Re: Pyramidiocy (was Re: Strange Maths)
Whittet (Whittet@shore.net)
26 Jul 1995 16:47:15 GMT
In article <vanhorneDCBqGo.DJq@netcom.com>, vanhorne@netcom.com says...
>
>In article <3v3hbo$37j@shore.shore.net> Whittet@shore.net (Whittet) writes:
>
>>An archaeologist who had a theory about how blocks might have been hauled up
>>ramps hired a mason from Massachusetts to go to Egypt and build a small
>>pyramid the size of the blocks missing from the top of the Great Pyramid.
>>
>>The mason tried it the way the archaeologist wanted for a month, and managed
>>to raise the pyramid a couple of courses. To finish the pyramid for the progr
>am
>>the mason resorted to using a backhoe and sling. So much for draging the
>>]blocks up a ramp.
>
>Yep, that takes care of that. Can't be done. Not with our *present*
>knowledge, that is. But what if we were possessed of the hidden gnosis
>of The Ancients? Could there be *ways* of moving large blocks of stone
>that we, in our blinkered ignorance, cannot even *conceive*? And just how
>did the Egyptians manage to PRECISELY measure the distance from Cairo
>to somewhere else and encode it in the VERY STRUCTURE of the Great
>Pyramid in such a way that it can only be revealed by The Clever?
>
>---Bill "find out and get back to us" VanHorne
That is both a very interesting point and question.
We of course, can do it, with a combination of machines and engines,
as for example with the use of a backhoe, or a crane. The Egyptians
used the same sort of machines and engines described by Vitruvius to
move both the cargos of boats and the blocks of builders.
The reason I use the phrase machines and engines is that Vituvius
differentiates them so that machines use nothing but the muscle power
of men, whereas engines such as a windlass which multiplies that power
are considered differently.
A mast with a boom and counter weight, cribbing, wedges, a capstan or windlass,
even pulleys if we may allow the use of a wheel, would make the work of building
the pyramid not greatly different from what we might have seen at the Nile where
the barges carrying the granite blocks quarried upstream in the "belly of hathor"
were unloaded onto the shore. Certainly we know the Egyptians were using large
boats at this period because they buried some in the pyramid complex.
As to how they managed to precisely measure the distance from Cairo to Giza,
I would propose they did it much in the manner of modern surveyors with a
knotted cord and a series of front sights and back sights to keep the line
straight or make whatever offsets from a straight route might be requiured.
We know that they used such methods to reestablish the boundaries of their
fields each year after the floods.
As to their precision, perhaps they took their time to measure each distance
several times. Indeed they may have had to do exactly that in reestablishing
the boundaries of fields year after year. It should be evident that each land
holder along the route of the river would want accuracy so as not to lose some
precious land to his neighbors.
Eventually studying written deeds, making and remaking the same well established
measurements each year, and the time consumed in accurate surveying would make
the establishment of some permanent benchmarks worthwhile.
Steve
>
>
|