Since the early eighties, Prof. Joseph Davidovits is proposing that the pyramids and temples of Old Kingdom Egypt were constructed using agglomerated limestone, rather than quarried and hoisted blocks of natural limestone. This type of fossil-shell limestone concrete would have been cast or packed into molds. Egyptian workmen went to outcrops of relatively soft limestone, disaggregated it with water, then mixed the muddy limestone (including the fossil-shells) with lime and tecto-alumino-silicate-forming materials (geosynthesis) such as kaolin clay, silt, and the Egyptian salt natron (sodium carbonate). The limestone mud was carried up by the bucketful and then poured, packed or rammed into molds (made of wood, stone, clay or brick) placed on the pyramid sides. This re-agglomerated limestone, bonded by geochemical reaction (called geopolymer cement), thus hardened into resistant blocks. In 1979, at the second International Congress of Egyptologists, Grenoble, France, he presented two conferences. One set forth the hypothesis that the pyramid blocks were cast as concrete, instead of carved. Such a theory was greatly disruptive to the orthodox theory with its hundreds of thousand of workers taking part in this gigantic endeavor. The second conference stressed that ancient stone vases manufactured 5000 years ago by Egyptians artists were made of cast synthetic (man made) hard stone.
J. Davidovits’ research was fiercely opposed by some experts (geologists and egyptologists) who did not refrain from publicizing the usual brickbats. The theory was finally published in a popular book, in 1989, entitled: “The Pyramids: an enigma solved”, Hippocrene Books, New York (4 printings) and later by Dorset, New York. In 1998, Prof. Davidovits resumed his work and he has presented updated and new results at Geopolymer Congresses. (See details in Archaeology applications in Geopolymer Proceedings ). Also, revised editions of the book has been published since 2003, see J. Davidovits website .
The carving and hoisting theory indeed raises questions that have been insufficiently answered. Using stone and copper tools, how did workers manage to make the pyramid faces absolutely flat? How did they make the faces meet at a perfect point at the summit? How did they make the tiers so level? How could the required amount of workers maneuver on the building site? How did they make the blocks so uniform? How were some of the heaviest blocks in the pyramid placed at great heights? How were twenty-two acres of casing blocks all made to fit to a hair’s breadth and closer? How was all of the work done in about twenty years? Experts can only guess. And Egyptologists must admit that the problems have not been resolved.
Theories of construction are many and continue to be invented. All are based on carving and hoisting natural stone, and none solves the irreconcilable problems. The casting and packing agglomerated stone theory instantly dissolves the majority of the logistical and other problems.
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