Building the Pyramids

One reputed architect has informed the world that the whole was constructed of pise. Water, by elaborate machinery, was led up to the required heights to mix with the sand to set in blocks of the needed size, and formed themselves tier by tier in the moulds. Mr. Perring thought scaffoldings were employed. Sir Gardner Wilkinson refers to the cutting away of the projecting angles, when they "smoothed the face of them to a flat inclined surface as they descended." This will meet the difficulty of its being finished downward.

Herodotus, the enigmatical historian, rather than the simple one, had before given this story. Dr. Lepsius, the German scholar, has his way of looking at it. " At the commencement of each reign," says he, "the rock.chamber destined for the monarch's grave was excavated, and one course of masonry erected upon it. If the king died in the first year of his reign, a casing was put upon it, and a pyramid formed; but if the king did not die, another course of stone was added above, and two of the same height and thickness on each side ; thus, in process of time, the building assumed the form of a series of regular steps. These were cased over with stones, all the angles filled up, and stones placed for steps. Then, as Herodotus long ago informed us, the pyramid was finished from the top downwards, by all the edges being cut away, and a perfect
triangle left."

Mr. Melville, the mystic, author of Veritas, has his view of the transaction ; saying, " Herodotus tells us the pyramids were finished downwards, and unquestionably they were. Books, learned books, as the writers fancy, have lately been published to explain this passage. Large blocks of stone have been supposed to have been lifted to their places, and then cut as required, and the debris thrown to the base. Oh, folly!"

[Be sure to check out the pyramid videos at http://www.egypt-packages.net for a current opinion on the concrete used to construct the pyramids. The thesis is that the concrete was poured, much like we do today.]

This is the story of the Greek: "Having finished the first tier, they elevated the stones to the second by the aid of machinery constructed of short pieces of wood ; from the second, by a similar machine, they were raised to the third, and so on to the summit. Thus there were as many machines as there were courses in the structure of the pyramids, though there might have been only one, which, being easily manageable, could be raised from one layer to the next in succession; both modes were mentioned to me, and I know not which of them deserves most credit."

Sir H. James, of the Ordnance Department, thinks the working rule of construction was by two poles, one horizontal, ten feet long, and the other vertical, of nine feet as, "the inclination of each edge of the pyramid is what engineers call ten to nine." But Sir Edmund Beckett, as an architect, demurs; remarking, "I do not at all agree with him that the builders worked by any such inconvenient rule as that -- carrying up
diagonally, slanting standards at the corners, and making the courses 'lineable by eye with them, however easy it may sound theoretically."