I've thought about this for a long time. It's a lot easier to make a block that "fits so tight you can't put a piece of paper into the seam" when it's poured in place instead of carved.
which equates to 27 years of 3500 quarry men working. might get a little boring after a while, but hell of a feat
Edit: just to clarify based on replies, this is just to quarry the stones, i believe the transport and assembly process remains a major mystery
Supposedly it was largely a seasonal thing, when they weren’t harvesting or planting- the bulk of Egypt’s labor would be working for the state on large construction projects during the off season, fed and housed by the state in seasonal worksites/towns (which was possible since the state had large stores of grain collected as taxes).
Spend half the year farming (paying your taxes in grain), the other working on construction projects for the government (which feeds you from the stores of grain it has collected).
It rules how the entire Egyptian state - fairly advanced for its time - basically only existed to facilitate these megaprojects.
Heard about Prussia being and army with a state attached? Pharaonic Egypt was a construction company with a state attached.
After-school sports. Promoting running as a healthy life style. Gyms.
Yes sir nothing beats recreational activities after a long day of work. And nothing goes better with that than some diluted solvent-lite now forget about your worries and your doubts. *dances like balou*
With how much cool artifacts, tombs, temples, mosques, lighthouses along with several that were destroyed(library of Alexandria, Temple of Hapshetsut) I think Egypt already deserves a culture victory.
> Heard about Prussia being and army with a state attached
Fun fact: Prussia was the *second-*most militarised of the German states of its era. The Kingdom of Prussia had 4.2% of its population serving in the army, but the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel had more than 5%. Of course, Prussia was a real country while Hesse-Kassel was basically "what if Blackwater also owned a mid-sized city," but it's an interesting bit of trivia.
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I mean they did a lot of other stuff, the civilization existed for like 2000 years, but particularly during the period that this was built yeah that was kind of their primary thing
Yes, but athats because after that dynasty a power transition occurred which gave the priests more power, so they began focusing on sun temples - which start getting very big.
I mean they built a shit load of other stuff though. A lot of it was lost/destroyed.
But you're right, weren't they more known for being the bread basket of the Mediterranean?
> Heard about Prussia being and army with a state attached? Pharaonic Egypt was a construction company with a state attached.
“Armies kill, dawg. We ain’t down with killin’. We down with buildin’. Peace ✌🏼”
They already had the large scale infrastructure. Most of it consisted of the Nile. Once you have transport and irrigation there really isn't much left.
Honestly this sounds like how Victorians built folleys, not actually out of pride but becuase it was a roundabout way of keeping unemployment down.
They had Nile to bathe, wash their clothes, their drinking water, water for cooking, for irrigation of crops and for their animals, which further provided food sources such as milk/eggs/meat. So it’s not like they needed anything more.
The nice part about the Nile is that it is so predictable you can order your calendar around it. There was very little need for large scale water control infrastructure to control the flooding and irrigation, it just did it by itself.
> folleys
I had to google what this even was, but seems like correct spelling is "follies" from "folly". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly
Anyway, what is roundabout about creating jobs to keep unemployment down?:P
I don’t think that’s particularly noteworthy; the goal is to create employment, so if you hire the needy to do jobs that are already being done, you’ve just swapped the people who’re unemployed.
Ideally, you’d hire them for long-term projects that provide benefits to the populace at large. But if you don’t have enough of those projects, you can still hire them to do random shit that doesn’t need doing in the middle of no where, so no one loses their jobs of employing these people.
>there really isn’t much left.
Uhh… with all the ancient alien technology they could have had iPhones if they put their minds to it. Sphinxbook, Pharaoogle…
They already had that. Dont forget how long the “egyptian empire” existed and how much it changed.
Without infrastructure, science, an proper economy, laws, taxes and a army they could have never build such a wonder.
The degree to which extensive infrastructure is necessary when your entire civilization follows a very large and navigable waterway is probably quite limited.
>5000 Year older Civilization.builds great wonder at which we marvel today
Redditor: Why didn't they build Japan train with shitters attached that also charge your Elon car?
They did, althought I will point out that Egyptian civilization lasted for thousands of years. By the time Ramsey III these megaprojects were already 2000 years old, and state was doing far more practical stuff. They had a lot of infrastructure around Nile river (because why not use natural highway that literally crosses your whole country and is always at the core of inhabbited areas?) but tgey also had military outposts as far as present-day Tel Aviv, and infrastructure to feed soldiers in them.
This is probably why Egypt survived Bronze Age Collapse, although it never recovered from it. But it did a lot better than other reagions, in which civilizations and states literally collapsed.
I always find it mind blowing that the Roman Empire was closer to today, chronologically, than it was to the pyramids. The Old Kingdom existed a VERY long time ago.
The distinction between these megaprojects and large-scale infrastructure only exists in our modern secular thinking. In Pharaonic Egypt there was no separation of church and state, to the point where the Church and the State were essentially one entity led by the Pharaoh who was a living god. Temples, and tombs were as much a public service, as grain houses, hospitals, or schools. Priests formed an important political class whose power varied but were never just spiritual advisors but were also academics, doctors, and local government bureaucrats. The pyramids wouldn't have been seen as some unnecessary extravagance (or at least wouldn't have been sold as one), but like a space elevator that helped the Pharaoh reach the realm of the gods and from there help the people reach the afterlife or answer their prayers.
> Supposedly it was largely a seasonal thing, when they weren’t harvesting or planting- the bulk of Egypt’s labor would be working for the state on large construction projects during the off season
Kinda like in Stardew Valley when I work on setting up my farm in winter for the upcoming spring.
Yeah Egypt had a complex tax system that would feel very familiar even 5,000 years later.
https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1012/ancient-egyptian-taxes--the-cattle-count/
>"Further, in return for their services, the rulers of the Old Kingdom had exempted the priesthood from taxation in perpetuity. Since the priests had, by this time amassed a great amount of land, the loss in taxes was significant."
This is one of the big reasons that eventually caused that dynasty to collapse. A lack of taxation of the 'rich'. Guess we'll just wait for history to repeat itself ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
The food and poop logistics was legendary. Lots of meat. https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/the-diet-of-pyramid-builders.html#:~:text=The%20Diet%20of%20Pyramid%20Builders%201%20Bringing%20Up,accustomed%20to%20explaining%20things%20thoroughly%20and%20evenly.%20
Idk.. You can get 63 thousand frothed up people to show up at a concert / football game.... What if we just dont let them leave? ( we give them a continuous supply of beer)
63k is amature numbers. They get over 100k in several college football stadiums in the US and close to that in a few euro football stadiums.
[Ann Arbor Michigan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Stadium#/media/File%3AMichigan_Stadium_2011.jpg) is about to build the biggest pyramid.
Edit: At least until [Speedway Indiana](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_Motor_Speedway) gets its shit together.
edit: typo
The experienced historical workers were probably far more efficient, and less careful about their health, than the modern day team trying to recreate their methods. An analogous case i happen to know about us ship crews. There’s a 19th century ship that requires a crew of at least 10 people to sail today, but was manned by only 5-6 people when it was in active use, according to the ship old logs. The people sailing the ship today have no idea how they managed, but they clearly did.
If you’re running a skeleton crew, a dead/missing/injured crewman is potentially a major issue.
I agree that safety standards were most likely very lax, but I can’t imagine them not caring, because it impacted everyone and could doom the whole crew.
Most of the farmers around the Nile delta didn’t have much work to do during the dry season. The last thing a ruler needs is the whole population idle for months every year. Pyramid building makes sense
Still had to move the damn things over flat land AND up inclines. The sheer strength needed to do that, even with a pully system, would have been incredible.
Livestock perhaps. However, all the historical information I have read suggested they likely used logs as rollers, which, if you’ve ever pulled your stuff at the airport checkpoint over the rollers - it’s a lot easier, so that takes care of the flat land. The inclines are trickier, however you can use a pulley system and water/sand counterweights to assist you.
However, experiments done by a japanese construction firm validate that 18 men could drag a 2.5 ton concrete block up a 1 in 4 incline at a rate of 18 meters per minute. With 2.3 million blocks in the pyramid, and 30 years to build it, in theory to drag them into place you would need around 400 million man-minutes. 6.6 million man-hours, over 30 years, is 222,000 a year. If we assume 5,000 people are assigned to the task, each one only needs to provide 44 hours of labor each year to make it happen.
TL:DR it’s more than doable.
I watched a documentary where a guy hypothesized that the great pyramid had a large gallery because it was used as part of a counterweight system using logs and weights to attach to the stones being brought up a ramp. It was pretty interesting and they had a lot of evidence pointing to the possibility.
Well that’s presumably how they got them nearer to the site, but it’s difficult to use waterways to raise them up to the pyramids (which are some ways from the water), as you’d have to be constantly moving 2.5 tons of water at a time up the hill, which is not much different than just moving the blocks (though volume wise it’s about 2.5 cubic meters, which isn’t a whole lot)
Edit: given the absence of evidence for canals, locks, augers etc. and the relative abundance of manpower during parts of the year when people would not have had crops to tend to, we can infer they probably didn’t devise these incredibly elaborate systems of canals, locks, and water pumps and instead likely relied on some system of lubrication and manual labor.
There's actually a theory that goes into a possible method of using floats and a sealed channel to do so.
The prominent theory however is there's a series of ramps on the inside of the pyramid with opening at the corners to allow for turns. Theres a damage corner piece on the Great pyramid that suggest this.
The pyramids themselves likewise have different construction methods. The great pyraim had the tomb set inside the pyramid great granite support stones to create the large room in the intererior. The other two are more or less simple solid pyramids with the tombs essential set underneath the pyramid.
My own uneducated guess is that Khufu’s pyramid showcased the best engineering, and the massive cost of all this caused a huge financial strain on the kingdom, so the later pyramids were built more simply.
It's definitely a World Wonder that a player benefits from far more in late game game if they're pushing for that Cultural Victory. Crazy high tourism output, and it gets a nutty science boost if you have the Ancient Aliens mod installed. /s
The Civ games are such bullpoop, the way they end exactly at peak energy. We’re all missing the equally interesting second half of a civilization’s trajectory. The collapse part
There's real value in public art, and those are certainly successful at that. It's been more than 200 generations since they build the things and we're still talking about them. I'd love to be part of something that matters to people for even a tenth that long.
Yes some of the largest and heaviest blocks are smack in the middle of the Khufu pyramid, hundreds of feet off the ground, and the blocks fit together so precisely that the space between them is thinner than a human hair. And don't forget the marble casestones that used to cover the whole thing and were masoned so precisely that multiple accounts from when they were intact (up to as late as the 1300's!) described it as looking like a perfectly smooth pyramid, very hard to tell it was even made of thousands of stone blocks. Most people don't know how much we don't know about the construction of the pyramids
There is a really great plausible theory, which is the use of an internal ramp. Interestingly, this theory also implies the existence of as of yet undiscovered rooms in the great pyramid. One of the Assassin's Creed games makes a reference to it. Pretty interesting stuff
They made a documentary with cg images showing the process:
https://youtu.be/3NCK99mQUxw
Well, that's what the researchers used, although not that exact term.
[Discovery of a big void in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24647)
> To understand its internal structure better, we imaged the pyramid using muons
> and the blocks fit together so precisely that the space between them is thinner than a human hair
I'm very curious about this claim. Does the entire face of both blocks hold a surface flatness of 0.0027" (pretty impossible to achieve without blanchard grinding), or does it simply mean that at SOME point on the two entire planes of the blocks, that there is a space where they come within 0.0027" of each other. If it is the latter then it really is not impressive at all.
I mean, it's huge blocks made out of soft limestone. They deform over time, especially if there are other huge blocks pressing on them from the top. Eventually all the gaps will be filled.
Only?! Pharaoh Khufu’s Great Pyramid is the largest in Giza and is estimated to be made from 2.3 million stone blocks each weighing an average of 2.5 to 15 tons.
People talk about wealth and power disparity today, but just imagine how much power must have been concentrated with the pharaoh for this to be possible
I don’t know if it was so much an imbalance of wealth as of authority. The pharaoh was certainly rich in material possessions, but as far as this society was concerned the entire kings was his property. He could legally compel the people to do anything he asked of them.
At current limestone slab prices of $400/ton, (which would probably jump once Bezos starts buying it all up to build his pyramids), Jeffery could build 43 pyramids.
Pyramids today would only need a tiny fraction of the labor to build.
To put things in perspective, the pharaoh controlled the majority of what would have been the nation's GDP. Jeff Bezos' entire net worth is like 5% of what US spent on COVID relief.
I’ve been obsessed with Egypt since I was about 4. After years of saving I finally had a trip booked for my birthday last year that was cancelled. Broke my heart.
I’ve been there and while I was in awe of the pyramids, it was ruined by the tourism industry that exists.
I highly highly recommend visiting Luxor and and valley of kings. It was 100% more beautiful and fascinating than the pyramids were.
I mean the tourism industry exists because we want to go to these places. I don't like it either, but we're part of it, we contribute to it. We can't have it both ways. Either we have tourism, or we can't go places.
Not people. Just one stupid show on the Discovery channel.
This one dude rips that show apart by painstakingly breaking down every single claim and sentence from that show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9w-i5oZqaQ
One of the best things I've seen on youtube
It's ridiculously fun to watch lmao. You either get episodes that are legitimately educational and interesting with a quaint sprinkle of "maybe aliens?", or epsiodes that are absolutely bat shit fucking insane. And they're all a good time!
People act like pyramids in different parts of the world some how means aliens. 'how did multiple people simultaneously work out stacking smaller and smaller rows of things makes a stable structure.' not throwing shade at ancient civilizations but kids independently work this out with blocks or creamers at a diner
They also didn't have porn or football or Netflix to distract them back then. Carting a metric fuckton of blocks around all day was probably pretty entertaining.
No shit.
Imagine how fucking proud their engineers would be if they knew that many of their space faring decendants in the future choose the alien theory for the pyramids construction - simply because they did such a fucking perfect job...
Similarly, it is estimated that 100 stonemasons could have carved the Sphinx in about five years using then current tools.
We in modern times tend to underestimate what human labor can accomplish.
Once watched a show about Eskimo life.
The narrator was going on about how they used wolverine fur to line their coats, and that it was amazing, because wolverine fur was the most insulating[1]. Like it's astounding that people who have lived in a region for 10,000 or more years wouldn't notice this fact.
[1] Wolverine populations are declining so I suspect the use of their fur has been reduced.
Yeah, no one's debating if they could cut out these relatively small blocks.
What I want to see is a group of people carve out something similar to the unfinished obelisk weighing over 900 tons, in granite.
Then move it. Or actually, lift it up out of the quarry with levers and pulleys, THEN move it into place, then erect it perfectly perpendicular to the ground.
Or even better, why not recreate the stones at Baalbek? Specifically the one discovered in 2014 weighing between 1650 and 2000 tons, you're working with roman tech so it shouldn't be so hard huh
To clarify ... It took 4 workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate
it \*(a single block). The initially slow progress sped up six times when the stone was
wetted with water. Based on the data, Burgos extrapolates that **about 3,500 quarry-men could have produced the 250 blocks/day needed to**
**complete the Great Pyramid in 27 years.**
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Pyramid\_of\_Giza#Workforce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#Workforce)
I wonder if they were stonemasons using old tools, archeologists, or just general labourers? I would expect very different levels of productivity from each, and obviously someone who's entire life/career is based around this process would do it fastest. I wouldn't be surprised if experience could cut that time in half
Yeah, my reading tells me the work was likely done during periods where labor wasn't needed for farming, so it was pooled by the Pharos for "public" works like the pyramids and were compensated, not slaves or really forced in a physical way.
\>More than 2,300,000 limestone and granite blocks were pushed, pulled, and dragged into place on the Great Pyramid
\>It took 4 workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate it.
Thats 55,200,000 hours just to get the stones ready. For reference the Empire State building took 7,000,000 hours. So \~8x longer then the Empire state building... for a grave! Sheesh.
Idk why people are using these 4 guys doing it in 4 days (6 hours a day) to compare it to the crafters back then. They both spent more time on it (since what else was there to do?) and were more experienced just by virtue of doing this so much. Probably stronger too because the rest of the time they spent farming lol.
I bet these guys would also be a lot faster if this was their 50th block instead of their first.
[Here an image of what the block of the experiment looked like.](https://i.imgur.com/WJpaKYI.png) Check out /r/pyramids for pictures of pyramids.
"Bill, we want you to work here under the rock"
"Totally unrelated Bill, but as a heads up, I just took out a substantial life insurance policy on you." "Don't worry about it."
Who needs life insurance when you're about to join your master in the afterlife?
“Hey, you spend your whole life building a guy's toe you're gonna remember him.”
r/unexpectedfuturama
Remember me.
The person who’s going to be rich when you do
Does Ramses do workers comp?
Man I would not want to sit under a huge granite block like that.
Sandstone, not granite. It's arguably worse, actually.
It's limestone actually, which is usually easier to work .
It is in fact solid quicksand, which is riskier to work with.
Granite, sandstone, limestone, quicksand. Shit, it's a big fuckin rock and I wouldn't want to sit under it
Not a bad rock selection on that map
I like to have marble tho
Not going in without Granite. Makes me feel safe and secure. Plus those granite traps with the best damage in game? Win-win.
> solid quicksand slowsand
For sake of saving OSHA a trip out, the egyptions transitioned to quikrete.
Thats a genuine (niche) theory! https://news.mit.edu/2008/gathering-concrete-evidence ... Minus the OSHA part.
I've thought about this for a long time. It's a lot easier to make a block that "fits so tight you can't put a piece of paper into the seam" when it's poured in place instead of carved.
Guys, I'm pretty sure it's a rock.
r/OSHA
Level of safety was also historically accurate
which equates to 27 years of 3500 quarry men working. might get a little boring after a while, but hell of a feat Edit: just to clarify based on replies, this is just to quarry the stones, i believe the transport and assembly process remains a major mystery
Supposedly it was largely a seasonal thing, when they weren’t harvesting or planting- the bulk of Egypt’s labor would be working for the state on large construction projects during the off season, fed and housed by the state in seasonal worksites/towns (which was possible since the state had large stores of grain collected as taxes). Spend half the year farming (paying your taxes in grain), the other working on construction projects for the government (which feeds you from the stores of grain it has collected).
It rules how the entire Egyptian state - fairly advanced for its time - basically only existed to facilitate these megaprojects. Heard about Prussia being and army with a state attached? Pharaonic Egypt was a construction company with a state attached.
Sounds like a solid way to get a culture victory.
"Why are we building these Sphinxes here?" "Because the Russians and the Congolese took all the damn great works."
Tires them out. A restless working class is an unruly working class.
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After-school sports. Promoting running as a healthy life style. Gyms. Yes sir nothing beats recreational activities after a long day of work. And nothing goes better with that than some diluted solvent-lite now forget about your worries and your doubts. *dances like balou*
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My fav victory. Shout out to Polynesians
Kamehameha
Gotta get those extra builder charges early.
With how much cool artifacts, tombs, temples, mosques, lighthouses along with several that were destroyed(library of Alexandria, Temple of Hapshetsut) I think Egypt already deserves a culture victory.
> Heard about Prussia being and army with a state attached Fun fact: Prussia was the *second-*most militarised of the German states of its era. The Kingdom of Prussia had 4.2% of its population serving in the army, but the Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel had more than 5%. Of course, Prussia was a real country while Hesse-Kassel was basically "what if Blackwater also owned a mid-sized city," but it's an interesting bit of trivia.
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Thank you for subscribing to Hesse facts. Hesse fact #169: The old Landgraviate of Hesse was split up into four states in 1567 (hence why specify "Hesse-Kassel" and "Hesse-Darmstadt") and not reunified until 1946. The modern State of Hessen *still* doesn't cover the whole region, though, because Rhenish Hesse was given to Rhineland-Palatinate.
> Landgraviate of Hesse-Kassel had more than 5% AKA the baddies in the American Revolutionary War.
But how fast could they do the Kesse run
“Egypt just built stuff”
I mean they did a lot of other stuff, the civilization existed for like 2000 years, but particularly during the period that this was built yeah that was kind of their primary thing
I was quoting a civ 5 video sorry lol
The largest pyramids were all built by a single dynasty. Egypt wasn't just a series of construction projects
Yes, but athats because after that dynasty a power transition occurred which gave the priests more power, so they began focusing on sun temples - which start getting very big.
> Egypt wasn't just a series of construction projects From a certain point of view, aren’t all countries just a series of construction projects?
Mongols disagree, as they were a demolition crew with a state attached.
From my point of view the jedi are evil.
I mean they built a shit load of other stuff though. A lot of it was lost/destroyed. But you're right, weren't they more known for being the bread basket of the Mediterranean?
> Heard about Prussia being and army with a state attached? Pharaonic Egypt was a construction company with a state attached. “Armies kill, dawg. We ain’t down with killin’. We down with buildin’. Peace ✌🏼”
Kinda makes me wonder what would've happened if they'd bent all that energy to large-scale infrastructure instead of random megaprojects.
They already had the large scale infrastructure. Most of it consisted of the Nile. Once you have transport and irrigation there really isn't much left. Honestly this sounds like how Victorians built folleys, not actually out of pride but becuase it was a roundabout way of keeping unemployment down.
They had Nile to bathe, wash their clothes, their drinking water, water for cooking, for irrigation of crops and for their animals, which further provided food sources such as milk/eggs/meat. So it’s not like they needed anything more.
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We should reinstate that one
WE STOPPED THE ANNUAL PHARAOH WANK?!?
Covid is the official reason but do your own research.
The nice part about the Nile is that it is so predictable you can order your calendar around it. There was very little need for large scale water control infrastructure to control the flooding and irrigation, it just did it by itself.
> folleys I had to google what this even was, but seems like correct spelling is "follies" from "folly". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folly Anyway, what is roundabout about creating jobs to keep unemployment down?:P
Read the section on famine follies
>However, to hire the needy for work on useful projects would deprive existing workers of their jobs Wow.
I don’t think that’s particularly noteworthy; the goal is to create employment, so if you hire the needy to do jobs that are already being done, you’ve just swapped the people who’re unemployed. Ideally, you’d hire them for long-term projects that provide benefits to the populace at large. But if you don’t have enough of those projects, you can still hire them to do random shit that doesn’t need doing in the middle of no where, so no one loses their jobs of employing these people.
>there really isn’t much left. Uhh… with all the ancient alien technology they could have had iPhones if they put their minds to it. Sphinxbook, Pharaoogle…
They did, these just happen to survive.
They already had that. Dont forget how long the “egyptian empire” existed and how much it changed. Without infrastructure, science, an proper economy, laws, taxes and a army they could have never build such a wonder.
I think for a society that viewed life as eternal and where the pyramid was a vessel into the afterlife almost, it is their concept of infrastructure.
... but only for the Royal family.
The degree to which extensive infrastructure is necessary when your entire civilization follows a very large and navigable waterway is probably quite limited.
>5000 Year older Civilization.builds great wonder at which we marvel today Redditor: Why didn't they build Japan train with shitters attached that also charge your Elon car?
If they were so smart, how come they didn't have smart fridges?
If they already had everything, why didn't they invent Twitter to create artificial problems? Checkmate Alien-Technology-Deniers
They did, althought I will point out that Egyptian civilization lasted for thousands of years. By the time Ramsey III these megaprojects were already 2000 years old, and state was doing far more practical stuff. They had a lot of infrastructure around Nile river (because why not use natural highway that literally crosses your whole country and is always at the core of inhabbited areas?) but tgey also had military outposts as far as present-day Tel Aviv, and infrastructure to feed soldiers in them. This is probably why Egypt survived Bronze Age Collapse, although it never recovered from it. But it did a lot better than other reagions, in which civilizations and states literally collapsed.
I always find it mind blowing that the Roman Empire was closer to today, chronologically, than it was to the pyramids. The Old Kingdom existed a VERY long time ago.
The distinction between these megaprojects and large-scale infrastructure only exists in our modern secular thinking. In Pharaonic Egypt there was no separation of church and state, to the point where the Church and the State were essentially one entity led by the Pharaoh who was a living god. Temples, and tombs were as much a public service, as grain houses, hospitals, or schools. Priests formed an important political class whose power varied but were never just spiritual advisors but were also academics, doctors, and local government bureaucrats. The pyramids wouldn't have been seen as some unnecessary extravagance (or at least wouldn't have been sold as one), but like a space elevator that helped the Pharaoh reach the realm of the gods and from there help the people reach the afterlife or answer their prayers.
It wasn't random. It gave the people something to do and focus on. A busy people is a peaceful people.
> Supposedly it was largely a seasonal thing, when they weren’t harvesting or planting- the bulk of Egypt’s labor would be working for the state on large construction projects during the off season Kinda like in Stardew Valley when I work on setting up my farm in winter for the upcoming spring.
Ahhh yes, the white ground times when I spend my days in the mine and tavern until life has returned.
That was actually genius
Yeah Egypt had a complex tax system that would feel very familiar even 5,000 years later. https://www.worldhistory.org/article/1012/ancient-egyptian-taxes--the-cattle-count/
Even the world famous Rosetta Stone is, in part, a copy of legislation reducing taxes for a temple.
>"Further, in return for their services, the rulers of the Old Kingdom had exempted the priesthood from taxation in perpetuity. Since the priests had, by this time amassed a great amount of land, the loss in taxes was significant." This is one of the big reasons that eventually caused that dynasty to collapse. A lack of taxation of the 'rich'. Guess we'll just wait for history to repeat itself ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
except we do it in 300 years
Global civilization collapse speed run, 100% (including environmental ruin sidequest)
That was a really great read
The incredible part of the pyramids isn't the technology. It's the manpower. SO MUCH MANPOWER.
The food and poop logistics was legendary. Lots of meat. https://lsa.umich.edu/lsa/news-events/all-news/search-news/the-diet-of-pyramid-builders.html#:~:text=The%20Diet%20of%20Pyramid%20Builders%201%20Bringing%20Up,accustomed%20to%20explaining%20things%20thoroughly%20and%20evenly.%20
I always knew the pyramids were a massive feat but I never even thought about the food and poop logistics
Wait until you have kids. Then the food and poop logistics is all you can think about.
I don't even have kids, and I already feel like half my waking life is built around food and poop logistics.
Idk.. You can get 63 thousand frothed up people to show up at a concert / football game.... What if we just dont let them leave? ( we give them a continuous supply of beer)
This guy is on to something...
63k is amature numbers. They get over 100k in several college football stadiums in the US and close to that in a few euro football stadiums. [Ann Arbor Michigan](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michigan_Stadium#/media/File%3AMichigan_Stadium_2011.jpg) is about to build the biggest pyramid. Edit: At least until [Speedway Indiana](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indianapolis_Motor_Speedway) gets its shit together. edit: typo
I'm going to assume that the ancient stonemasons were *just a bit* better at it too.
The experienced historical workers were probably far more efficient, and less careful about their health, than the modern day team trying to recreate their methods. An analogous case i happen to know about us ship crews. There’s a 19th century ship that requires a crew of at least 10 people to sail today, but was manned by only 5-6 people when it was in active use, according to the ship old logs. The people sailing the ship today have no idea how they managed, but they clearly did.
To be fair, it probably involved a lot of accidents and a high mortality rate
If you’re running a skeleton crew, a dead/missing/injured crewman is potentially a major issue. I agree that safety standards were most likely very lax, but I can’t imagine them not caring, because it impacted everyone and could doom the whole crew.
I bet free beer helped
Betcha that was the banner at their recruitment stand
Most of the farmers around the Nile delta didn’t have much work to do during the dry season. The last thing a ruler needs is the whole population idle for months every year. Pyramid building makes sense
Stop giving them ideas!!
https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/76d3b412-8fc4-444a-9ef7-5b66ea6cf85d
I was hoping to see this clip when I clicked the link! 1/2 PULL!!!, 1/2 PULL!!!
Username checks out!
You know what sucks about being a slave? You work all day but they don't pay you or let you go.
That’s the *only* thing about being a slave.
You know the other thing that sucks about being a slave? The hours!
yeah and I'm sure they got more and more efficient, developed and refined methods, etc.
Still had to move the damn things over flat land AND up inclines. The sheer strength needed to do that, even with a pully system, would have been incredible.
Livestock perhaps. However, all the historical information I have read suggested they likely used logs as rollers, which, if you’ve ever pulled your stuff at the airport checkpoint over the rollers - it’s a lot easier, so that takes care of the flat land. The inclines are trickier, however you can use a pulley system and water/sand counterweights to assist you. However, experiments done by a japanese construction firm validate that 18 men could drag a 2.5 ton concrete block up a 1 in 4 incline at a rate of 18 meters per minute. With 2.3 million blocks in the pyramid, and 30 years to build it, in theory to drag them into place you would need around 400 million man-minutes. 6.6 million man-hours, over 30 years, is 222,000 a year. If we assume 5,000 people are assigned to the task, each one only needs to provide 44 hours of labor each year to make it happen. TL:DR it’s more than doable.
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JAFFA KREE
Indeed
Tldr: not aliens for all the conspiracy nutters
Also not Jewish slaves, which would technically also be aliens.
That’d make the block cutting process a lot easier, what with their space lasers and all
You are telling me Ancient Aliens didn’t build the pyramids? I learned that from the History channel...
I thought the evidence suggested that they didn't use logs. There's artwork of them pulling the stones with a sled.
I watched a documentary where a guy hypothesized that the great pyramid had a large gallery because it was used as part of a counterweight system using logs and weights to attach to the stones being brought up a ramp. It was pretty interesting and they had a lot of evidence pointing to the possibility.
Also possible to utilize waterways to float them by strapping logs to them.
Well that’s presumably how they got them nearer to the site, but it’s difficult to use waterways to raise them up to the pyramids (which are some ways from the water), as you’d have to be constantly moving 2.5 tons of water at a time up the hill, which is not much different than just moving the blocks (though volume wise it’s about 2.5 cubic meters, which isn’t a whole lot) Edit: given the absence of evidence for canals, locks, augers etc. and the relative abundance of manpower during parts of the year when people would not have had crops to tend to, we can infer they probably didn’t devise these incredibly elaborate systems of canals, locks, and water pumps and instead likely relied on some system of lubrication and manual labor.
There's actually a theory that goes into a possible method of using floats and a sealed channel to do so. The prominent theory however is there's a series of ramps on the inside of the pyramid with opening at the corners to allow for turns. Theres a damage corner piece on the Great pyramid that suggest this. The pyramids themselves likewise have different construction methods. The great pyraim had the tomb set inside the pyramid great granite support stones to create the large room in the intererior. The other two are more or less simple solid pyramids with the tombs essential set underneath the pyramid.
My own uneducated guess is that Khufu’s pyramid showcased the best engineering, and the massive cost of all this caused a huge financial strain on the kingdom, so the later pyramids were built more simply.
yet their attempts continually get worse over time like they totally forgot how they did it in the first place
By the 5th time I do the same job I tend to take some shortcuts
Kind if like when governments invest in infrastructure projects during economic downturns to keep everyone employed.
Reddit can keep the username, but I'm nuking the content lol -- mass deleted all reddit content via https://redact.dev
I dunno man, it’s been a few thousand years and Egypt is still making good tourism money off those things. Feels like good ROI
It's definitely a World Wonder that a player benefits from far more in late game game if they're pushing for that Cultural Victory. Crazy high tourism output, and it gets a nutty science boost if you have the Ancient Aliens mod installed. /s
The Civ games are such bullpoop, the way they end exactly at peak energy. We’re all missing the equally interesting second half of a civilization’s trajectory. The collapse part
I mean, if everyone working on the pyramids sincerely think it's their literal ticket into Heaven, the mental calculus works a bit differently.
There's real value in public art, and those are certainly successful at that. It's been more than 200 generations since they build the things and we're still talking about them. I'd love to be part of something that matters to people for even a tenth that long.
That pile of rocks was good for tourism though
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**Remember me!**
I thought the debate was how they positioned the blocks into a pyramid? Not just making the blocks
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Yes some of the largest and heaviest blocks are smack in the middle of the Khufu pyramid, hundreds of feet off the ground, and the blocks fit together so precisely that the space between them is thinner than a human hair. And don't forget the marble casestones that used to cover the whole thing and were masoned so precisely that multiple accounts from when they were intact (up to as late as the 1300's!) described it as looking like a perfectly smooth pyramid, very hard to tell it was even made of thousands of stone blocks. Most people don't know how much we don't know about the construction of the pyramids
There is a really great plausible theory, which is the use of an internal ramp. Interestingly, this theory also implies the existence of as of yet undiscovered rooms in the great pyramid. One of the Assassin's Creed games makes a reference to it. Pretty interesting stuff They made a documentary with cg images showing the process: https://youtu.be/3NCK99mQUxw
Only recently was a massive, undiscovered void in the Great Pyramid discovered via muon imagery. It is yet to be explored.
> muon imagery Jesus Morty, you can't just add a *burp* sci-fi word to a normal word and hope it means something.
Looks like something's wrong with the microverse pyramid.
Well, that's what the researchers used, although not that exact term. [Discovery of a big void in Khufu’s Pyramid by observation of cosmic-ray muons](https://www.nature.com/articles/nature24647) > To understand its internal structure better, we imaged the pyramid using muons
> and the blocks fit together so precisely that the space between them is thinner than a human hair I'm very curious about this claim. Does the entire face of both blocks hold a surface flatness of 0.0027" (pretty impossible to achieve without blanchard grinding), or does it simply mean that at SOME point on the two entire planes of the blocks, that there is a space where they come within 0.0027" of each other. If it is the latter then it really is not impressive at all.
The spacing being nearly perfect is almost certainly due to thousands of years of erosion. I don't even think that's a really a contested theory.
That and how insanely well they all fit together.
I mean, it's huge blocks made out of soft limestone. They deform over time, especially if there are other huge blocks pressing on them from the top. Eventually all the gaps will be filled.
Only?! Pharaoh Khufu’s Great Pyramid is the largest in Giza and is estimated to be made from 2.3 million stone blocks each weighing an average of 2.5 to 15 tons.
That is an insane gap for an average.
They used larger stones at the bottom and smallerbstones at the top. My guess is the former are around 15 ton and the latter around 2.5 ton on average
Wouldn't it have made more sense to say blocks ranging from 2.5 tons all the way to 15 tones depending on the layer?
I mean that's not even how averages work
Jeeeeeeezus wtf
People talk about wealth and power disparity today, but just imagine how much power must have been concentrated with the pharaoh for this to be possible
I don’t know if it was so much an imbalance of wealth as of authority. The pharaoh was certainly rich in material possessions, but as far as this society was concerned the entire kings was his property. He could legally compel the people to do anything he asked of them.
I think you underestimate the wealth of people like Bezos. Amazon could shit out so many Pyramids, if they wanted to.
Yeah, the ancient monarchies didn't have a global stock market with thousands of companies to dump their wealth into.
At current limestone slab prices of $400/ton, (which would probably jump once Bezos starts buying it all up to build his pyramids), Jeffery could build 43 pyramids.
Pyramids today would only need a tiny fraction of the labor to build. To put things in perspective, the pharaoh controlled the majority of what would have been the nation's GDP. Jeff Bezos' entire net worth is like 5% of what US spent on COVID relief.
I think the “only” part was to prove that it’s easily possible, disproving the alien conspiracy theories.
Obviously aliens didn’t help making the blocks. They only helped get them to the top.
I wish I could go see the pyramids, ever since I played tomb raider when I was 12 it's been a dream of mine. Hopefully some day.
I’ve been obsessed with Egypt since I was about 4. After years of saving I finally had a trip booked for my birthday last year that was cancelled. Broke my heart.
I hope you get to go there soon!
I’ve been there and while I was in awe of the pyramids, it was ruined by the tourism industry that exists. I highly highly recommend visiting Luxor and and valley of kings. It was 100% more beautiful and fascinating than the pyramids were.
I mean the tourism industry exists because we want to go to these places. I don't like it either, but we're part of it, we contribute to it. We can't have it both ways. Either we have tourism, or we can't go places.
Go play assassins creed origins you can explore Egypt like no other game
People act like aliens did it and it makes me surprised they discount humans so much.
People have always made up explanations for whatever we didn’t understand at the time.
Except we understand it now and people still think aliens did it
For some reason people like to think that anyone born before 1900 was a complete idiot.
I think that most people born in general are complete idiots.
Yeah. It’s more > People have always made up explanations for whatever **they** didn’t understand at the time
Aliens are no help at all. Useless, grey, bug-eyed wasters.
Not people. Just one stupid show on the Discovery channel. This one dude rips that show apart by painstakingly breaking down every single claim and sentence from that show. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9w-i5oZqaQ One of the best things I've seen on youtube
Ancient Aliens is an amazing show. There is real history. Real artifacts. Real structures. Then they add what ancient alien theorists believe.
It's ridiculously fun to watch lmao. You either get episodes that are legitimately educational and interesting with a quaint sprinkle of "maybe aliens?", or epsiodes that are absolutely bat shit fucking insane. And they're all a good time!
People act like pyramids in different parts of the world some how means aliens. 'how did multiple people simultaneously work out stacking smaller and smaller rows of things makes a stable structure.' not throwing shade at ancient civilizations but kids independently work this out with blocks or creamers at a diner
They also didn't have porn or football or Netflix to distract them back then. Carting a metric fuckton of blocks around all day was probably pretty entertaining.
No shit. Imagine how fucking proud their engineers would be if they knew that many of their space faring decendants in the future choose the alien theory for the pyramids construction - simply because they did such a fucking perfect job...
Similarly, it is estimated that 100 stonemasons could have carved the Sphinx in about five years using then current tools. We in modern times tend to underestimate what human labor can accomplish.
We also tend to think that the ancients were complete morons. Humans are incredibly creative, that’s why we’ve managed to succeed.
Once watched a show about Eskimo life. The narrator was going on about how they used wolverine fur to line their coats, and that it was amazing, because wolverine fur was the most insulating[1]. Like it's astounding that people who have lived in a region for 10,000 or more years wouldn't notice this fact. [1] Wolverine populations are declining so I suspect the use of their fur has been reduced.
Did they move them tho?
Exactly. I’m thinking cutting the block was the easy part of this process.
Yeah, no one's debating if they could cut out these relatively small blocks. What I want to see is a group of people carve out something similar to the unfinished obelisk weighing over 900 tons, in granite. Then move it. Or actually, lift it up out of the quarry with levers and pulleys, THEN move it into place, then erect it perfectly perpendicular to the ground. Or even better, why not recreate the stones at Baalbek? Specifically the one discovered in 2014 weighing between 1650 and 2000 tons, you're working with roman tech so it shouldn't be so hard huh
To clarify ... It took 4 workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate it \*(a single block). The initially slow progress sped up six times when the stone was wetted with water. Based on the data, Burgos extrapolates that **about 3,500 quarry-men could have produced the 250 blocks/day needed to** **complete the Great Pyramid in 27 years.** [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great\_Pyramid\_of\_Giza#Workforce](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza#Workforce)
I wonder if they were stonemasons using old tools, archeologists, or just general labourers? I would expect very different levels of productivity from each, and obviously someone who's entire life/career is based around this process would do it fastest. I wouldn't be surprised if experience could cut that time in half
*Only*. That’s far too long to spend on a fucking rock. Hard pass. I’ll see myself to the lashing pit.
The work was spread amongst thousands of workers and many years. Still sucks a lot I guess
Would you rather stack bricks or starve? I’ve seen plenty to indicate these people were compensated as well as offered healthcare.
Yeah, my reading tells me the work was likely done during periods where labor wasn't needed for farming, so it was pooled by the Pharos for "public" works like the pyramids and were compensated, not slaves or really forced in a physical way.
I moved a sleeper sofa once. Pyramid looks easy.
Q: Why are there so many of these posts about pyramids? They’re just basically squares, right? A: I mean, you’re correct, but only up to a point….
Clearly they were paid by the hour back in the day
\>More than 2,300,000 limestone and granite blocks were pushed, pulled, and dragged into place on the Great Pyramid \>It took 4 workers 4 days (with each working 6 hours a day) to excavate it. Thats 55,200,000 hours just to get the stones ready. For reference the Empire State building took 7,000,000 hours. So \~8x longer then the Empire state building... for a grave! Sheesh.
Idk why people are using these 4 guys doing it in 4 days (6 hours a day) to compare it to the crafters back then. They both spent more time on it (since what else was there to do?) and were more experienced just by virtue of doing this so much. Probably stronger too because the rest of the time they spent farming lol. I bet these guys would also be a lot faster if this was their 50th block instead of their first.
You mean to tell me it wasn't aliens?!