The great temples of ancient Egypt arose from the same technological skill one sees on the small scale of household goods. The central value observed in creating any of these goods or structures was a careful attention to detail. The Egyptians are noted in many aspects of their culture as a very conservative society, and this adherence to a certain way of accomplishing tasks can clearly be seen in their construction of the pyramids and other monuments. The creation of an obelisk, for example, seems to have always involved the exact same procedure performed in precisely the same way. The quarrying and transport of obelisks are well documented (though how the immense monuments were raised is not) and shows a strict adherence to a standard procedure.
The Step Pyramid of Djoser was successfully built according to the precepts of the vizier Imhotep (c. 2667-2600 BCE), and when his plans were deviated from by Sneferu during of the Old Kingdom (c. 2613- c. 2181 BCE), the result was the so-called ‘collapsed pyramid’ at Meidum. Sneferu returned to Imhotep’s original engineering plans for his next projects and was able to create his Bent Pyramid and Red Pyramid at Dashur, advancing the art of pyramid building which is epitomized in the Great Pyramid at Giza.
The technological skill required to build the Great Pyramid still mystifies scholars in the present day. Egyptologists Bob Brier and Hoyt Hobbs comment on this:
Because of their immense size, building pyramids posed special problems of both organization and engineering. Constructing the Great Pyramid of the pharaohKhufu, for example, required that more than two million blocks weighing from two to more than sixty tons be formed into a structure covering two football fields and rising in a perfect pyramidal shape 480 feet into the sky. Its construction involved vast numbers of workers which, in turn, presented complex logistical problems concerning food, shelter, and organization. Millions of heavy stone blocks needed not only to be quarried and raised to great heights but also set together with precision in order to create the desired shape. (217)
In order to accomplish this, the vizier would delegate responsibility to subordinates who would further delegate tasks to others. The bureaucracy of the Old Kingdom of Egypt set the paradigm for the rest of the country’s history in accounting for every aspect of a building project and making sure each step was proceeding according to plan. Later in the Old Kingdom, Weni, known as the Governor of the South, would leave an inscription detailing how he traveled to Elephantine for granite for a false door for a pyramid and dug five canals for towboats to bring supplies for further construction (Lewis, 33). Records such as Weni’s show the immense amount of effort required in building the monuments one finds in Egypt today. There are numerous inscriptions relating to supplies and difficulties in building the pyramids at Giza but no definitive explanation of the practical means by which they were built.
The most popular theory involves ramps which were constructed as the pyramid was raised but this is actually untenable as Brier and Hobbs note:
The problem is one of physics. The steeper the angle of an incline, the more effort necessary to move an object up that incline. So, in order for a relatively small number of men, say ten or so, to drag a two-ton load up a ramp, its angle could not be more than about eight percent. Geometry tells us that to reach a height of 480 feet, an inclined plane rising at eight percent would have to start almost one mile from its finish. It has been calculated that building a mile-long ramp that rose as high as the Great Pyramid would require as much material as that needed for the pyramid itself – workers would have had to build the equivilent of two pyramids in the twenty-year time frame. (221)
A modification of the ramp theory was proposed by the French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin who claims ramps were used but on the inside of the pyramid, not the exterior. Ramps may have been used externally in the initial stages of construction but then were moved inside. The quarried stones were then brought in through the entrance and moved up the ramps to their position. This, Houdin claims, would account for the shafts one finds inside the pyramid. This theory, however, does not account for the weight of the stones or the number of workers on the ramp required to move them up an angle inside the pyramid.
A much more cogent theory has been proposed by engineer Robert Carson who suggests that water power was used. It has been clearly substantiated that the water tables of the Giza plateau are quite high and were more so during the period of the Great Pyramid’s construction. Water could have been harnessed and pressure exerted via a pump, as Carson claims, to help raise the stones up a ramp to their intended position. Egyptologists still debate the purpose of the shafts inside the Great Pyramid with some claiming they served a spiritual purpose (so the king’s soul could ascend to the heavens) and others a practical left over from construction. Egyptologist Miroslav Verner states that these questions cannot finally be answered as we have no definitive texts or archaeological evidence to point in one direction or another.
While that may be so, Carson’s claim for water power in construction makes more sense than many others (such as a hoist being used to transport the stones when, clearly, there is no evidence whatsoever for Egyptian use or knowledge of a crane) and it is known that the Egyptians were acquainted with the concept of the pump. King Senusret (c. 1971-1926 BCE) of the Middle Kingdom drained the lake at the center of the Fayyum district during his reign through the use of canals and pumps were used to divert resources from the Nile in other periods. Ukranian engineer Mikhail Volgin also cites water as central to the Great Pyramid’s construction and claims that the pyramids were not designed as tombs at all actually but were immense waterworks depots. He points to the lack of any mummies found in the pyramids, their shape, and the high water table of the Giza plateau as evidence for his claim.
