How is a pyramid built?

Answer 1

Egyptian pyramids are amongst the oldest stone buildings in the world. They were built nearly five thousand years ago. These ancient tombs are also among the world's largest structures. The biggest is taller than a 40-story building and covers the area occupied by Lincoln's Inn (about 13 acres; 5.3 hectares). Men built these huge structures without the help of equipment such as cranes and bulldozers. The ancient Egyptians used tools of copper, a softer metal than steel. Wooden wedges to help prise the stone from the quarry face and levers to help put the stones in place were also used in building the pyramids. Building a pyramid was dirty, difficult and dangerous work. It required meticulous planning and organization.

Two varieties of stone were used, limestone and granite. The limestone which made up the bulk of the pyramid was quarried locally. The granite had to be brought from the quarries at Aswan to where the pyramid was being built. They were transported on the Nile River in massive reed boats. The average weight of one of the pyramid's stone block is two and half tons. Some of the Aswan blocks, however, weighed up to 70 tons. To complete the Great Pyramid at Giza, one stone block was quarried, shaped and placed in position every two minutes for 20 years. It was this dangerous, hard and monotonous work that was done by slaves. This was an era of slave labour and none were more expert in directing their slaves than the ancient Egyptians. The slaves were naked too low in status to be given clothes.

In the minds of the Ancient Egyptians the pyramid form served a very serious purpose. Ancient Egyptians had a strong belief in life after death. The pharaohs wanted their bodies to last forever, so they had pyramids built to protect their bodies after death. Each pyramid housed a pharaoh's preserved body. It also held the goods he would need in his next life to continue living as he had when he was alive. Granite doors, false passages and fake burial chambers were built in an attempt to confuse and stop robbers from robbing the pyramids. In spite of these precautions, all pyramids were robbed of their treasures by around 1000 B.C.

Building plans showing how the pyramid was built have never been found, experts use present knowledge about construction to make some intelligent guesses. The Ancient Egyptians were an ingenious people. You cannot help to be impressed by the fearlessness the ancient builders exhibited in taking on such a colossal project.

The limestone blocks were cut out in the quarries close the pyramid site. Most of these blocks were roughly cut to size. Only where precision was needed were they dressed and trimmed by skilled masons to exacting standards. Once the limestone blocks quarried they were hauled on sledges along a causeway by gangs of slaves. Water was poured around the sledges to help them slide.

A spiralling ramp of mud, brick and rubble was used to haul the blocks to the level where building was going on. Once at the working level the blocks were man-handled off the sledges into position by levers and brute force by further gangs of slaves called setters. Once relieved of their load the hauliers would then make their weary way back down the ramp to start the whole process again.

A canal connected the pyramid site with the Nile. Here granite brought down from Aswan and fine limestone from Tura was unloaded. These were special stones that involved a lot of preparation in their quarrying, dressing and transportation.

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Answer 2

Egyptian pyramids are amongst the oldest stone buildings in the world. They were built nearly five thousand years ago. These ancient tombs are also among the world's largest structures. The biggest is taller than a 40-story building and covers the area occupied by Lincoln's Inn (about 13 acres; 5.3 hectares). Men built these huge structures without the help of equipment such as cranes and bulldozers. The ancient Egyptians used tools of copper, a softer metal than steel. Wooden wedges to help prise the stone from the quarry face and levers to help put the stones in place were also used in building the pyramids. Building a pyramid was dirty, difficult and dangerous work. It required meticulous planning and organization.

Two varieties of stone were used, limestone and granite. The limestone which made up the bulk of the pyramid was quarried locally. The granite had to be brought 400 miles from the quarries at Aswan to where the pyramid was being built. They were transported on the Nile River in massive reed boats. The average weight of one of the pyramid's stone block is two and half tons. Some of the Aswan blocks, however, weighed up to 70 tons. To complete the Great Pyramid at Giza, one stone block was quarried, shaped and placed in position every two minutes for 20 years. It was this dangerous, hard and monotonous work that was done by slaves. This was an era of slave labour and none were more expert in directing their slaves than the Ancient Egyptians.

In the minds of the Ancient Egyptians the pyramid form served a very serious purpose. Ancient Egyptians had a strong belief in life after death. The pharaohs wanted their bodies to last forever, so they had pyramids built to protect their bodies after death. Each pyramid housed a pharaoh's preserved body. It also held the goods he would need in his next life to continue living as he had when he was alive. Granite doors, false passages and fake burial chambers were built in an attempt to confuse and stop robbers from robbing the pyramids. In spite of these precautions, all pyramids were robbed of their treasures by around 1000 B.C.

Building plans showing how the pyramid was built have never been found, experts use present knowledge about construction to make some intelligent guesses. The Ancient Egyptians were an ingenious people. You cannot help to be impressed by the fearlessness the ancient builders exhibited in taking on such a colossal project.

The limestone blocks were cut out in the quarries close the pyramid site. Most of these blocks were roughly cut to size. Only where precision was needed were they dressed and trimmed by skilled masons to exacting standards. Once the limestone blocks quarried they were hauled on sledges along a causeway by gangs of slaves. Water was poured around the sledges to help them slide.

A spiralling ramp of mud, brick and rubble was used to haul the blocks to the level where building was going on. Once at the working level the blocks were man-handled off the sledges into position by levers and brute force by further gangs of slaves called setters. Once relieved of their load the hauliers would then make their weary way back down the ramp to start the whole process again.

A canal connected the pyramid site with the Nile. Here granite brought down from Aswan and fine limestone from Tura was unloaded. These were special stones that involved a lot of preparation in their quarrying, dressing and transportation. A vast amount of labour: of quarrymen, masons and of course slaves.

Answer 3

Shortly after ascending the throne in 2589BC, Pharaoh Khufu commanded his overseer of works to prepare a burial place in keeping with his status as a god-king, a pyramid tomb far grander than anything that had been built before or since. A site was chosen on the Giza plateau west of the Nile across from his capital at Memphis. The site was surveyed and levelled to provide a foundation for Khufu's Great Pyramid.

As the slaves cut the first stones for the pyramid from nearby quarries, thousands more began building the causeway, erecting storehouses and digging a canal to link the foot of the plateau to the Nile. Meanwhile scribes, the Pharaoh's project managers, dispatched orders for more supplies.

A town was built for the crafts people where they were provided with houses, food, clothing and even medical care. Less comfortable accommodation in the form of barracks was provided for the slaves. They were also provided with food but no clothing, the slaves went naked.

Through Khufu's reign, the construction site teemed with workers of all kinds hard pressed to complete the monument before the king's death. Khufu and his architects did not make it easy for them. The royal planners decided to enlarge the structure several times and relocate the burial chamber from beneath the structure to its inner reaches. Day after day, year after year, the quarries rang with the sound of hammer and chisel on stone. Through the dust the bodies of the quarry slaves stand out dark against the yellow stone. After the stone blocks are hacked out of the quarry face they are lowered onto sledges. A note of each load is taken down by a scribe.

From dawn to dusk, slaves dragged sledges loaded with stones each weighing about 2.5 tons each to staging areas at the base of the pyramid. Here the skilled masons chiselled the blocks to prescribed dimensions, smoothed the sides and squared the corners. Slaves then reloaded the sledge and began hauling them slowly up the ramp that spiralled around the emerging structure. The noise here was one of chanting slaves, the rumble of heavy sledges and the swish of the overseer's lash.

When the sledges reached the working level teams of slaves called setters shifted the blocks from the sledges into their designated positions. Toiling below were the tool makers, cooks, porters and guards under the watchful eyes of the scribes.

Other slaves were employed in maintaining and extending the ramps as the pyramid grew. These ramps were made of rubble, bound together with tafla (a type of clay) and laid with planks to ease the passage of the ramps.

Barges made from papyrus reeds deliver fine limestone from Tura just across the river and granite from Aswan over 400 miles upriver. Some of the granite stones from Aswan weighed up to 70 tons. Copper chisels were using for quarrying limestone but harder stones such as granite required stronger materials. Balls of dolerite, a hard, black igneous rock, were used in the quarries of Aswan to extract hard granite.

These dolerite "pounders" were used to pulverize the stone around the edge of the granite block that needed to be extracted. Teams of 60 to 70 slaves would pound out the stone. At the bottom, they rammed wooden pegs into slots they had cut, and filled the slots with water. The pegs would expand, splitting the rock. Slaves would then slide the blocks onto the barges.

At any one time as many as 30,000 workers may have been involved on this massive project. Some of them were professional craftsmen most however were slaves.

Answer 4

it was built by people. Although it is not precisely understood how the pyramids were constructed, it is widely understood that simple, effective tools were used to quarry the stones, move them to the construction site and place them in desired locations. It was a monumental undertaking. It is estimated it took 20 years the Great Pyramid of Khufu the largest of all the pyramids.

Building a pyramid involved the mechanics of moving huge masses of building material, mind boggling logistics and a labour force of thousands. Pyramid construction was the most massive building project in all of history.

The Aztecs, Mayans and ancient Egyptians had one thing in common: They built pyramids. Egyptians set the standard for classic pyramid design, massive monuments with square bases and four smooth sided triangular sides rising to a point. The construction involved highly skilled masons and various other tradesmen as well as thousands of slave labourers, many of whom died during construction. The crafts people lived in a specially built town where they were provided with houses, food, clothing and even medical care. The slaves were not so fortunate. They were housed in barracks, they were fed but not clothed.

The construction was an enormous drain on both the economy and manpower resources of the civilization. Thus, the pyramids became smaller and less extravagant as time passed. It is estimated the construction period lasted from 2600 B.C. to 1500 B.C.

Every time a new pharaoh ascended the throne, construction on a pyramid began. The new pyramid would be the pharaoh's final resting place for eternity. The construction site was laid out after engineers found a suitable location with a good foundation, which was excavated and levelled by the workforce. They used copper and stone cutting tools to carve out large stone blocks from the quarries. These large pieces were transported from local quarries using wooden sledges that were dragged by gangs of slaves. Transportation from remote quarries was accomplished with barges.

How the large stones were raised is uncertain. There is evidence that earthen ramps made of mud brick and rubble were used at an inclined plane during the first stages of construction. These were built up as the pyramid progressed upward and then removed as the pyramid was finished downward. The large blocks were dragged on sledges to the needed height. The exact configurations of the ramps are unknown.

Pyramid construction followed exact measurements and calculations performed by the priests who know the secret of mathematics. Skilled masons had precision tools with which they ensured the stones were smooth and fit together perfectly. The workers were coordinated to bring all the materials together to accomplish the pyramid's construction. There is no documentation available on how these great artefacts were actually built. However, human stamina, ingenuity and a stunning degree of intelligence and no doubt cruelty were certainly critical to the pyramid's monumental construction.

Answer 5

I very complex system of dirt ramps and maybe pulleys with utterly massive amounts of man power and rope. Basically they build a dirt ramp to slide up a sand stone block and then build another ramp higher for the next one and in the end they clean off the dirt

Answer 6

The Egyptian slaves make the blocks for the outer pyramid (limestone) and the inner walls (granite).

-gogloo