This conference was recorded in 2008,
representing the knowledge at that time.
Since then, recent scientific studies using very powerful and modern equipment
found the ultimate evidence that the pyramids stones are synthetic.
Believing in the artificial stone theory, or countering it,
is simply no longer relevant. It has become a fact, a truth.
Read more at www.geopolymer.org/pyramids or
buy the book: "Why the Pharaohs built the Pyramids with Fake Stones" at bookstores.
The Egyptian pyramids were built of re-agglomerated limestone, a type of
limestone concrete. I am a member of the International Association of Egyptology
and I presented this theory since 1979 in the Second Congress of Egyptology in
Grenoble, which was followed in Toronto in 1982, then in Cairo in 1988, and in
Grenoble in 2004. What I am claiming is that the stones of the pyramids are not
carved but re-agglomerated. This is proven by science,
experimentation, religion, and hieroglyphic texts. In order to present
the theory in a very short way, we have a small video that will show the different
aspects of the system.
Ari-Kat, the proven fact on how the pyramids were
built. At last, a logical explanation of how the ancient Egyptians built the
pyramids. An astounding discovery reveals they
were not built by 200,000 workers or by aliens from outer space. According to
archaeologists, the stones were all carved from nearby quarries,
hauled on sledges, hoisted on huge ramps and set in place by armies of workers.
To lift a thirty-ton block off the ground would require the force of at least 1200 men.
They would have built a ramp, whether circular or straight, over 1 kilometer
long, that required more material than the pyramid itself. And they ended up with
some sort of traffic jam until each block was placed in its position.
However, recent scientific studies discovered the presence of artificial elements in
pyramid stones. They found traces of a chemical reaction, more precisely,
a geosynthesis, namely the manufacture of minerals with chemistry.
Thus, Egyptians built the pyramids using man-made stone which looked exactly
the same as natural rocks. Limestone blocks were cast in place.
French scientist, Professor Joseph Davidovits, chemist, geopolymers and
ancient cement expert, solved the enigma. He sensed the truth when he found air
bubbles and fibers trapped inside great pyramids' limestone. He discovered fossil
shells in disarray, jumbled, not in normal sedimentary horizontally layers.
He confirmed the existence of a lost technology in the Irtysen stele,
currently found in the Louvre Museum, and also, with the enigmatic stone vessels found
in the labyrinth under the Saqqarah pyramid. The mystery was finally solved
when he decoded hieroglyphs found in an ancient stele at Sehel Island, near Aswan,
in the midst of the River Nile. It contains the chemical formula used by
high priest Imhotep to make the stones of the first pyramid in History: the Step
Pyramid at Saqqarah. Using the same formula and the same Ari-Kat stone
technology, Professor Davidovits replicated several artificial limestone
blocks in his laboratory at Saint-Quentin, near Paris. They looked exactly the same
as natural limestone.
The great Imhotep, the alchemist, and master architect of pharaoh Zoser,
made the stone blocks, and built the first pyramid at Saqqarah. He invented the
Ari-Kat stone technology. And here's how. Nearby the pyramids, pools were dug in
the soft limestone along the Nile, forming basins for producing limestone concrete.
Workers began disaggregating the crumbly rock with water coming from
the River Nile. They flooded the canals to form mud
with clay. Next, sodium carbonate, called Natron salt, was poured in. This salt is
a very reactive substance. It is mixed with ash rich in calcium oxide from
burnt palm trees. When added to water, the resulting mixture forms caustic soda
which will trigger off a powerful chemical reaction. Then, workers added
more limestone rubble, and another salt, magnesium chloride, named carnallite,
to lower the pH. After evaporation of water, the concrete is now ready.
The limestone paste is taken in buckets, then carried to the pyramids.
Archaeological digs discovered that only 2500 people were working on site.
In fact, the re-agglomerated stone theory doesn't need more workforce. By means of
wooden ramps and the tiers already set, men carried each bucket, and poured its
content into molds. Then, limestone concrete is compacted and left to harden.
Wooden molds had been prepared. These molds had been smeared with oil to ease
the release of the block once hardened. The mixture was rammed into the molds as
in the making of the packed earth called Pisé, becoming a strong and dense
re-agglomerated limestone. The workers stood inside the mold pounding the wet
material with a wooden pestle, packing it against a contiguous block already made,
thus producing a close fit. That's how Imhotep successors made millions of
blocks for Kheops Pyramid, one of the seventh wonder of the ancient world.
The Ari-Kat technology uncovers a logical, simple, and proven solution to the
mystery that has puzzled men for centuries, shading light on how the
pyramids were really built.
The idea seems very plausible. However, when you arrive on the site, this is what
you see. You have remains of carving activities. For example, on your left
is the Pyramid of Cheops and on your right is the pyramid of Chefren, and
in between, remains of carving activity which led geologists to contradict
Davidovits's theory. The problem is that they never
mention that above these quarrying remains, we get a beautiful hieroglyph.
It belongs to the pharaoh Ramses 2 that came on the site 1400 years later. It means
that the quarrying remains do not belong to the pyramid's time. This is a problem.
However, egyptologists and geologists agree with the locations of
the quarries where the material, the stony material, is coming from. We have located
the Cheops quarries at Giza. This is where they are. Looking at the
layers, we see that the materials were extracted in a very weak limestone.
It is absolutely not dedicated to the purpose of making building blocks and
building structures. But it is this layer of soft limestone that was used to build
the Pyramid of Cheops. They are other quarries that have been used
for the pyramid of Chefren and Mykerinos. So, we know the location
of the quarries at Giza. This is a cross-section of the plateau.
The quarries are located here. This is in the Wadi, below the plateau where the
pyramids have been built. The quarries are not close to the pyramids. They are
below and this is strange! This is confirmed by geochemical analysis made
by Professor Klemm from the University of Munich in Germany.
He analyzed the various blocks from the pyramids of Chefren, Cheops and Mykerinos.
He found that, for example, for Mykerinos, 100% of the stone is
coming from a quarry that is in the Wadi, below, for Cheops, in yellow,
it is 72%, for Chefren 44%. But from the base itself, at the place
where the pyramids have been founded on a very good
limestone bedrock, practically 0%, 3% for Cheops and
2.5% for Chefren are coming from that era. All the others are coming from
quarries that are in the Wadies. It means that practically 98 to 100% of
the stones that are constituting the great pyramids are coming from this soft
limestone layer. We look at the satellite view. We see that for Cheops and Chefren,
we have a level of 54 meters for Cheops, 56 meters for Chefren, and the quarries are
located below at 20 meters or 19 meters above sea level. We go to
Chefren, then we climb up to 72 meters. We see that, on the left of the
pyramid site, it goes higher. The geological limestone layers on the left
of the pyramids are higher. It would have been logical for the Egyptians to take
this very good limestone bed, that is located up the pyramids, to get the
limestone to be quarried, put on sledges, going down-hills to the pyramids site.
It would have been easy! No! What they have done, they made just the contrary:
they got their stones from the quarries that are located below the level of the pyramids,
and had to go up to the quarry, to the pyramids worksite. It means
they had to add another burden to their work they had to accomplish.
This is against nature. This is not how Homo Sapiens would have reacted.
Remember, all other quarrying activities that we find in Egypt, essentially in the
south of Egypt, in the Aswan quarries, in the granite quarries, and so forth.
The quarries are always located above the site where they have been used.
This is logical and this is always the same way that had been used later during antiquity.
The quarries are always located above, so that the stones could be
transported on sledges downwards very easily to the site. Here, in Egypt, it is
the contrary. This is strange and we will see other strange things at Giza that
shows that the normal way of thinking must be revisited and revised.
For example, we have huge blocks that have strange lift lines, layers,
that do not fit with geological layers. Then we see a block, a piece of stone,
here, practically 30 centimeters long, that is inside another limestone block.
Nature is not capable of doing this. If we look at other blocks, here, at the
Pyramid of Chefren on the south side, you see huge blocks that have curved
joints and very strange curved joints. This is impossible to get with the
regular carving tools and with the regular way of making the blocks,
as it is presented by egyptology. We continue to look at the variety
of strange things we see on the site. Here, we have the level, the horizontal
level. Beneath here is the natural limestone bedrock that is inclined, going
from the west to the east. We look at the nature of the
nummilithic shells that are constituting the limestone in Giza.
The natural limestone is made of fossil shells that are
horizontally aligned. It is quite obvious for natural
nummilithic limestone. We look at the pyramid blocks. We have these shells
in disarray, which is not very oftenly found in natural limestone. So, there is a
big difference between the natural geological limestone and
the pyramid blocks. We claim that the blocks were not carved but re-agglomerated.
This is proven by science. Which science? This is the science of geopolymers.
You know that this science is young. It is only a 30 years
young science. It is obvious that it takes time until the knowledge coming
from geopolymer chemistry is adopted by other fields of activity in the
university and especially in the world of history and here, precisely, egyptology.
We have geological analogues, -Si-O-Al- aluminosilicates, sialates.
We have systems that belong to natural geological minerals such as
calcilite, sodalite, sanidine, leucite or anorthite type. These are the results of various
geopolymerization. So, we are capable of making binders that have
the properties or the makeup of natural minerals. We have developed, with this
system, applications such as geopolymer resins, geopolymer cement, foam, composites,
and, of course, geopolymer stones. They are applied as fire and heat materials,
as cement and concrete for building materials. We are using the geopolymer
chemistry to mitigate global warming CO2 emissions.
Geopolymers are used for environmental technologies, the containment of toxic
waste. And we are applying the science to study archaeological artifacts.
Since we are dealing today with archaeology, we will be looking at Egypt.
We have antique geopolymers. These antique geopolymers
must follow prerequisite. There must be easy to implement.
We must have mineral resources in great quantities. This is a technology that is
not concrete. It is not regular gypsum.
There is no cement added to the system. And we are not using crushed stone.
On the opposite, we are using the knowledge from geopolymer, from geosynthesis,
from geochemistry, from mineralogy, from geology,
and we are using naturally weathered stone instead of crushed stone.
In the case of the Giza material, we have an agglomerated stone that is a mixture of
95 to 97 % by weight of limestone, that are shells, fossil shells, and calcite.
To which we add 3 to 5 % by weight of a geological glue that is a geopolymer.
This explains why geologists see nothing. You see in the literature
dealing with the contradiction of my theory,
and you see in several papers written on the internet, that it is very easy to look at
a stone and to detect if it is a natural of an artificial one. Wrong!
This is not the case for geopolymeric limestone and it is not the case for the Egyptian
limestone blocks that are making the pyramids. I have to show that,
each time geologists or mineralogists are looking at this type
of stone and claiming it will be very easy to detect that they are not made of the
the system that I am claiming, re-agglomeration, they fall in the pitfall of
the thin section optical analysis. What is the problem here? The problem is that
we are dealing with a material that is an aggregation of fossil shells. You see
the shells that are constituting the pyramids blocks. We have 95% of
shells, and in between, a very tiny amount of the binder that is called
"micritic binder". When you make a thin section, it is obvious that what you see
are the natural elements that is the shells. 95% of what you have under
your microscope lens is natural shells. We are just discussing the 5%
that are constituting the "micritic binder", the geological glue.
If you don't look at the geological glue, very precisely, you see nothing.
Since the beginning, I had to study some genuine pyramids stones,
and I discovered on this "Lauer sample", the presence of strange artifacts
that I called filaments. Then, we have a lot of air bubbles. This is a stone
that is covered with synthetic coating. This was in 1982. Then after, for several
reasons, essentially after 1990, I stopped doing any research on this material.
It had been only on the year 2001, 2002 that we started again to
reconstitute limestone blocks like the ones that we find at the pyramids.
We made several limestone artifacts in the laboratory. We will see them later
in great quantities. We took these re-agglomerated limestone, made in 2002,
to 2 different geological renown laboratories in France. The first one was
the Bureau de Recherche Géologique (BRGM), the French Geological Survey,
and a second at the Museum of Natural History in Paris at the Geological Department.
We gave them 2 samples of the limestone that we had re-agglomerated
in our laboratory at the Geopolymer Institute in Saint-Quentin, France.
We told them: "Look, we found this type of limestone.
There seemed to be strange for us. Could you tell us what it is really about these stones?"
They made thin sections. They wrote a report and this is what they got:
This is the thin section of what we gave them. Obviously, you see
the big nummilithe, then other natural artifacts like the quartz or the echinoidea,
and, in between, the micritic binder. The micritic binder is a binder
that is made of very small particles of calcite. They claimed this was the
thin section of natural nummilithic limestone. This piece of artifact was
made in our laboratory and had up to 10% by weight of modern geopolymer.
They could not detect it under the optical microscope. The binder that we used to
re-agglomerate the stone had been claimed to be the natural micritic binder.
So, if I don't say, if I don't tell that the piece of limestone has been made in
our laboratory, geologists and mineralogists will claim will state that
it is a natural stone. This is also the case for the samples that we got
from the Egyptian monuments.
I asked my scientific colleagues to look at a way in order to try,
to determine the artificial nature of the micritic binder, of the geological glue.
The only way to do it, the practical way to do it, is to use electron
microscope. This has been done recently by a group of 3 scientists:
Michel Barsoum, Adrish Ganguly from Drexel University in the US, and Gilles Hug from
the ONERA, in Paris, France. They published in December 2006, in the
Journal of the American Ceramics Society, the results of the analysis on the
electron microscope and they claimed having found "Microstructural Evidence of
Reconstituted Limestone Blocks". They studied six natural samples that came
from the quarries. We compared Egyptian monuments stones with natural quarries
where they usually seem to come from. And they analyzed 5 pyramids samples:
3 from Cheops' pyramid, and 2 from satellite from Mykerinos's pyramid,
that is called "Menk". I will focus on this one because it is the prototype for
the core blocks. It is the mass of the material constituting the pyramids.
This is where I took the "Menk" samples. This is one of the satellite pyramid.
This is the second one here. And this is the place where we took the samples.
This is the "Menk" samples which is a piece of a big stonework. Under the
electron microscope, we got the following analysis. As you see, it is a mix of
sodium, silicon, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, carbon, carbonate and chloride
that represent (NaSi6Al4MgCa7) calcium carbonate. It is an alumino-silicate
of geopolymer that has also sodium chloride and calcite in it.
The authors confirmed that the matrix was the result of geosynthesis in high
alkaline milieu, pH 13 to 14. I now present the various chemical steps
that have been used by the Egyptians in order to make their re-agglomerated limestone.
These are the steps that are exactly in agreement with the analytical results.
The first reaction is the use of sodium carbonate, Natron, that reacts with
lime, producing caustic soda. This is the basic of the geopolymeric reaction.
We have also the production of calcite. So the first step of
using this chemical reaction is the making of a natural mineral, calcite.
Then, caustic soda is reacting with the kaolinitic clay. This is one of the basic
reaction that we know in geopolymer chemistry. We get what is called here,
a hydrated feldspathoid. The pH is around 13 to 14.
If, instead of sodium carbonate in reaction 1, we have sodium sulfate,
then we would get caustic soda and the production of calcium sulfate.
It would be taken by geologists or mineralogists for remains of gypsum. Which is not.
We need lime. Sodium carbonate is a salt.
This is Natron, and we have to manufacture lime. This is a debate between
Egyptologists and ourselves. We will come back and discuss in detail this feature later.
Reactions 1 and 2 are the two reactions that I frequently use in our lab.
I thought that this was sufficient. However, I was always struck by the fact that
we were still in a high pH, and I was always wondering how the
Egyptian workers were dealing with this corrosivity.
Until I got the first results of the electron microscope analysis from my friends
Barsoum and Hug. The first result was that they did not find remains of Natron,
sodium carbonate. If the chemistry was right, we must have remains of sodium carbonate.
They did not find it. Second, they did not find the sodium alumio-silicate, what I was claiming.
This was a little disturbing. But instead of sodium carbonate remains or alumino-silicate,
they got sodium chloride and magnesium alumino-silicate.
I had to cope with this fact
to figure the chemistry that could yield to these two minerals.
I came with the addition of another salt that is always found with the first one,
with Natron. It is magnesium chloride, carnallite, and the likes.
I discovered a very simple reaction. When you add this magnesium chloride
into the system, first, it neutralizes it, and then, we have an exchange of
the sodium with the magnesium, and we get a new material, a new element,
a magnesium alumino-silicate. This is exactly what they found in their analysis,
with the production of halite, of sodium chloride.
The addition of this magnesium chloride, that is a very common salt also
in Egypt, has two major effects. The first one, it lowers the pH because
it neutralizes the caustic soda. The second, it transforms the sodium alumino-silicate
into the magnesium alumino-silicate found by the analysis.
If we measure the pH of the slurry,
we observe, essentially with a paper pH, a chromatographic behavior,
the pH of the liquid is around 9 instead of 13 to 14.
Whereas the pH of the paste is between 12 and 13. So, we have a strong
neutralization which able the workers to take the material with bare hands and
bring it to the building site. We continue. We have an excess of
all these starting elements such as sodium carbonate, then it reacts with carnallite,
with magnesium chloride. And we have production of magnesium carbonate,
magnesite, plus halite. This is very interesting. Because if, instead of sodium
carbonate, you have the production in the mix of sodium silicate, which happens if
one gets in the mix soluble silica that will react with caustic soda
producing sodium silicate, then the sodium silicate will react with
magnesium chloride and will be transformed into magnesium silicate,
another element also found in the analysis. So, to sum up, we get
the production of minerals that are analogues to natural elements, and
we have hydrated calcite on the top, hydrated magnetite, and both of them will
intereact to make hydrated dolomite, that will later transformed or crystallized into
the beautiful rhombohedral crystals that are also found in the pyramid stones and
in the mortars that belong to this Egyptian epoch.
As a summary, we have the action of the reactive product. One natural element is clay,
kaolinitic clay, could also be silicates. We are producing natural minerals.
So, the chemistry is providing the formation of natural minerals.
It is this system that is used to make the geological glue. They represent 3 to 5%
by weight of the limestone, which contains 95 to 97% of shells and calcite.
It is obvious that if geologists and mineralogists do not
understand this chemistry, they see nothing. So we have two different
geopolymer systems for the core blocks. The prototype is the "Menk" stone.
It is made of natural magnesium, calcium, alumino-silicates, plus halite, sodium
chloride, common salt, dolomite and calcite. This is the micritic binder.
For the casing blocks (casing blocks have up to 10% of silica in the
constitution. It is a lot for the geological glue. They are represented by
the samples we got from Cheops and the Lauer stone), it is a magnesium silicate,
sodium chloride, dolomite and calcite. The scientific results for this
geological glue, which is the micritic binder detected under the optical
microscope, is made of what they called "microconstituents" containing silicon,
calcium, magnesium. We discover that we have a geopolymer mechanism
that is involving calcium and magnesium. So far, we did not have
a system in which magnesium was directly involved. And here, it happens by
ion exchanged between sodium and magnesium. In addition, we have hydrated
calcite and hydrated dolomite. These two elements are unknown in nature.
In nature, there are crystalline. We have alumino-silicate clay types that are
amorphous. In natural stones or materials, they are always crystalline.
These results prove the artificial nature of the micritic binder.
You get additional information in chapter 17
of my book "Geopolymer Chemistry and Applications".
The stones of the pyramids are not carved but re-agglomerated.
This is proven by experimentation.
We have the system. So, we decided to
experiment it in making great quantities of stones, not just in the lab, but also outside.
We had to choose a material that would be equivalent to the one that
is found at Giza. This is the cross section. You see in yellow the soft marly
limestone layer that had been used for the buildings of the pyramids.
These quarries are supplying a nummilitic limestone
that is unique for the Giza Plateau.
We had to find, near Saint-Quentin,
a geological outcrop where we could get something similar. We had the luck
to find, south of Saint-Quentin, a quarry where we got this nummilitic limestone.
We decided to make 15 tons of
pyramid stones. Since it was an experiment,
I choose to vary the parameters that are involved in the making of the blocks,
namely the amount of water and the amount of clay that we had to add to the limestone,
because limestone did not have it. Clay is inherent in the Giza limestone.
But in the French limestone, we did not have the clay. We added the kaolinitic clay,
4%, with the limestone and the chemistry with the others. We changed
the other amount of the elements in the various blocks that we made.
We will show you a small video of this experimentation where we produced 15 tons
of re-agglomerated limestone.
In September of 2002, our Geopolymer Institute crew cast massive imitation
pyramid blocks, or perhaps we should say genuine pyramid blocks: we used the same
kind of earthen ingredients available to the ancient Egyptians 4,500 years ago.
These massive blocks have the same chemical make-up and appearance as blocks
of the Great Pyramids. The limestone we used consists of fossil shells called
nummulities, like those in the Giza bedrock. Like in Giza, the French
limestone is so loosely bound it doesn't require crushing. But unlike in Giza,
it contains no kaolin clay. We heap the cement additives (lime, natron, and kaolin
clay) near the limestone. "The 2 components will react in the water and
built in situ a geological glue which will then yield the hard geopolymeric reagglomerated
limestone". We start making the cement by mixing sodium carbonate (found in
Egyptian natron), and lime in 500 liters of water. We then add the kaolin
(inherent at Giza limestone), and stir the mix with a wooden tool.
We dump 1 ton of limestone rubble into the basin, and mix it with the cement.
Several days later, water has evaporated from the basin,
so we remove the disaggregated limestone for making the block.
Inspecting the mixture: 95% limestone aggregates, and only 5% rock-making binder. Between
12 and 17% of water give it the consistency of wet sand. One squeezes the
mixture with his hand, and it keeps its shape. This batch will quickly gain strength.
We do all of the work manually, forming a human chain carrying buckets
from the mixing area to the mold. We pour the limestone concrete mixtures in a mold
and pack it down with a tool called a "rammer".
Compacting the material requires little effort. The packing operation
encourages cohesion, and the denser mixture takes on high strength from the
initial curing phase. When the climate is warm and beautiful, our crew rapidly
produces a re-agglomerated limestone that proved strong, dense and true to the
planned size and shape. The mold consists of small wooden boards, which can be
reused many times for making other blocks. In this ideal weather, the whole
process runs smoothly and is very simple. We removed the mold 4 hours later.
The synthetic limestone looks like a natural stone ! We observe no trace of wood grain.
4 blocks have already been made. Joseph Davidovits presents them. The two large
blocks, weighing up to 4.5 tons, containing most water, have given
smoother surfaces. The two small blocks, weighing up to 1.3 tons,
the least wet, take on rougher surfaces. "When you look at the stones of the pyramids,
this is what you see. You see either smooth blocks or very crude blocks. And we
have replicated all these surfaces, just by varying the amount of water which depends on the
climate, which depends on the weather". Joints between blocks are also perfect.
It will take 3 months for the stones to fully cure because of the climate of
northern France. In 4000 years, will future archaeologists insist that our
imitation pyramid stones are natural limestone ?
We looked at the stones one year later.
Our scientific team gathered in Saint-Quentin to examine the material.
We had protected the blocks against rain and frost. The climate in northern France
is not the same as the climate in Egypt. In Egypt, it practically never rains and
it practically never freezes. In France, we had, in January 2003, one month long freezing.
It is not very good for this type of stone. This is what it looked like
when we reopened the molds and the shelters. We got our blocks that were
in good shape and we were starting to look at them. You remember in the video,
we have been claiming that we cannot see the joints between the stones.
One year later, we have the joints and this is obvious. Because each block, during
hardening, is shrinking. The shrinkage is very small but it is
sufficient to produce a joint between blocks. And each joint is
the mirror of the other. They are perfect and they are exactly in the same shape
of what we see on the pyramids' site. You see the stone above
the two others, we don't see practically any joint. We feared that the blocks
would be glued together. This is what people are always telling us.
"If you are doing this type of experiment your stones will glue to the other one!"
We had to destroy what we had manufactured. During the crushing,
we were capable of separating very easily the upper block with those
from the bottom. We saw that they were absolutely not adhering
to each other but, in fact, the surface of each block was
exactly fitting with the surface of the other one. This is one of the very
specific feature of the pyramid blocks. The blocks on the horizontal layer are
absolutely fitting to each other without any, any, any space in between.
So, we can claim that our experimentation was very fruitful. It provided good
knowledge into the practical feasibility of the system.
The stones were not carved.
This is proven by religion. In Egypt, everything is connected to religion.
Every item, every part of life is connected to a God.
It is obvious that the building of these monuments must have religious meaning.
We discover that there is one theorem that is never taught by
Egyptology but which is obvious. I call it "theorem number 1".
The stone has a religious meaning. Stone is used only for tombs, pyramids and
temples. Stone is never used in secular constructions, never for palaces,
garrison, houses that are made out of wood, clay brick, never in stone, except
except during the Greek period, during the invasion of Egypt by the Greek.
They started to build Alexandria with stone and also during the Roman occupation.
So, never, during the genuine Egyptian civilization, was the use of stone
permitted for secular constructions. If you want to explain this dichotomy,
stone for temples, and clay and wood for regular buildings, then we discover
that at the roots of this Egyptian civilization we have two Genesis,
two genitors, two ways of creating man. The oldest is the one of the god Khnum.
The youngest is the one of the god Amun. We have two antagonistic religions
that will be sources of rivalities and two different technological civilizations
that will support these religions. Let's start with the god Khnum.
The god Khnum is depicted by a ram-headed man.
The horns are particular. These are horizontal horns.
You see the god Khnum on his potter's wheel. He is creating the body of the
pharaoh and his "ka", his eternal soul, by petrifying, by using clay. The creation,
according to the god Khnum, he kneads humanity and the gods with clay and silt.
You know this is the Genesis that we are accustomed to read in the Bible.
It is also the type of Genesis that is depicted in the Quran.
The god Khnum creates the "ka" of pharaoh. The "ka" is the soul in eternal stone.
For Khnum, creation is the divine incarnation in the agglomeration of stone.
We discover that for Cheops, for the builder of the most impressive
monument of antiquity, its actual name is "Khnum Khufu": may the god Khnum protect
Cheops. The god Khnum is associated with
the building of the pyramids. The pyramids must have been done within the
technology associated with Khnum, which is agglomeration. On the other side, for the
god Amun, it is different. "A mountain of mud began to rise up from the shadow
waters, the mountain of mud swelled up, casting out bubbles and took the form of
the first god Amun. And Amun pulled out (carved) the limbs and all the parts
of his body, and these parts of the body of Amun were transformed into men,
animals and all creation…". This is different. For god Amun, in the
creation, he carves mankind and the other gods in his body, the mountain.
The creation is the divine incarnation in carved stone. You understand that
Ramses II had his temple at Abu Simbel hauled, dug out, in the body of Amun,
in the hill of sandstone. We understand that the temples in Thebes, in Karnak
in Luxor, were made of carved stone that had been cut very carefully in the body
of Amun. We understand why the obelisks out of granite have been called
the "finger of Amun". We have two civilizations, one in the north that
flourished during the Old Kingdom, god Khnum, re-agglomerated stone.
And the south flourished under the New Kingdom, god Amun and carved stone.
The stones were not carved but re-agglomerated.
This is proven by hieroglyphic texts.
This is the first theory that is based on hieroglyphic texts. We have discovered
the texts that depict this system. Remember, Egyptology has never found any
text proving that the pyramids were built with carving stones that were
hauled on sledges and ramps. There is no text. They say there is no text
because it is a sacred system that should not be revealed to anybody.
We are dealing with technological texts, with texts that are describing
technological information. You know that it is very difficult to translate a
technical text into a language if you are not aware of the significant of the
keywords. I provide here a small example that is well adapted to our
speciality, to our geopolymer speciality. Let's imagine that I got a text from
Egypt. It has been translated in the following way.
The text says: "make fluid stone with ashes insect in glass water".
You have this text and it has been fluidly written to say: "fluid stone could be cement".
So we write: "make cement with ashes from flies (these are the insects)
in glass of water". This means nothing. Whereas, what we have in reality is the
description of making cement with fly ashes and water glass. This is the
example that has to be in front of you when you will be trying to
understand the antique texts that are dealing with our technology.
So we have the text, and the first one is a very renown text that is called:
"The Famine Stele" at Sehel. It was engraved in 2000 BC, that is more recently.
It is understood that it is the copy of more ancient texts dating to the time of
the pyramids. We have the pharaoh Zoser, the builder of the
first pyramid worshiping the god Khnum. The Famine Stele is, in fact,
a list, there are 32 columns, in which 1/3 are dedicated to the lists of
minerals that will be used to make the pyramid. In antique text, what is
very difficult to translate are verbs. For example, we have the verb
"iri-kat", "ari-kat", which means "to create", "to manufacture". This verb is used
to depict the god Khnum when he is making, creating,
manufacturing the "ka" that is the soul of the pharaoh in eternal stone.
We find this verb "iri-kat" in the Famine Stele where the god Khnum is providing
the minerals to pharaoh Zoser to build his first pyramid. This is here, on the
right, you see "arikat", to manufacture, and the real translation is: "since
creation, you are the first one who manufactures them (the minerals) to
build the temples…". The second verb is the verb "khusi" that means to erect, to build,
to construct. The verb has a determinative that is a man
pounding something in a mold. This is the making of agglomerated stone,
this is the making of bricks, and this is the making of stone that defines
our hypothesis. "Khusi": to build in re-agglomerated stone. This is what we get
as a sentence in the Famine Stele: "with these products (that are depicted in the
various columns in hieroglyphs) they have built the pyramid (the royal tomb).
Which pyramid? It is the first pyramid, the one of Zoser that was built
by Imhotep, one of the greatest scribes in Egypt. It is the first pyramid, the Steps
Pyramid at Saqqara. The Steps Pyramid at Saqqara is made of small limestone
bricks that have been manufactured like crude clay bricks. They took the molds,
made the bricks, transported them, and laid down the pyramid. In fact, they used
the same technology that had been in use previously, in the making of the
monuments and the enclosures. Here, it is the enclosure of Khasekhemwy, the pharaoh
that lived just before pharaoh Zoser. My opponents always claimed that
if the re-agglomerated stone theory was correct, the blocks made in molds must have
the same dimension, like it is for clay bricks. We have the example of the
Khasekhemwy enclosure. We look at the dimension of the clay bricks.
We discover that they are not equal. We find at least 5 different dimensions.
It means that the 5 different dimensions were decided by the architect.
Because it is the only way to get seismic resistance, seismic durability
for monuments that are built in earthquake-prone areas.
The Egyptian had this knowledge at their disposal. So, it started with the first
pyramid in small bricks. They mastered their technology, improved the dimension
of the blocks. They ended with the first pyramid of Sneferu. It is
the bent or rhomboidal pyramid where the blocks are still moved, still transported to the
worksite. But they are becoming to be too big and for the Red Pyramid of Sneferu,
they are too big to be manipulated. They are cast, they are pound on site.
We arrive to the Giza Plateau where this technology was used for the Cheops,
Chefren and Mykerinos pyramids.
It should have evolved in this way during
the entire civilization, but we observe a dramatic stop of the
technology. If we look at the variation of the pyramids volume, with the timeline
of the dynasties, we see that, from the invention by Zoser to the Cheops
pyramid, that is only within 60 years, we have an increase in the volumes
of the pyramids. The optimum is for Cheops and Chefren. Then, a dramatic plunge, a
dramatic decrease of the volume happened for Mykerinos. The others are ridiculously
small. What happened? This is what we will try to explain now.
We can interpret it with two elements that are part of the industrial activities.
First, we may suppose that they have
been exhaustions in Sinai mines. Some minerals are used to make
artificial stones. We have texts, we have records that show that, at that time,
the Sinai mines were very heavily exploited, and afterwards, no longer.
Or, the manufacture of lime-ash generated an ecological disaster. This is the lime
that is intervening in the "reaction number 1", that we need to get the
reaction between the Natron, sodium carbonate, in order to produce the
caustic soda that will start the geopolymeric reaction. Lime is very
important. It has been shown by Klemm: "… in the 6th dynasty, lime disappears
nearly within the mortars. May this be interpreted as a variation of
accessibility of fuel (wood) and consequently of economic potential and
crisis?". Professor Klemm was talking about the regular lime that is calcined
from limestone in a kiln. The problem is that we have not found any remains of
kilns in Egypt to manufacture or to build the pyramids of Cheops and Chefren.
We need approximately 150,000 tons of lime. It means that we should
have found remains of kilns that were producing this lime. We did not find them.
It means that the technology was different. The technology was
different: it was the one of the ashes which contains lime
that were used in the reaction. The ecological disaster came from
the over exploitation of the wood. This is proven by the fact that, just after
the great pyramids, one gets frescoes that are describing famines. Something
very dramatic and tragic happened. If we want to understand what was the
reason, we have to come back to one essential knowledge.
Plants were supplying a lot of chemicals during antiquity and even during our
Middle Ages in Europe. The ashes are the results of the
burning of wood or plants. You see that we get plenty of SiO2. It is chemically
available for the reaction. Plenty of CaO, a calcium oxide, in beech, oak, acacia, palm
trees. Plenty of alkali K2O, in beech, in palm trees, in fern and bulrush,
and so forth. I am claiming that this is the way how they used the plants and
the wood in the manufacture, in the production of these ashes. They have been
the sources of the chemicals. It is obvious that if they over exploited the
palm trees in the production of the ashes that contains the silica and
the lime, then, they got into an ecological disaster. Because the palm
trees are always associated with agriculture. If there is no more palm
trees, there is no more agriculture. It may have been the end of the
pyramids construction. It was obvious for the Egyptians that
this technology, even if it was a sacred one, was dangerous.
Just after, we have the starting of making a small pyramid in carved stone. If you want
to have pyramids made of carved stone, this is what we have. We have the
pyramid of Ouserkaf, 2460 BC, built just after the Pyramids of Giza.
It is simply a heap of small stones that have been taken from the environment.
If you compare it with the first pyramid, you see, this one is totally destroyed, and
this one is still there. So this is a big difference between a building made out
of re-agglomerated stone and a small building made out of carved stone.
For pyramids made of carved stones, this is what you have. You see that it is no
longer this very powerful and very important technology that have been used
previously. We continue to study the Egyptian civilization, and we are
discovering something really very strange. We started with mud
bricks, that were used in the enclosures during the 2nd dynasty. They
only have stone tools (no hard metal), so it is obvious that they used bricks. Then,
it was the invention of the first limestone bricks by agglomeration. The technology
improved into bigger and bigger and bigger blocks, limestone blocks. And then,
suddenly, 800 years later, they had bronze tools to cut the stone. No!
They returned to pyramids made of mud brick. This is something that
Egyptology is not capable of explaining. It is something that geopolymeric
technology is capable of explaining. Essentially because we had a stop
of the use of this technology to make stone. They went back to mud because
mud brick is also the replica of incarnation, in the materials that
belongs to the Khnum divinity. What about the Cheops pyramid? You have seen
I'm talking about the pyramids, and I don't talk about Cheops. Strange!
With Cheops, this is what we have. We have the core. This is a mass, more
than 2 million tons is made of limestone, re-agglomerated limestone. But, here,
inner, there is one exception. It is made of granite. It is made of carved stone.
Why? Cheops is "Khnum Khufu". Well, it is agglomerated stone.
However, pharaoh is the king of the 2 countries. It is obvious to me that the
pyramids must be the representation of Egypt. It must represent the northern country
and the southern part of Egypt. It means, we must have the replication of
agglomerated stone for the northern part of Egypt, and in the south, natural granite
that is the carving technology. So we have agglomerated limestone for the whole body,
and the King's chamber is made of split granite that is dressed,
split granite, not carved. I have to figure that it has been
two independent building worksites. They were not connected between each other.
Those who were involved in the erecting of the natural granite slabs,
these are huge, were using a temporary ramp that was located on the south side
of the pyramid, on the opposite of the Grand Gallery. We had two separated
technology work sites that were working independently. For Chefren, same problem.
The core is made of agglomerated stone. But this time, they used the granite in a
very more easily way. it was only for the casing of the first and second steps,
that is made of split granite, like this one. These are blocks of granite that are
split into two, and are incorporated into a natural layer, the natural step.
What about Mykerinos? Mykerinos has a core made of agglomerated
limestone. The first steps were recovered with the casing, also
made of split granite, not dressed.
We are not alone. We have several institutions that, officially, are
claiming that they support and they endorse the re-agglomerated limestone
theory. Very famous institutions, and they are all supporting us.
Looking at the world connections of the Geopolymer Institute,
it is obvious that they are several institutions in the world that are
agreeing with this theory of the pyramids being made of re-agglomerated
limestone. You will find additional information in my recent book
The Pyramids, and also in the book "Geopolymer Chemistry and Applications".