Guy Demortier, Professor of physics at the University of Namur, explains in the latest edition of the famous French-speaking magazine Science & Vie how the Great Pyramids of Egypt were in fact most probably built by pouring a sort of concrete into wooden boxes to make each block of the pyramids.
He demonstrates the impossibility of the theory that slaves pulled the huge blocks from quaries many kilometres away. The first reason was that the chemical composition of the blocks does not match that of quaries anywhere near the pyramids. The second argument is that no wooden sled, onto which the blocks were supposedly carried to be pulled, would have resisted the weight of such huge blocks. The third reason is that there was no space on the 6 ha around the pyramid to fit 100,000 people, which is the supposed number of workers it took to build the Pyramid of Cheops. The fourth is that a block should have been placed every 4 minutes, working day and night for 365 days a year during 20 years to place the 2.600.000 blocks of the Pyramid of Cheops.
Professor Demortier suggested that the blocks were made from a sort of cement made of stone powder and gravel mixed with water and poured into wooden frames on location. The extremely dry local climate would have turned the paste into stone relatively quickly. This would have made the job much easier, and would explain how the Pyramid of Cheops was indeed completed in about 20 years during the reign of Khufu. Chemical analysis of the blocks seem to support this new theory.
I didn't read about other monuments made this way, but it would seem much easier to carve the Sphynx had it been made of soft mortar than in huge blocks of hard stone.
He demonstrates the impossibility of the theory that slaves pulled the huge blocks from quaries many kilometres away. The first reason was that the chemical composition of the blocks does not match that of quaries anywhere near the pyramids. The second argument is that no wooden sled, onto which the blocks were supposedly carried to be pulled, would have resisted the weight of such huge blocks. The third reason is that there was no space on the 6 ha around the pyramid to fit 100,000 people, which is the supposed number of workers it took to build the Pyramid of Cheops. The fourth is that a block should have been placed every 4 minutes, working day and night for 365 days a year during 20 years to place the 2.600.000 blocks of the Pyramid of Cheops.
Professor Demortier suggested that the blocks were made from a sort of cement made of stone powder and gravel mixed with water and poured into wooden frames on location. The extremely dry local climate would have turned the paste into stone relatively quickly. This would have made the job much easier, and would explain how the Pyramid of Cheops was indeed completed in about 20 years during the reign of Khufu. Chemical analysis of the blocks seem to support this new theory.
I didn't read about other monuments made this way, but it would seem much easier to carve the Sphynx had it been made of soft mortar than in huge blocks of hard stone.