THE PYRAMIDS
An Enigma Solved
Joseph Davidovits and Margie Morris
New York: Hippocrene Books, 1988
263 pp.$16.95
Monuments for the ages to ponder, the mysterious pyramids of Giza have fascinated mankind for thousands of years. Their mass brings wonder to all those who stand below in Egypt's Saharan sands.
The Great Pyramid, credited to the Pharoah Khufu, is the largest, its square base covering 13.1 acres. Its apex towers as high as a fifty-story skyscraper. Its estimated 2.6 million stone blocks, averaging 2.5-3 tons, make up a bulk of 6.25 million tons.
All this rock was quarried, dressed, and raised into its lofty position within less than two decades, without pulleys, draft animals, or the wheel, according to Egyptologists. Yet thousands of the blocks are situated at great heights. Ancient engineers relied on crowbars, sledges, rollers, ramps, and sweat to build the pyramids, historians tell us.
The immense blocks fit as close as 0.002 inches, although iron and bronze were not yet developed to provide high-quality stonecutting. Logistical problems surrounding the building of the pyramids have not been reconciled; the precision is too great, the scale too grand. As scientific methods become more sophisticated, more questions are raised. The enigma grows.
Joseph Davidovits, a research chemist and founder of the chemistry of geopolymerization, states that he has solved the mystery in The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved. He writes that he has rediscovered the forgotten technology used to build the pyramids. According to him, the pyramid blocks are not natural stone, but are actually exceptional quality limestone concrete--synthetic stone--cast directly in place. His theory, if true, would mean that the pyramid builders must have done something, almost as miraculous as cutting, hauling, and mounting two and a half million huge stone blocks: master a technology of concrete that outperforms the best concrete produced by modern construction firms. Yet that, says Davidovits, a pioneer in the manufacture of synthetic stone, is precisely what the Egyptians did.
He and his American collaborator, Margie Morris, have produce a fascinating and provocative documentation of their theory, which many lawmen will find persuasive. Many professional Egyptologists who have listened to Davidovits expound his thesis at scholarly conferences over the last ten years have welcomed it with a deafening silence; others have denounced his theory as being against all evidence. Yet, if he is correct, major aspects of ancient history must be rethought, and Pyramids is intended to provoke just such a serious discussion.
Davidovits, a research chemist specializing in the manufacture of highly durable cements, began formulating his hypothesis after making synthetic stone himself at his research center one hundred miles north of Paris in the late 1970s. In the process of developing concrete that could safely contain hazardous radioactive wastes for many decades, Davidovits discovered low-temperature mineral bonds that he calls geopolymers. "Geopolymeric concrete,"
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