Page 278 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

the problems multiplied: four blocks a minute would have had to be
delivered, about 240 every hour.
Such scenarios are, of course, the stuff construction managers’
nightmares are made of. Imagine, for example, the daunting degree of
coordination that must have been maintained between the masons and
the quarries to ensure the requisite rate of block flow across the
production site. Imagine also the havoc if even a single 2.5 ton block had
been dropped from, say, the 175th course.
The physical and managerial obstacles seemed staggering on their own,
but beyond these was the geometrical challenge represented by the
pyramid itself, which had to end up with its apex positioned exactly over
the centre of its base. Even the minutest error in the angle of incline of
any one of the sides at the base would have led to a substantial
misalignment of the edges at the apex. Incredible accuracy, therefore,
had to be maintained throughout, at every course, hundreds of feet
above the ground, with great stone blocks of killing weight.

Rampant stupidity

How had the job been done?
At the last count there were more than thirty competing and conflicting
theories attempting to answer that question. The majority of academic
Egyptologists have argued that ramps of one kind or another must have
been used. This was the opinion, for example, of Professor I.E.S Edwards,
a former keeper of Egyptian Antiquities at the British Museum who
asserted categorically: ‘Only one method of lifting heavy weights was
open to the ancient Egyptians, namely by means of ramps composed of
brick and earth which sloped upwards from the level of the ground to
whatever height was desired.’
8
John Baines, professor of Egyptology at Oxford University, agreed with
Edwards’s analysis and took it further: ‘As the pyramid grew in height,
the length of the ramp and the width of its base were increased in order
to maintain a constant gradient (about 1 in 10) and to prevent the ramp
from collapsing. Several ramps approaching the pyramid from different
sides were probably used.’
9
To carry an inclined plane to the top of the Great Pyramid at a gradient
of 1:10 would have required a ramp 4800 feet long and more than three
times as massive as the Great Pyramid itself (with an estimated volume of
8 million cubic metres as against the Pyramid’s 2.6 million cubic
metres). Heavy weights could not have been dragged up any gradient
10

8 Ibid., p. 220.
Atlas of Ancient Egypt, p. 139.
9
10 Peter Hodges and Julian Keable, How the Pyramids Were Built, Element Books,
Shaftesbury, 1989, p. 123.

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