How Were the Egyptian Pyramids Built? – Part 4
Were the pyramids made of concrete?
The question of how the ancient Egyptian pyramids were built is one that has occupied the minds of many for thousands of years. Many interesting theories have been developed over that time and one that has recently made the news is that of the concrete pyramid.
In today’s article we’ll look at the theory that the pyramids were built using blocks that were cast insitu from cement.
David Davidovitts
The theory was first suggested by Professor Davidovits in 1979. Davidovits claimed that the limestone blocks that made up the bulk of the pyramid were not carved from local quaries with copper tools as is the commonly accepted theory among Egyptologists, but instead were the result of the ancient discovery of how to create a sort of cement from local limestone.
If the pyramids were built using cement blocks this would be the earliest known use of concrete, 2,500 years before the Romans began using it to build their amphitheaters and other architecture.
Davidovits claims that the Famine Stele on Elephantine island provides evidence of a record that describes how the pyramids were built.
One third of the stela relates to the construction of monuments and Djoser: the owner of the fist pyramid ever built, Imhotep: Architect of Djoser’s pyramid, and Khnum: the god who processing minerals (clay) to form the bodies of humans. Davidovits argues that this is direct evidence in a section of the stele where Imhotep describes to Djoser the minerals and stones and in a dream, Djoser is told by Khnum of a new way to build temples of the gods.
The many words relating to minerals have not yet been deciphered by Egyptologists leaving room for Davidovits’ interpretation.
Each word of the hieroglyphic text of the Famine Stele is scrutinised in detail on the website:
Also on the website is a small video documentary showing how a small group of people is able to produce several tons of pyramid stone blocks:
Alternatively, you can Download the Video (13.8 MB).
Davidovits’ theory was finally published in 1989 in a book entitled: “The Pyramids: an enigma solved”, Hippocrene Books, New York (4 printings) and later by Dorset, New York.
The Pyramids: an enigma solved
- Dr Joseph Davidovits
Links:
Download Chapter 1 of “The New History of the Pyramids” + the extended abstract of the theory, from an official Press Kit. (574 KB in PDF format).
Cutting-Edge analysis proves Davidovits’ Pyramid theory
Read more at the Geopolymer website
Wikipedia: Joseph Davidovits
Michel Barsoum
Enter Michel Barsoum….Materials Science: Concrete evidence
In December 2006 and article appeared in the scientific magazine Nature vol. 444, featuring a new paper published in the Journal of the American Ceramic Society by Michel Barsoum professor of materials engineering at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. In it, Barsoum supported Davidovits claims that some of the blocks that make up the pyramids were made from a limestone-based form of concrete.
According to Barsoum the Egyptians used concrete blocks on the outer and inner casings and probably on the upper levels, where it would have been more difficult to lift stone up to.
Barsoum had taken Davidovits hypothesis further by analysing samples from small fragments from pyramids with stone from the Toura and Maadi quarries using X-rays, a plasma torch and electron microscopes. He found that the samples contained ratios of elements, namely calcium and magnesium, that don’t exist in any of the known quarries.
Watch Barsoum’s Lecture, Engineering New Frontiers from February 2007 online. Duration: 1 hour and 20 minutes. If you don’t have Microsoft’s Silverlight installed you’ll be prompted to install it. There are occasional problems with the speaker’s microphone around 10 minutes in but sound returns soon after.
Here are a few snippets of news from various sources:
From the Discovery Channel website:
“Using scanning and transmission electron microscopy, Barsoum and his co-workers, Gilles Hug of the French National Aerospace Research Agency, and Adrish Ganguly of Drexel University, analyzed and compared the mineralogy of a number of pyramid samples with six different limestone samples from their vicinity.
They found that pyramid samples featured mineral ratios that did not exist in any known limestone sources.
“The most convincing argument is the presence of amorphous SiO2 (silica),” Barsoum told Discovery News. “In sedimentary rocks, the SiO2 is almost always crystalline.”
He also noted that some samples of calcite and dolomite taken from pyramid samples featured water molecules trapped inside again, he said, this is not a phenomenon found in nature.
The researchers believe that a limestone concrete, called a geopolymer, was used for, at most, 20 percent of the blocks in the outer and inner casings and in the upper parts of the pyramids.
Davidovits, himself, tested a limestone-based concrete recipe at the Geopolymer Institute at Saint-Quentin.
He concluded that diatomaceous earth (a soil formed by the decay of tiny organisms called diatoms), dolomite and lime were mixed in water to produce a clay-like mixture. This was what the ancient Egyptians would have poured into wooden moulds at Giza to obtain concrete blocks in a few days.”
From the Times Online:
“‘There’s no way around it. The chemistry is well and truly different,’Professor Hug told Science et Vie magazine…
…They found ‘traces of a rapid chemical reaction which did not allow natural crystalisation . . . The reaction would be inexplicable if the stones were quarried, but perfectly comprehensible if one accepts that they were cast like concrete.”
From Live Science in May last year:
“What started as a two-hour project turned into a five-year odyssey that I undertook with one of my graduate students, Adrish Ganguly, and a colleague in France, Gilles Hug”, Barsoum says.
A year and a half later, after extensive scanning electron microscope (SEM) observations and other testing, Barsoum and his research group finally began to draw some conclusions about the pyramids. They found that the tiniest structures within the inner and outer casing stones were indeed consistent with a reconstituted limestone. The cement binding the limestone aggregate was either silicon dioxide (the building block of quartz) or a calcium and magnesium-rich silicate mineral.
The stones also had a high water content, unusual for the normally dry, natural limestone found on the Giza plateau and the cementing phases, in both the inner and outer casing stones, were amorphous, in other words, their atoms were not arranged in a regular and periodic array. Sedimentary rocks such as limestone are seldom, if ever, amorphous.
The sample chemistries the researchers found do not exist anywhere in nature. “Therefore,” says Barsoum, it’s very improbable that the outer and inner casing stones that we examined were chiseled from a natural limestone block.
More startlingly, Barsoum and another of his graduate students, Aaron Sakulich, recently discovered the presence of silicon dioxide nanoscale spheres (with diameters only billionths of a meter across) in one of the samples. This discovery further confirms that these blocks are not natural limestone….
…Why do the results of Barsoum’s research matter most today? Two words: earth cements.
“How energy intensive and/or complicated can a 4,500 year old technology really be? The answer to both questions is not very, Barsoum explains. “The basic raw materials used for this early form of concrete – limestone, lime, and diatomaceous earth – can be found virtually anywhere in the world,” he adds. “Replicating this method of construction would be cost effective, long lasting, and much more environmentally friendly than the current building material of choice: Portland cement that alone pumps roughly 6 billion tons of CO2 annually into the atmosphere when it’s manufactured.”
“Ironically,” says Barsoum, “this study of 4,500 year old rocks is not about the past, but about the future.”
When asked about Michel Marsoum’s paper Minister of Antiquities Zahi Hawass said that he thought the theory was “plain stupid”.
“Of course they’re not. They’re made from solid blocks of quarried limestone.
To suggest otherwise is idiotic and insulting.
I heard this from a Frenchman before, 20 years ago. It is as ridiculous now as it was then.”
“The idea that concrete was used is unlikely and completely unproven.”
Pointing out that many restoration efforts had been carried out on the pyramid over the course of history involving cement, added:
“I would ask Dr. Barsoum the question: where did he get the samples he is working with, and how can he show that the samples are not taken from areas that have been restored in modern times?”
Barsoum responded:
“I would have to be a complete and utter fool to confuse Portland cement to what we saw.”
How the Great Pyramid Was Built
- Craig B. Smith, Zahi Hawass & Mark Lehner.
Links:
Professor Michel Barsoum’s website.
Professor Michel Barsoum’s Blog.
Dr Zahi Hawass’ Website
Linn Hobbs
Then last week an announcement appeared in the news proves once again that the cement pyramid theory is not going away. Linn Hobbs and his class at MIT University are going to test the theory in another way, they’ll be building a ‘Mini Great Pyramid’:
“In fact, the very idea has been so controversial that “you can’t get research funding, and it’s difficult to get a paper through peer review,” says Linn Hobbs, professor of materials science and engineering and professor of nuclear science and engineering at MIT and coteacher of the pyramid-building class.
Hobbs says that actually building a small-scale model of the pyramid using the materials and methods the Egyptians may have used is far more than just an educational exercise for the students. “Like any other investigation of ancient technologies, you can only get so far by speculating, and even only so far by looking at evidence. To go the rest of the way, you have to do the thing yourself. You have to get acquainted with the materials.”
“But the unusual material has a significant advantage: It doesn’t shrink when it sets. “With most cements, you worry about shrinkage,” Hobbs says, but not with this kind.”
“It’s not science unless we formulate hypotheses that can be proved or disproved,” he says. He hopes the class will produce a scientific paper detailing how the question could be resolved more definitively through microscopic and microchemical analysis. “It’s good that the students can see a real scientific controversy being addressed in productive ways.”
….stay tuned for the next exciting installment: ‘How Were the Egyptian Pyramids Built? – Part 5: Houdin’s Internal Ramp’.
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- How Were the Egyptian Pyramids Built? – Part 5 Houdin’s Internal Ramp French Architect Jean-Pierre Houdin has a revolutionary...
- How Were the Egyptian Pyramids Built? – Part 1 The Traditional Theory with Donald Redford This is the first...
- How Were the Egyptian Pyramids Built? – Part 3 How the Pyramid Built Itself John Romer is an Egyptologist...
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The production of LIME, necessary for cement mixtures, is HIGHLY energy intensive- it requires VAST heat resources to burn limestone in a kiln to form lime.
The Egyptians would have been forced to burn large forests for firewood or charcoal.
So, first, did they have access to sufficient amounts of fuel for fire for the processing of the materials themselves ?
And, would their ancient process REALLY have been ‘ energy efficient ‘ or ‘ environmentally friendly ‘ ?
We need to ask HOW did they access the supposed ingredients ?
From where ? And in what quantities ?
The theory probably is not true.