The pyramids have long been recognized as one of the wonders of the world.
It has never been clear how the ancient Egyptians, even with armies of slave laborers, were able to quarry, ship, shape, and place the enormous blocks of stone which comprise these magnificent monuments.
A chance discovery made by a team of archeologists working in a distant quarry might explain at least some of how the builders moved the massive stones, the Guardian reported.
Reexamining Old Sites
An Anglo-French team of archaeologists jointly led by Dr. Roland Enmarch, senior lecturer in Egyptology at the University of Liverpool, and Dr. Yannis Gourdon of the Institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale (IFAO), were investigating a quarry which had been known to Egyptologists for almost 100 years.
The team made two significant findings.
First, they studied inscriptions in the walls of the alabaster quarry which revealed that the quarry was active during the building of Egypt’s greatest pyramid, the Pyramid of Cheops, or Khufu.
The quarry, and the inscriptions, had first been explored by Howard Carter, the British Egyptologist who discovered Tutankhamen’s tomb in 1923.
The examination of the inscriptions had been the team’s primary goal. But that discovery was dwarfed by another finding.
The team found a series of steps and post holes in the ramp leading up out of the bottom of the quarry. These holes and steps indicated that the previous idea of how the Egyptians moved huge chunks of rocks, simply dragging them up inclined planes, was incomplete.
A Better System Revealed
Egyptologists had long believed that the builders of the pyramids built temporary ramps around the outside of the structures, which allowed laborers to drag giant rocks high up the structures.
The new findings began with the fact that the angles of the ramps in the quarry were too steep—it seemed impossible that even an army of slaves could pull the multi-ton blocks of stone up inclines that extreme.
The combination of steps and post holes revealed a different system.
“The system we have discovered would allow more people to exert force at one time, so it means you would be able to exert more force and move the blocks more quickly,” Dr. Enmarch told the Guardian.
The Egyptians were able to push and pull blocks of stones up discrete steps. By using the posts as pulleys, many more people could apply energy to the stones—some pushing directly from below, some pulling from above with ropes, and even more, below the stone, pulling ropes wrapped around the posts.
Also, because of the distinct steps, each stone could be lifted a set amount, and then the teams of laborers could rest and reset.
Based on the inscriptions, Drs. Enmarch and Gourdon believe this was most likely the construction method used to build the Great Pyramid.
The pair has not yet published their findings. The discoveries were made in September and they have not had time to compile a formal submission for a peer-reviewed journal.
There are multiple theories surrounding the origins of the pyramids, with some suggesting that the structures predate the Egyptian civilization.
