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« Fatah building new "Special Force" - with Egypt's help | Main | Khouri on Arab security services and foreign policy »
10:23AM

Pyramids built from inside out?

A new theory on how the Pyramids were built:

A French architect says he has cracked a 4,500-year-old mystery surrounding Egypt's Great Pyramid, saying it was built from the inside out.

Previous theories have suggested the tomb of Pharaoh Khufu was built using either a vast frontal ramp or a ramp in a corkscrew shape around the exterior to haul up the stonework.

But flouting previous wisdom, Jean-Pierre Houdin said advanced 3D technology had shown the main ramp which was used to haul the massive stones to the apex was contained 10-15 metres beneath the outer skin, tracing a pyramid within a pyramid.
I still think it was aliens. But look at how they want to prove the theory:

Now, an international team is being assembled to probe the pyramid using radars and heat detecting cameras supplied by a French defence firm, as long as Egyptian authorities agree.
What, using high-tech defense equipment on the national treasures? I suspect Zahi would say no unless he gets to do the Discovery Channel special about it, and Hosni will say no unless he gets to keep the high-tech gadgets.

Reader Comments (9)

The pyramds are the national symbol of Egypt and the pride of the Arabs! It is only Egyptians who should work on them! If we dont have enough conservationsts and archeologists, then we have to prepare and train more of them

Apr 1, 2007 at 3:31 PM | Unregistered Commenteramre El-abyad

Do you really mean that Amre? A building like that is world heritage. Therefore the best from everywhere should work on their history. It is natural that Egypt will have a great number of Egyptologists, but why exclude a Japanese, a Brazilian or a French? That's just not how sience works.

Apr 2, 2007 at 10:26 AM | Unregistered CommenterMoritz

@Moritz i agree with you, no one is to be excluded. But it has to be under full Egyptian supervision.

Sometimes, politically charged, pseudo scientific theories that later on become very popular spring out ,intentionally or not, of foreigners working on the pyramids. Like the alliens theory, Hebrews theory or any other theory that tend to trace the pyramid builders to any different ethnicity than that of the contemporary Egyptians

Apr 2, 2007 at 4:39 PM | Unregistered Commenteramre el-abyad

I don't think you can stop the aliens theory or comparable theories through Egyptian supervision on the work of archeolgists. I am pretty sure, that most of the important proponents of the alien theory have never seen the pyramids, let alone done some real work on site. The only way to show these theories are wrong is by hard fact based science.

Apr 3, 2007 at 12:12 AM | Unregistered CommenterMoritz

You are right Amre, Egyptians really need to weed out the theories that may actually have some bit of truth in them and instead cling to silly myths about the path using outdated methods and techniques of archeology. We see the great preservation techniques of the Egyptian musuem. Maybe the technologically more advanced foreigners aren't so bad...

Apr 3, 2007 at 1:26 AM | Unregistered Commenterrl

I see you are a startrec fan:)

Apr 3, 2007 at 2:10 AM | Unregistered Commenteramre El-abyad

Hmm. My answer seems to have been lost to the spam filter. :(

Apr 3, 2007 at 11:44 AM | Unregistered CommenterMoritz

now it is there :) spam sieve seems to be rather slow from time to time

Apr 4, 2007 at 1:27 AM | Unregistered Commentermoritz

All very well you guys tossing off on each other over whether "foreigners" have any right to fondle the pyramids, but remember that whoever put those things up and however they did it, it had nothing to do with the handful of guys who came over here from Saudi several millennia later.

From a more practical angle: maybe if Whitey didn't pay for the discovery, excavation, preservation, restoration and presentation of every temple, tomb and pyramid currently fueling the cash-cow tourist industry, as well as the museums and the roads leading up to them, not to mention the security forces who control access to them, it would be easier to persuade Whitey to let local experts do it their way?

Apr 6, 2007 at 10:07 AM | Unregistered CommenterNige

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