CONTINUED FROM PREVIOUS POST
So, I wrote the previous post before watching the first video. I'm not a chemical engineer so I can only take most of what he says on faith. The form of his argument is logical. I'm impressed. He derives both the location and the form of the pyramids from their function, which Pustogarov cannot do.
Drumm appears to be a very capable researcher in his area of expertise. I am certainly not capable of engaging critically with his more technical claims. If we wish to add something to his hypothesis, it seems to me like the most fruitful next step for us here is to do the work that Drumm is not in a position to do himself, to wit, zeroing in on the actual date of construction and functioning of these chemical plants. Sadly, Drumm is stuck in conventional chronology. For his theory to make sense, he has to send the pyramids back eight thousand years. That is nonsense. How many insights is he missing out on for this reason? Here the New Chronologists have better arguments. The material dialectician Pustogarov argues consistently that we ought to see technological development as a linear process with no huge gaps. Metallurgy did not appear, then disappear, then reappear. It appeared once, then more or less steadily developed. Likewise with bricks, shipbuilding, weapons, etc. Likewise with the Earth's population. For Pustogarov, the "Black Plague" can only be a fabricated event to paper over the mathematical contradiction between vast (nonexistent) ancient civilizations and the low population of Europe in the Renaissance.
Here is what Pustogarov has to say about the pyramids. Just use Google Translate:
4. 12. ÐгипеÑÑкие пиÑÐ°Ð¼Ð¸Ð´Ñ ÐºÑо, когда, заÑем (ÐаÑало ÐÑÑоÑии) / ÐÑоза.ÑÑ
So, we are quite far from Drumm here. But maybe we can put these two theories together. Pustogarov argues that the pyramid complex was built by Franciscan monks in the middle of the 17th century. I'm not saying I believe that, but it offers us a good starting point. Tamansky, in one of his videos, traces the different monastic orders to different skills and trades which he compares to the different ministries in a government. These were not simple religious brothers. The Franciscans were the world's premier builders, and they constructed all of the pyramid complexes we find around the world in the 15th-17th centuries. Remember as well that Pompeii was buried in 1631, meaning that the middle of the 17th century puts us squarely in "antiquity". Did Rome discover gas deposits on the Giza Plateau and send their greatest engineers to figure out how to put these raw materials to use? Remember that Egypt was under the control of the Ottoman Empire at this time. Was this some kind of joint venture between East and West? Did the Ottomans hire the Franciscans to build them a chemical plant the same way the Saudis might hire an American petrochemical company today?
Remember as well that the German polymath Leibniz, whose fascinating case I discuss at length in another series of posts, attempted to convince Louis XIV to invade Egypt in 1671. This would have been not long after the pyramid complex was built.
https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/617049/3/Leibniz’s Egypt Plan (1671-2) - from holy war to ecumenism (revised).pdf
Scholars have generally supposed that Leibniz’s rationale for devising the plan was to divert Louis XIV from his intended war with Holland, and ensure that the French armies were sent not just away from Holland but – crucially – from German territories also. This is what we might term the “diversion hypothesis.” It has a long history: a nineteenth century scholar explains that Leibniz’s aim in writing the Egypt plan was “that the storm gathering in France might be averted from Europe, and its energies directed to a distant object, the conquest of Egypt.” The “diversion hypothesis” remains popular today; for example, when discussing the genesis of the Egypt plan, a contemporary scholar informs us that “In order to divert the King of France from his disturbing impulses to extend his kingdom, Leibniz has no alternative to a European war than a war against the Turks.” Although hard evidence for the diversion hypothesis is thin on the ground, it is not my intention here to challenge it, or even investigate it, though in what follows I will argue that, at best, it offers an incomplete account of Leibniz’s motives for advocating a French invasion of Egypt.
The authors of the document suspect that the religious aspect of Leibniz's proposal was a screen concealing purely economic and political motivations. Remember that Leibniz was a cryptographer and might have enjoyed using flowery religious language as a cipher for his Realpolitik. Geopolitics is something we plebs will never be allowed to really understand, but the idea of a German diplomat fomenting a completely pointless war between France and Ottoman Egypt just to take pressure off of Holland sounds absurd. It has the flavor of one of those superficially logical but essentially insufficient explanations that historians love to invent to fill in gaps in their reconstructions (we here are not above this error ourselves).
Invading Egypt would have clear political and economic benefits, Leibniz suggests, because the country is so situated as to confer domination of the seas, and almost that of the world, on any conquering force, which would thence control trade with the East. (...) Hence Leibniz feels able to quite literally promise Louis the world: if the plan were carried out successfully, Louis would be crowned Emperor of the East, and France would become arbiter of the world.
Well, if the world's largest and most important chemical plant is located in Egypt, this makes more sense. Remember that Leibniz was above all a scientist, mathematician, and engineer.
Leibniz explains that Egypt is the key to the whole Turkish Empire, and if it were to fall into Christian hands then the Turkish Empire would be ruined.
Why would Egypt be the key to the whole Turkish Empire?
Leibniz states...that the Turks’ failure to move the seat of their Empire from Constantinople to Cairo could be seen as “providence willing that a channel remain open to Christians to undermine the [Turkish] Empire.”
Why on Earth should the Turks move the seat of their Empire to Cairo?
I will now speculate, or rather fantasize.
- Did Roman Franciscans build the Giza chemical plant for the Ottoman Empire?
- Was it rendered nonoperational in the context of a battle between East and West?
- Did Leibniz want to take Egypt to get the plant up and running again? Was it still running? Did he leave the engineering details out of his letters to the court of Louis XIV because this was top secret industrial information?
- Did Napoleon go to Egypt in 1799 to see what was left of the old plant? Is this why he brought along France's top scientists? Is this why the voltaic pile was invented by a member of the expedition immediately afterwards?
I'm spitballing, obviously, don't bust my chops too hard.
My favorite form of reasoning is the
reductio ad absurdum in which an argument is accepted as true and then run through all of its logical consequences. If any absurdities or contradictions appear, the argument must be false. So let's take this a bit further. Drumm argues that the form and size of the pyramids have two functions:
1. Concentrating electrical fields around the reaction chambers.
2. Containing the huge amounts of pressure that build up in the reaction chambers.
This means that pyramids become an obsolete technology the moment people figure out how to build containing structures out of metal and create electrical fields industrially. Both occurred in the 19th century if I am not mistaken.
Let's also assume that the Giza complex was built around 1633 as Pustogarov suggests.
This leads us to a few possible conclusions.
1. The pyramids were still functioning as chemical plants until they were replaced in the 19th century (not likely).
2. People figured out how to produce chemicals industrially, perfected the technology in the Giza complex in the mid-17th century, and then at some point lost that capability until 19th century technology offered a new technique of production. It seems clear that by the time of Napoleon they were no longer functional.
If we accept (1), then there is no mystery as to why the pyramids were abandoned. If we accept (2), then we have to ask ourselves what caused all the pyramid complexes around the world to stop functioning. Did the power source break? Did atmospheric/aesthetic conditions change? Were the gas deposits used up? Were all the pyramids around the world simply abandoned in the context of some political upheaval? After all, if the global economy crashes, there is no way to maintain complex industrial production facilities (nowhere to sell your product, no money to pay your employees, etc.).
I'm going to play with the idea that the plants still worked in 1671 when Leibniz wanted to invade Egypt and no longer worked when Napoleon got there in 1799. I suppose it's possible that Napoleon even found them in a functioning state, tasked his scientists with retro-engineering the old Roman/Franciscan technology for France, then rendered them nonoperational himself. This would offer a possible explanation for the dirt pyramid constructed by the Napoleonic army in Holland in 1804. It was an engineering experiment.
