than "rubble", perhaps "filler" would be more acceptable. Great video, very educational.
There's the more than likely great overestimation of how many blocks were used.
Also, it is hard to imagine that the Egyptians wouldn't be organized in a manner that multiple crews are laying multiple blocks almost at the same time at a regular pace. If one has their lines laid out well and keeps a good eye on things and the blocks don't have to be fitted perfectly. Wasn't like blocks were all laid by only one crew working and supplied by only one crew so then everyone had to stand around for 4 minutes waiting for another block. More like enough blocks were laid simultaneously in a regular work day that it would average out to one every four minutes per day for years.
No spaceships or anti-gravitational devices or multiple generations of work required.
agreed...this hypothesis is quite plausible....more study of this method is needed.....the architects mastaba is, in my opinion, a huge clue to the possibility of this building technique used in the pyramids.....also, why not? construction shortcuts are still being used today, anything that works to speed up the process.
i'm very interested in seeing what comes of this. thanks and.....Happy Holidays to you and yours! cheers mate🍻🍾🥂
Excellent job of research, and presentation. I must agree with your conclusions. I look forward to more excellent videos.
Regarding transportation - although rubble weighs as much as cut blocks, it should be much easier to transport. With cut stones, a lot of care is needed to avoid damaging the blocks when moving, lifting and stacking them to avoid damage. That would slow down transport. With rubble, no such care is needed, so transporting would be easier and faster.
I know there are massive metal tuning forks being held in Egypt in warehouses recovered from Egyptian sites - they are taller than a man, perhaps they lined metal wire between the two forks and struck them repeatedly with mallets and lowered them on platforms into rough hewn blocks to precision cut them ?? Given the proper tuning of the forks and the frequency, and guage of wire/strand - the precision would be rather extraordinary - no different than a vibrating guitar string.
I am not sure a vibrational method would make the stones precise, because the fracture is going to depend on the cleavage planes within the rock crystal. But maybe it was used in some other capacity? The key point of the video though is you don't _need_ high precision for the internal stones. They can just be loosely cut with cobble used as fill where needed, since you aren't looking at that part. It just needs to take weight, and the pyramid structure itself does most of that job.
You dont understand sound waves at all.
Rubble makes sense even as anti grave robbers measure. Rubble wall filling tends to crumble when someone tries to make opening in the wall with such a filling. It means any hole tends to fill itself in by material above it, if material above is not structurally fixated e.g. as bricks are. I was trying to drill whole into such a wall in old house during remodeling and such a wall can even caught the drill in because it keeps crumbling inside with each material taken away.
good job, as usual 👍
Excellent! Detailed analysis of building with a "rubble fill" method will be interesting to see.
Matt, with a rubble fill over thousands of years would there be some visible shift or sinking somewhere that you might notice on the outside? If not, then they may have packed the rubble carefully to avoid that, and maybe low rainfall helps?
Have a look at dry stone walls, they look like a random pile of stones but are actually stacked very skilfully and deliberately so they don't move. We have a lot in England and a lot of them are hundreds of years old with no mortar and haven't moved an inch. I do get your point though, throwing random stones together with no thought would result in them moving.
I have seen photos of at least two cracked stones within the interior of the Great Pyramid. I forgot the exact locations though. (I think one of them was part of the Queen's Chaimber.)
It doesn't have 2.3 million tightly fit blocks. Nor it was not built one block at a time. When studying the mathematical shape of the pyramid, it tells that 7/8ths of the mass is below the top of the 'relieving chambers'.
Very true. And you also have the large natural hill built into it as well.