MJ Thomas Wrote:
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>
> I have always found this to be something of a
> sticking point.
> I'm inclined to see the actual building of the 4th
> Dyn pyramids as some kind of vast job creation
> scheme that relatively quickly got out of hand and
> subsequently led to the building of smaller
> pyramids.


I'm inclined to believe that almost all the pyramids required about the same amount of physical human effort. Some were more convenient to their quarries or could be planned a little bigger because their was manpower available or the like but they mostly were just the biggest that were practical at the moment. The great pyramids followed some of the larger mastabas which were likely built with the weight of water and they got increasingly good at this kind of building. There would be many fine points that would allow for larger pyramids with the same amount of effort.

Individually and collectively people do things for reasons that aren't necessarily obvious. Building pyramids was a cultural thing but why so huge? Let's face it even a 200' tall "little" mud brick pyramid is a gargantuan task. It's well within the capabilities of human beings but why would a culture undertake such a project especially when their ancestors had already defined pyramid building? And just because you have a motive force hardly makes a 500' tall pyramid a day at the beach; it merely reduces the scale to something humans can accomplish. Yes, it was a religious thing to aid their God's trip to heaven and may have served to help the sun cross the sky but there's no reason to believe they had to be this size. That they are so "great" does imply that on some level the culture thought that using human labor for such purposes was a good use for it. There is a strong implication that they believed this labor was surplus at least to the needs of the moment. I've argued the term "make work" but really this is just semantics. My main problem with it is that I don't believe many of the workers felt like the only reason they were there was to keep them out of mischief. The pyramids were obviously a labor of love. But, yes, certainly thy wouldn't have been built to even the scale of the later ones if the culture didn't have the attitude that it was a good use of effort, supplies and material.

I guess my disagreement is much more with the terminology than the concept. These were all bigger than they needed to be for any practical purpose most likely. But, part of the function of the early ones may have been to impress and the bigger the better for this purpose.



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Man fears the pyramid, time fears man.