2024 update! The construction time frame still orbits twenty-years in academic circles. Not all, of course. but most I see. Just letting you know as this post from 2009 is almost as old as the pyramids. Carry on. For ankhs and giggles, let's bump the figure to 30 years and it's 210 2.5 ton stones a day. 8.75 placed an hour. One block every 6.85 minutes. Ponder that. Something is missing in our understanding of the Damned Thing.
According to mainstream Egyptologists, the Great Pyramid of Giza was constructed roughly over a 20-year period starting in 2580 BCE. Probably on a Monday. It is comprised of approximately 2.3 million stone blocks with an average weight of 2.5 tons or 5000lbs.
Let’s do the math:
1. 20 years multiplied by 365 days a year = 7300 days
2. 2,300,000 blocks divided by 7300 days = 315 blocks a day (315.068493 to be exact)
3. 1 day = 24 hours
4. 315 blocks divided by 24 hours = 13 blocks an hour (13.125 to be exact)
5. 1 hour = 60 minutes
6. 60 minutes divided by 13 blocks = One 2.5 ton
block placed every 4.6 minutes (4.61538462 to be exact)
Ponder that. I mean, really sit on the toilet and think about that. For the Great Pyramid to have been built in twenty years, laborers situated a 5000-pound stone every 4.6 minutes 24 hours a day for 7300 days straight despite errors, mishaps, or elevation.
Plus...
Don’t
let us forget it holds several shafts (can you dig it) and elaborate interior features like the King's Chamber, the Queen's Chamber, the The Grand Gallery, and that underground chamber. 2016 and 2017 non-evasive scanning programs found even MORE interior features.* The 4.6-minute speed DOES NOT INCLUDE these design features because no one knows how they were built
into the midst of everything else. Plus, this does NOT include the time to quarry and move the millions of stones! Nor does it include the outer polished
limestone layer that the locals (mostly) pilfered over the centuries. Nor does it include the construction of the mud bricks, which is its own process.
(Found this rendition on a number of sites in different formats, but never with a source for credit. Well done, mystery person.)
Plus...
Then we have the logistics of growing/processing/distributing food, water,
beer, milk, and housing the on sight workforce while disposing of the resulting...ahem...solid waste. My exhaustive
online research found an average human spawns 3-8 oz of stercore, as
they say in Latin, per day. Let’s call it 5.5 oz to keep it simple. While the
true size of the onsite workforce is unknown, estimates place it in the many thousands
depending on the time of year. 2500 humans in a single day, for example, could
grace Giza with 859.37 pounds of germ loving detritus requiring constant attention so
sickness didn't sweep away the labors. Or at best, get in the way.
Let your mind wander around a bit on this: the support systems needed to build the pyramids might surpass, in some ways, the constructs themselves. And scholars wonder why foolish, ignorant lay persons fancy outlandish theories about the lost and distant past. Personally, I’m not implying supernatural or non-human forces were at work here. I enjoy those ideas because looking at a picture from multiple directions can sometimes yield new knowledge on the subject. It's a big Universe, after all. No, for me the suspect of choice has always been the weirdos called Humans. When we want to, we're truly amazing. That's my ultimate message here. We did this. We. Did. This. What else can we do?
Unless, of course, the ancients did have gifted anti-gravity devices. The lazy bastards...
Be well, gentle reader.
* https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/hidden-chamber-pyramid-giza-180981745/
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