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Pyramid Construction - Theory2
Tripod Cranes and Canals
SYNOPSIS: The pyramids of Egypt represent an incomprehensible engineering feet IF it is assumed they were constructed by slaves, using ropes and rollers to move huge blocks of stone. On the other hand, the Egyptians were masters of hydraulic engineering. They built CANALS and used barges to move heavy objects. They routinely used primitive cranes to lift water, and other heavy objects, and understood levers and counterweights, and locks in canals and other basic engineering principles necessary in an irrigation centered culture. What IF some Egyptian hydraulic engineer thought of doing on an incredibly large scale what common Egyptians must have done on a smaller scale every dayÖ
PROPOSED TECHNIQUES: Stones transported seasonally by canals, with locks. The canals extending all the way from quarry to pyramid. Perhaps during wetter periods when tributaries provided water at higher water levels than the Nile. Human operated water powered tripod cranes, allowing the use of water power (as a crane ballast) to lift heavy weights upward in stages. Use of such water powered cranes as a pumping mechanism to lift water up the to layered ponds on each successive levels of the pyramid. (Or, possibly more likely, the early invention of a chain-of-pots water pump capable of using water power to lift more limited amounts of water to the top of a pyramid, and the use of that water, falling back down, to be used by hydraulic powered tripod cranes lifting the stones up from tier to tier of the pyramid.) By building a stone dike around each tier, and flooding it, shallow barges can be used to move stones into place with minimal human strength. Or, more likely, bundles of papyrus reeds on each side of a stone could float a barely submerged stone right to its final location.
BACKGROUND TECHNOLOGIES (In ancient Egypt):
"HIGH CANALS" and CANAL LOCKS: Egyptians routinely captured Nile floodwaters on their properties with dikes and canal gates. They built canals, in very ancient times, for irrigation, and also MUST HAVE used them for barge transportation. We know for sure of several canals used specifically for transportation. It can be reasonably assumed that farmers routinely used primitive boats and barges (during flood season) to move around large amounts of soil for the building of dikes and levees, and certainly for building platforms above the flood, to build their houses upon. It is not credible that the same technology was not used for moving monumental stones.
Canal locks, intelligently utilized, allow the use of an upstream level canal for the lifting of heavy weights, although upward transport is ultimately limited to the level of the upstream canal source.
A "high canal" (originating far upstream) owned and controlled by a monarch, gives him the ability to transport objects upward up to the stagnant (level) water level of the canal. And, when not used for such lifting and transporting purposes, it allows irrigation of lands that could not otherwise be irrigated.
The scale of construction possible in ancient times could not ever allow any one such canal to rival the irrigated area of the annual floods of the Nile. But it allows a select area to receive water, at the "King's command". This power of life and death extends to the broadest area possible and gives the King the most life and death power only IF the canal is not restricted to natural gravity flow. The use of locks allow the canal to have sections temporarily rendered stagnant. This allow transportation of heavy barges upstream or downstream, with minimal labor, specifically during periods of the year when the irrigation water is least needed downstream.
NOTE: Satellite photography must be utilized to look for the remnants of such "high canals", on the outskirts of the Nile valley.
ALSO NOTE: If the pyramids were built in a slightly wetter period of history, it is possible that there existed, in wintertime, tributaries to the lower Nile that could be used to fill canals at a higher elevation than possible with the waters of the Nile.
Such a "Royal High Canal", fitted with gates large enough to handle barges, provides a lifting mechanism beyond the capacity of slave labor. It also has a tendency to enlarge the territory under control of the king to at least the area included inside of that canal, even though that extends far beyond the flooding of the Nile.
If I were Pharaoh, I would probably operate such a canal on a daily cycle paralleling the yearly flooding of the Nile. Closing gates, creating lakes during the night (and allowing upstream transportation) and draining those lakes during the day, when peasants can see to irrigate their fields. This diurnal operation of gates (opening and shutting each gate only once a day) is slow by our standards. But it allows for irrigation cycles and transportation cycles ideal for ancient times, and in tune with the Egyptian experience with field flooding.
Such a "diuranal" cycled canal would be broken up into sections perhaps 10 miles long. One field/lake would be flooded to maximum along its course during each night, and released during the day. This sequential flood, traveling down the canal, also allows staged transport of barges up (or down) the canal, at the rate of 10 miles a day.
The difference between a modern transportation canal (with short locks) and this primitive canal is that locks are essentially each 10 miles (one day's travel) long, with water level in each lock cycling from minimum to maximum once each day. This is more in tune with the Egyptian flooding style of irrigation (during daylight hours, when water is released), and allows canal workers operating the gates to cycle them without having to communicate over the length of a several hundred mile long canal.
WATER POWERED TRIPOD CRANES:
The classic lifting device in ancient Egypt was the counterweighted tripod crane. We KNOW that it was used for lifting water from a low canal to a higher canal from the most ancient times. It can also reasonably be surmised that clever slaves played with the use of water (in water-skins, large or small) as a counterweight. If you are lifting water uphill, and you are called upon to lift something else, from the lower to the higher canal (say, from a lower barge to a higher barge), nothing allows as easy of counterweight control as carefully adding or releasing a small quantity of water from a bag, box, or pot.
Now IF the water is naturally FLOWING from the higher canal to the lower canal, AND IF the slaves are now required to STILL lift objects by crane from the lower to the higher canal, THEN it is not a great stretch to imagine one of them rigging a tube or trough leading water from the higher canal into a counterbalance bag originally located right at the water level of the higher canal. Then, as the bag fills, the increased counterbalance weight will pick up the load, and swing it up and over towards the barge in the upper canal.
While we have no direct evidence of such a water powered crane, it is a direct and logical outgrowth of jobs performed thousands of times a day, with equipment that was indigenous to the area. It is inconceivable that tripod cranes were not used to lift objects from low to high barges, or that water bags were never used as an adjustable counterweight. The development would be natural, even without the existence of engineers or great inventors.
Now, ASSUMING the existence of a water powered crane, filled by gravity water flow, and swung by a slave to transport cargo, AND knowing that lifting water uphill was the primary function of tripod cranes by ordinary slaves, it is not a stretch to postulate the use of the flow of water downhill to transport water further uphill.
In other words, a human operated water powered "pump" or lifting device could be operated anywhere that water flowed from a high canal to a lower canal. If the dropping water is used as a crane counterweight, it can perform work and lift water to an even higher canal.
It has been widely held that water pumps operated by water power could not be a truly ancient invention, mainly because true mechanical water pumps didn't exist. But this is ONLY true if you forget that human operated water pumps (tripod cranes) were a common feature in ancient Egypt.
We MUST assume, that when very strong motivation existed to move lots of water uphill to successively higher heights, that human operated water powered tripod cranes did the lifting, NOT human beings carrying water up a ramp in jugs. We KNOW they used tripod cranes, rather than jugs, routinely, for moderate scale irrigation water lifting. Large scale lifting would have favored the water powered versions, even if they were not the common device used by the common farmer to irrigate his garden.
AUTOMATED WATER LIFTING TRIPOD CRANES:
It is conceivable that an "automatic" water lifting/ water operated crane could be built. If one or more posts are erected near the tripod crane, simple ropes strung from them to the boom of the crane could direct the path of the crane to fill and empty in the appropriate points of travel, without having any high friction or high wear elements in the structure. Then, automatic operation merely requires a mechanism to automatically empty a full container of water at a certain point in travel. Such a device may have already existed in classical times, as an automatic measuring system for measuring out grain with a scoop that automatically filled and emptied entirely on its own, with a constant volume each time.
The invention of the tube or trough that leads water into the ballast bag or box is truly the "difficult" part of the invention. Automation of the swinging and dumping of the water load is actually a "natural development" of necessary technology.
Efficient use of a slave requires the cranes to get bigger and bigger. This (eventually) calls for the use of ropes attached to the tops of post (and other rope mechanisms) to assist the slave in swinging the load to the dumping point (and back). And, due to the extensive time wasted in filling a ballast box, it is "natural" for a slave to operate more than one crane at a time.
Any competent worker will, over time, optimize the rigging to minimize his backbreaking labor, if he is motivated to do so.
Egyptian slaves, in the time of Moses, were given quotas of work to be performed, rather than told how many hours to work (Exodus ___________). Either a slave given time off when his quota was reached, or a contractor paid for delivering so many acre feet of water, had plenty of motivation to increase water lifting efficiency.
MULTI-STEP CRANE LIFTING:
If a major drop of water (in a canal) existed at one place, it would be a "natural use" to utilize that water power to lift a smaller quantity of water uphill. If the first stage cranes were substantial enough, it is conceivable that water allowed to drop from the first lifting stage (a higher canal or pond) could be utilized to lift water to an even higher canal or pond.
While ordinary farmers had virtually no incentive to lift more than a single stage, any ruler would see things differently. The extent of his kingdom and power were probably bounded by the highest transportation canal he could provide with water. If a series of cranes could use floodwaters (during the spring flood) to lift both water and cargo into very high level canals, it would enable the king to transport heavy weights, barges, and water into regions several days walk beyond the normal flood range of the Nile.
It is most easy to visualize multi-step lifting of water as using a single waterfall to power the lifting of water and cargo to a series of every smaller ponds. The pond size must logically decrease by half, since doubling the height of lift naturally halves the amount of water transported. And, once the ponds are full, their levels can be maximized by using the ponds to transport dirt to the berms about their perimeter.
And, as the water level increases in each pond, it is also natural to fill the pond gradually with dirt, to build up a dirt pyramid, using water power lifting.
PYRAMIDS & WATER POWER:
The origins of pyramid building is probably related to the origins of building dirt platforms above the Nile floods.
Ordinary farmers found their fields flooded each year. They built dikes around their property, that formed lakes for a time, even after the floods began subsiding. Transportation was limited to walking on the dikes, and using shallow boats and barges in the flooded fields.
When dikes had to be built up, it was natural to transport the dirt by barge or boat. Houses had to be built above the water, on platforms, or mud houses would crumble into muck at each annual flooding. This would be done by using a boat to transport mud (perhaps quit liquid mud) from the highest point in the field to the house platform area. One EXCELLENT way of creating a well packed platform is to create a dike around the platform, and fill it with mud and water, compacted by water and human feet. A natural way of lifting both water and mud into the platform "pond" is with a tripod crane.
A king could build a more substantial platform, using water power from an adjacent canal, to lift both water and mud into a gradually growing higher level platform. The use of falling water to power the cranes allowed him to build a platform with less slave labor than was required for ordinary platform building.
And, if the king wanted the platform to be more durable, he could incorporate rocks or rubble in the outer dike, to form a barrier against the floodwaters that naturally eat at anything made of dirt.
And, in a kingdom made flat by Nile floods, a multi-stage water powered lifting system could allow him to construct a "pyramid platform", with two or three or more stages of terraces, built up entirely by water power.
The king, unlike the peasant, would be motivated to make each terrace a true pond, deep enough to be used by barges, during the construction phase. This would allow him to drop dirt or rock anywhere he chose over the platform area, without benefit of human lifting, using water powered cranes and dirt transporting barges.
TRUE PYRAMIDS: If a truly impressive high canal were available for water power, and if a King wanted to carry the tiered platform to its ultimate logical conclusion, a true stepped pyramid could be built, by successively smaller ponds built one atop the other. The individual "steps" would each be both a pond, and a canal around the perimeter of that step, presumably with a hewn stone barrier wall around each step. A hewn stone wall allows for the narrowest possible dikes to retain the pond, and encourages the steepest of possible pyramid structures. At some point rubble replaces dirt as a fill material, to help stabilize the hewn stone walls, and eventually "standard size stones" become the fill material as well, perhaps with clay or bitumen filling in the gaps to prevent water seepage.
THE CANAL:
Presumably, any canal leading to the waterfall/pyramid site, would also be a natural transportation corridor for barges carrying construction materials (specifically stones).
Also, logically, it would be used for transportation when water was most available and least needed for other irrigation needs (during the flood of the Nile). And, also logically, this flood season is the time when a King can appropriate the labor of his peasants without any loss of productive farming time.
IF such a canal were designed to transport stones seasonally, and in a short period of time, it would also be logical that the canal might allow bi-directional barge transport. Presumably, a pair of parallel canals would be most efficient, one coming and one going.
Ruins of such a canal would show up as segments of a very wide raised berm of earth, all at the same elevation level.
TRANSPORTATION HUB:
If a very long "high canal" were led from a source of quarried stone to a logical termination place in the kingdom, that location would be a natural transportation hub. The pyramid site would not necessarily be a city site, but would be a natural long term location for canal locks, and cranes transporting cargo from low to high level canals and such.
PERIPHERAL CRANES:
A pyramid consisting of a layer cake series of stone dike ponds requires (for its construction) that its entire perimeter be surrounded by water operated tripod cranes.
More significantly, it implies that the next layer should be begun long before the last layer is completed. (Water power is most efficiently used if later stages are already in place early in construction). Therefore, small areas of upper tiers could be expected to be built long before the lowest tiers are complete. It is also logical that these early to be completed sections will be the first sections to be "dry", and should logically be the main sections containing internal "dry chambers."
CHAIN POT WATER PUMPS, WATER WHEELS, ETC.
It is not NECESSARY that water powered pumps be limited to human operated tripod cranes.
First, an automated water lifting tripod crane was mentioned earlier. While it is useless for cargo, it is a natural development for lifting water.
Second, we do not know with certainty that waterwheels and chain pot pumps and such were not invented in distant antiquity.
If any device was natural and obvious, it would probably be a wheel of large pots driving another larger wheel, with smaller pots. This, with a wooden tool to tip the pots at the proper point in their travels, would constitute the most basic water wheel/water pump combination.
But, if a true chain of pots on a rope loop were ever conceived, hooked to any type of rotary waterwheel, the difficulty of building a tall pyramid would be reduced by many orders of magnitude. So much so, that the invention of long chains of pots, as a pump, may actually be a required element for pyramid construction.
ARGUMENT FOR CHAIN POTS:
A chain of pots pump cannot be demonstrated to exist this far back in time. BUT, it did, it would have allowed pumping water to a great height, slowly and automatically, without human intervention, day and night, around the clock.
The prior existence of automated water lifting tripod cranes would be an extreme catalyst for the invention of further water lifting devices. Cranes are limited in lift to about half the length of their boom. The ancient's routinely lifted water from deep wells with ropes and buckets and pulleys (though not necessarily wheeled pulleys) that did not have this lifting height limitation.
Contractors, hired to deliver fixed volumes of water to a high canal, would be the most highly motivated to develop automated pumping to its next logical step. Wheels existed. Crude pulleys existed. Automated water lifting tripod cranes probably existed. Automatic load dumping mechanisms existed. Ropes and buckets existed. It was merely a matter of putting them all togetherÖ
If such a tall pump existed, then ALL of the necessary material lifting could be done by tripod cranes, using the falling water as ballasts in their lifting. And the water pumped during the night to flood a pyramid tier could be used FIRST, to transport stones by barge to their final location, and SECONDLY, to power the lifting of more stones up from a lower tier.
I will assume a chain of pots pump, merely because its existence makes the entire construction of a pyramid POSSIBLE, with a fraction of the human power. While human operated water powered tripod pumps alone, could theoretically enable water based pyramid construction, the motivation towards a totally automated, rotating pumping system would, over the course of a few centuries be overwhelming.
THE 4 SIDES OF A PYRAMID:
One wall of a pyramid would have to be devoted to multiple chain of pots pumps.
The second wall of a pyramid would have to be dedicated to cranes lifting cargo from one layer to the next.
This leaves two walls of the pyramid to be "open" to construction, which is approximately the correct balance, considering the technology of the times.
The use of water powered cranes (alone) to do the lifting of the water would probably require 3 sides to be utilized just for lifting, which may not permit a balanced construction pattern.
THE FLOATATION OF STONE BLOCKS:
Typical stones have a specific gravity of about 2. That means that, when submerged, they weigh only half as much.
The universal floatation system in the Nile valley was the use of bundles of papyrus reeds. While not sophisticated, it was cheap, requiring only human labor to gather and bundle the reeds. Note too, there was an economic incentive to clear the growth of papyrus to open waterways and to clear land for growing other things.
Therefore it is almost inconceivable for stones to be floated in a canal by any other means than by binding the stone between two bundles of papyrus reeds.
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