This is the best summary so far of old and new theories of pyramid construction possibilities, by Egyptologists Bob Brier, on the Archaeology magazine website. It includes helpful diagrams to accompany detailed explanations, and offers an excellent summary of Jean-Pierre Houdin's theory, together with an assessment of the evidence.
Brier concludes: "Far from being just another theory, the internal ramp has considerable evidence behind it. A team headed by Jean-Pierre Houdin and Rainer Stadlemann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo and one of the greatest authorities on pyramids, has submitted an application to survey the Great Pyramid in a nondestructive way to see if the theory can be confirmed. They are hopeful that the Supreme Council of Antiquities will grant permission for a survey. (Several methods could be used, including powerful microgravimetry, high-resolution infrared photography, or even sonar.) If so, sometime this year we may finally know how Khufu's monumental tomb was built. One day, if it is indeed there, we might just be able to remove a few blocks from the exterior of the pyramid and walk up the mile-long ramp Hemienu left hidden within the Great Pyramid."
See the above page, from Archaeology Volume 60 Number 3, May/June 2007 for the full story.
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On 27 August 2006 the ancient method of RAMPLESS Egyptian Pyramid construction was re-discovered by an Australian mechanical engineering tradesman. The ancient method is fully explained, with photographs and illustrations in Raising Stone 1: Paul Hai's racks & pinions theory ISBN 9780646476797. Google search haitheory or rampless Egyptian Pyramid construction.
www.haitheory.com
For those of you interested in Bob Brier can travel with him on a tour to Egypt. Please see the Far Horizons website - www.farhorizons.com - to see the itinerary for several tours that he leads.
Rampless Egyptian Pyramid construction has a definite AUSTRALIAN connection
Captain Matthew Flinders navigated and mapped Australia’s coastline. His grandson became Professor Sir William Matthew Flinders Petrie who excavated ancient Egyptian artifacts. In 1895 as an employee of the Egypt Exploration Fund (now Society) of London he was excavating artifacts at Deir el-Bahari and found a cache of ancient building equipment buried for preservation in a hewn out rock pit during Pharaonic times.
One of the wooden items is stated as being of “unidentified use” and has been named the “Petrie rocker” by Egyptologists.
Petrie considered the “rocker” was used to raise Pyramid blocks with a “rocking” motion and in 2006 he has been proven partly correct on the matter of raising Pyramid blocks using “rockers”.
The “rocker” is a component of an ancient Egyptian pulley which operates with a mechanical advantage of 2.8 and with CLASS 2 lever principle as a wheelbarrow does. (CLASS 2 lever: Pivot – Load – Effort).
The technical term for the “Petrie rocker” is “pinion-pulley lobe quadrant”. Four of these surround a Pyramid block and then the pulley is hoisted causing rotation and positive engagements of pulley lobes with Pyramid steps.
Consider the Pyramid as four RACKS of stone teeth on to which the PINION pulley lobes engage and here is the earliest form of RACK & PINION mechanics that we know of.
This is the ancient method of Pyramid construction as used on at least four large Pyramids: Sneferu’s RED Pyramid and those at Giza of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure.
This ancient method of construction DOES NOT REQUIRE RAMPS and uses the Pyramid under construction (using all four sides simultaneously) to complete the Pyramid, thus using a Pyramid to build a Pyramid.
Petrie died in Jerusalem in 1942 unknowing that “Petrie rockers” are components of an ancient pulley, unlike any pulley in the modern world, hitherto unknown and one of his most important excavations.
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