Hello Clive,

You write, 'The builders set only the first layer of base stones in place to provide us with two distinct sets of measures. One to calculate an “imaginary” base width/height; the other would be the actual dimension. This allowed the designers to double the information they wanted to place into the monument. With the casing absent, it guaranteed that future observers would instantly notice the oddity in course thickness at designated levels, a very important feature of G1.'

About 4,500 years passed before anybody noticed - and certainly not instantly - the 'two distinct sets of measures', the 'information they wanted to place into the monument', and the 'oddity in course thickness at designated levels'.
If, as you appear to be implying, the Pyramid's architect was passing on knowledge, then why did he choose such an unreliable and cumbersome method of doing it - it's not as if writing had not been invented back then...

Based on physical evidence alone we could probably argue 'til the cows come home about whether or not Khufu's pyramid was ever entirely covered with an outer casing.
However, a way past this impasse perhaps could lie in your telling us what information the architect was passing on to future generations by leaving off the outer casing above the first level.
I seriously doubt that this 'information' contained things like "We knew pi and Phi long before the Greeks did" - but that's only because it would mean endowing the architect with, um, well, precognitive skills...


You write, 'Also, and most important, it saved having to haul 300,000 cubic cubits of material for no other reason than to reach a level of 280 Rc. They were not that foolish.'

When you consider the sheer volume of quarried stone in the pyramids before and immediately after Khufu's, then the work involved in casing it all over would hardly have caused its builders to have batted a collective eye.
It strikes me as most unlikely that the Pyramid builders en-masse ever thought of what they were doing as being in anyway foolish.
My impression is that what the king wanted the king got.
If he wanted the largest stone structure in his world, then that is what he got; and if he wanted it cased in smooth-surfaced white limestone blocks, he got that, too.

Regards,

MJ



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/30/2008 11:34AM by MJ Thomas.