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An idea of Napoleon Bonaparte being the mastermind behind the construction of the three Great Pyramids of Egypt sounds ludicrous at best. We all know the dogmatic version. The three Pyramids of Giza: pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure were built a gazillion years ago. Science says the Khufu one was built around 2560 BC. The other two our scholar are not really sure about, but they are positive that it was a long time ago, for they have multiple sources. Everybody knows where to go to read up on what the textbook version is.
Before I start, I wanted to make a little side note. If you are one of those people who would dismiss his own observations, because "this is just impossible", you might as well walk by. You already know that what I am about to say is impossible. This article will only benefit you, if read it entirely, and while paying attention to what's presented and described. A good follow up discussion is always welcome.
I did not really have a specific approach to this 100% unscientific research. It's just that at different times I ran into little things, here and there, which were not making sense. Once the critical mass reached an amount justifying the use of the word "bizarre", I figured a little summary of my observations would not hurt.
We will look at:
It is presumed, that the Ancient Egypt, as well as Egyptian Pyramids were a common knowledge for just about forever. This automatically makes any sort of discovery of the said objects and locality pointless. At least you will probably not be able to find that this, or that person discovered the Pyramids, or was the first to set foot in Egypt. Yet we should be able to track some of the so called "first mentioned in" sources.
As you might know, the first published book that we know of was The Gutenberg Bible. It was printed in the 1450s. Since then there were a lot of books printed.
Assisted by Google, quite a few were scanned and made available to public. As you can imagine, different books contained various topics. Google Ngrams service assists in tracking down specific words, or groups of words as they appear in books throughout history. Unfortunately it only starts at 1500. For example, when we want to see when words: England, France, and Rome were mentioned, we end up with the following graph. It shows that the words were very much in use from the beginning of the 16th century. It is obvious that those were early days of book printing, but some common words were clearly used.
When we use the same service to look at: Egyptian Pyramids, Pyramid of Egypt, Pyramids of Egypt, Pyramid of Giza, we end up with publications gravitating to the late 17th, and early 18th century. There is a single graph spike pertaining to 1650's, but if you actually use Google Ngrams and see the publication, you will understand why we have that spike.
Overall, it is clear, that at least from 1500 to about 1700 the Pyramids of Egypt are not mentioned. Yet there might have been a lot of pyramids, but they were not as great as the Great Pyramids. I will demonstrate those possible pyramids below.
When searching specifically for Great Pyramids, we end up with 1795-1798 as the time when Great Pyramids were first mentioned. This could be either attributed to the combination "Great Pyramids" not being used at the time. It could also be attributed to the existing pyramids not being as great to qualify for Greatness we see in the Great Pyramids of today.
And the last publication worth mentioning would be the Bible itself. There are multiple explanations of why the Great Pyramids are not mentioned, but the fact remains, they are not. Some say that they are mentioned in Isaiah 19, but using that analogy anything could be considered a Great Pyramid.
Manuscripts: Manuscripts deserve some special attention. I have spent plenty of time trying to get to the point where there is at least a bit of useful information. Good luck with that one. Here is the scenario everything will follow.
Additionally some things even Google does not know: when were egyptian pyramids first mentioned?
Maps:
Honestly, maps are not the best of sources. When somebody is trying to fake the History of Mankind, it is to easy to add a few pyramids to an old map. Whereas it's pretty hard to stick a paragraph into an existing handwritten manuscript (that is if there is one). Manuscripts are being studied, inspected dated and such. Is there anybody to pay specific attention to a couple triangles on an old map as far as scrape some paint of and determine when it was made I do not know.
Fist of all, let's determine where the Great Pyramids are at by looking at a contemporary schematic. Also to see what shape of a pyramid symbol we use today, you are welcome to look at these Google Images of various Maps. Basically the symbol looks like a small pyramid only much smaller. Not trying to insult nobody's intelligence, but details are important.
At the same time it gets pretty interesting with the old maps. The pyramids of Egypt are on the maps. As a matter of fact there are multiple maps with pyramids. And if we get away from "this is how they drew" those days ideology, we could be able to consider, that those are not the Great Pyramids of Egypt we know. And quite possibly our Sphinx looked different as well.
First of all, today's Pyramids are humongous to the point when they still hypnotize with their size and greatness. But did they have the same impact on the people who lived in the 16th, and 17th centuries? What if not so much? Well, Let's take a look at the maps (the last map I don't know the source of).
In the above maps we can see, that some of the depicted pyramids are narrower then the other ones. Yet they all share a common trait: none of the bases exceed the height of the pyramid. Our Great pyramids look either very different, or simply different. Additionally the size of the pyramids shown does not correspond with "bigger then life" achievement of the ancients. May be this is why some of the maps do not have any pyramids at all. Below are two maps dated 1548. One shows pyramids, and the other one does not. There are a lot of maps not showing pyramids at the same DRMC website.
Of additional interest could be the appearance of the possible Sphinx as seen in 1575. An idea of two different maps showing our Sphinx as a female, and one displaying Sphinx with exposed female breasts is strange at the very least.
Returning to the pyramids depicted on the old maps, it's fairly obvious that they were depicted looking like this, more or less. The shape of these pyramids is obvious, even though we can see that they are buried in the sand.
Art:
Pretty much the same theme is dominating the graphical representation of the Egyptian pyramids pre-dating the 19th century. The Greatness is not there and the shape is not the same. Yet, the consistency of the depiction is there. There are pyramids, but not the Great Pyramids.
Where else can we find similar pyramids? They still exist, and the place is just South down the Nile from Egypt. They are pyramids, just not as great as the Great Pyramids. Welcome to Nubia, Sudan.
I find it to be a pretty interesting coincidence: same river, same pyramids. Same pyramids built along the river by whoever. Where are the Great Pyramids though?
Additionally you can see a very similar pyramid in Rome. I believe, originally it appears in some of the Piranesi engravings, but there are some actual photographs as well. Here is the Pyramid of Cestius. They say it was built around 18-12 BC. First of all they clearly do not know. Second, I would not bet on what they say anyways.
If you do not know who Piranesi was, you should probably read this article, and the Wikipedia piece. Besides his obvious talents of a Master of Engraving, he also was a renown archaeologist. His attention to detail can be observed in the article: Ancient bridge construction as presented by Piranesi in the 18th century.
Yet Egyptian hieroglyphs were somehow well known in Europe. I have not seen any material proof of hieroglyphs existing in actual Egypt, but somehow they made it their way to Europe. At least Piranesi was able to provide us with plenty of the engravings depicting them. He also presented the Ancient Egyptian theme altogether.
And the pyramids as understood by Piranesi looked like this.
Prior to Piranesi we have the 17th century Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher.
Additionally we have three types of Sahara pyramids as presented by Frederick Louis Norden (1708 - 1742)
It does not appear that either Kircher, Norden, or Piranesi had ever traveled to Egypt. At least I was unable to locate any reference of them going there. Yet there was some collection of hieroglyphs at the library of Speyer (Germany) in 1628. The first modern study of hieroglyphics came with Piero Valeriano Bolzani's Hieroglyphica (1556).
We clearly have the knowledge about Ancient Egypt in the 16th century. Scientists say that Egypt is pretty Ancient. How ancient it really is remains to be seen. The etymology of hieroglyphics says that English language acquired the word in 1590.
What I'm leading to here is that there had to be a crazy volume of information about the so-called Ancient Egypt in Europe. Individuals like Piranesi, who were known for their attention to detail create super complicated engravings, showing Egyptian theme and hieroglyphs. Yet none of them had a chance to observe the three Great Pyramids of Giza as we know them today. I doubt they would consider the Great Pyramids to be not worthy of their talent, or attention. This leaves us with only one other explanation - they have never seen them.
Now, if we imagine for a second, that there were no Great Egyptian Pyramids as late as 1798, we would have a question: who was skilled enough to build those at the split of the 17th-18th centuries? Well, may be these master builders were. We are googling 18th Century Architecture.
How they might have done it we will discuss later, but they clearly had the skill. I'm talking about the same people who supposedly built all the above structures.
Just FYI, the duration of WW2 was approximately 4 years.
Napoleon's Army, "The French army was large, although perhaps not large enough to attempt the permanent occupation of Egypt on its own. The original plan included provision for reinforcements to be sent, assuming that France would retain her freedom to act in Mediterranean. Napoleon’s expedition included 30,000 infantry, 2,800 cavalry, 60 field guns, 40 siege guns and two companies of sappers and miners. This was enough for the initial conquest, but as will be seen it was severely stretched to provide both a garrison for Egypt and a field army. The officers that accompanied the army were an impressive group. As well as Napoleon, the army included Berthier, Murat, Marmont, Davout, Kléber, Reynier, Junot and Alexandre Dumas, the father of the famous novelist. To transport an army this size to Egypt required a massive fleet. Nearly 300 transport ships were accompanied by 13 ships of the line and seven frigates." - French Invasion of Egypt, 1798-1801
Interesting enough, "An unusual aspect of the Egyptian expedition was the inclusion of an enormous contingent of scientists and scholars ("savants") assigned to the invading French force, 167 in total. This deployment of intellectual resources is considered as an indication of Napoleon's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment, and by others as a masterstroke of propaganda obfuscating the true motives of the invasion; the increase of Bonaparte's power.
These scholars included engineers and artists, members of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, the geologist Dolomieu, Henri-Joseph Redouté, the mathematician Gaspard Monge (a founding member of the École polytechnique), the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, Vivant Denon, the mathematician Jean-Joseph Fourier (who did some of the empirical work upon which his "analytical theory of heat" was founded in Egypt), the physicist Étienne Malus, the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the botanist Alire Raffeneau-Delile, and the engineer Nicolas-Jacques Conté of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. Their original aim was to help the army, notably by opening a Suez Canal, mapping out roads and building mills to supply food. They founded the Institut d'Égypte with the aim of propagating Enlightenment values in Egypt through interdisciplinary work, improving its agricultural and architectural techniques for example. A scientific review was created under the title Décade égyptienne and in the course of the expedition the scholars also observed and drew the flora and fauna in Egypt and became interested in the country's resources.
The Egyptian Institute that Napoleon established saw the construction of laboratories, libraries, and a printing press. The group worked prodigiously, and some of their discoveries were not finally cataloged until the 1820s." - Wikipedia.
Whatever the text (above) in French says, I don't know, but this is the first time I see the known layout of the Great Egyptian Pyramids. Allegedly, at least a portion of the handwriting is attributed to Napoleon himself, "Still, the savants carefully cataloged the pyramids and debated learnedly over their observations. Napoleon jotted down his own. On his rough sketch of the Giza pyramids, he noted the calculation that they contained enough stone to build a ten foot wall around France."
You could probably watch a few YouTube videos on the matter, like this one: Ancient Building Techniques Concrete Use in Ancient Egypt.
Not only MIT professors think it was possible. Regular observers agree as well.
For masters who were able (around the same time) to build the structures mentioned in this article, "Similar style buildings are all over the world. Were they built by our civilization?" it could be possible to achieve the impossible - to build the known Great Egyptian Pyramids between 1798 and 1801. If you doubt they could do it,check this out: 1889 Post-Fire Seattle rebuild speed: 5,625 buildings in 18 months.
Getting back to concrete. Obviously it would not be cement, or concrete we use today. This could be some sort of lime mortar substance.
Is there a huge pile of dirt inside the Pyramid?
Why is it sagging?
Why did they use bricks!
Top 10-20 rows have brick blocks intermingled with regular ones.
Is it to better support the cladding?
Synthetic Granite?
Could it be a failed formwork?
Plaster falling off?
_______________________
* * * * *
Even conventional scientists agree that Egypt became famous after the visit of Napoleon. Did he build the Great Pyramids? I don't know. Is there enough circumstantial evidence to consider such a possibility? That is for someone else to decide.
Additional two cents. The Great Pyramids are falling apart. The science says it is due to the expansion of the planet Earth. What a coincidence. They stood for thousands of years, and suddenly started to fall apart? Could it be because they are only 200 years old and it's simply time for them to start falling apart?
I remember something similar from my school days, "The Great Pyramid sits upon the Giza Plateau, in the desert just southwest of present day Cairo. It soars to a height of 481 feet. Constructed of approximately 2.3 million stone blocks with an average weight of 2.5 tons each, the stone blocks fit together without mortar, yet a knife blade cannot be placed between the seams. It was not eclipsed in height by any other man-made structure until the 14th century - nearly 3800 years later."
Times have changed. You can fit a few chainsaw blades these days.
Before I start, I wanted to make a little side note. If you are one of those people who would dismiss his own observations, because "this is just impossible", you might as well walk by. You already know that what I am about to say is impossible. This article will only benefit you, if read it entirely, and while paying attention to what's presented and described. A good follow up discussion is always welcome.
We will look at:
- Books, Manuscripts, Maps and Art
- Hieroglyphs and Engravings done by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
- 18th century master buiders
- Napoleon Bonaparte's French campaign in Egypt and Syria
- Was lime mortar(-like) substance used to produce blocks for the Great Pyramids?
Books, Manuscripts, Maps and Art
It is presumed, that the Ancient Egypt, as well as Egyptian Pyramids were a common knowledge for just about forever. This automatically makes any sort of discovery of the said objects and locality pointless. At least you will probably not be able to find that this, or that person discovered the Pyramids, or was the first to set foot in Egypt. Yet we should be able to track some of the so called "first mentioned in" sources.
Books:As you might know, the first published book that we know of was The Gutenberg Bible. It was printed in the 1450s. Since then there were a lot of books printed.
Assisted by Google, quite a few were scanned and made available to public. As you can imagine, different books contained various topics. Google Ngrams service assists in tracking down specific words, or groups of words as they appear in books throughout history. Unfortunately it only starts at 1500. For example, when we want to see when words: England, France, and Rome were mentioned, we end up with the following graph. It shows that the words were very much in use from the beginning of the 16th century. It is obvious that those were early days of book printing, but some common words were clearly used.
When we use the same service to look at: Egyptian Pyramids, Pyramid of Egypt, Pyramids of Egypt, Pyramid of Giza, we end up with publications gravitating to the late 17th, and early 18th century. There is a single graph spike pertaining to 1650's, but if you actually use Google Ngrams and see the publication, you will understand why we have that spike.
Overall, it is clear, that at least from 1500 to about 1700 the Pyramids of Egypt are not mentioned. Yet there might have been a lot of pyramids, but they were not as great as the Great Pyramids. I will demonstrate those possible pyramids below.
Manuscripts: Manuscripts deserve some special attention. I have spent plenty of time trying to get to the point where there is at least a bit of useful information. Good luck with that one. Here is the scenario everything will follow.
- This guy who lived in 1226 copied that document which was dated to 846 BC.
- Scientist Mr. X was able to locate the 1226 copy in his grandma's attic in 1854
- Grandma's house burnt down in 1855 and the copy perished in the fire, but not before Mr. X took some notes
- Here is the book printed in 1876 describing what the 846 BC document was saying
- Initial book is followed up by 400 different editions and scientific analysis papers
- Here comes the official dogmatic version
Additionally some things even Google does not know: when were egyptian pyramids first mentioned?
Maps:
Honestly, maps are not the best of sources. When somebody is trying to fake the History of Mankind, it is to easy to add a few pyramids to an old map. Whereas it's pretty hard to stick a paragraph into an existing handwritten manuscript (that is if there is one). Manuscripts are being studied, inspected dated and such. Is there anybody to pay specific attention to a couple triangles on an old map as far as scrape some paint of and determine when it was made I do not know.
Fist of all, let's determine where the Great Pyramids are at by looking at a contemporary schematic. Also to see what shape of a pyramid symbol we use today, you are welcome to look at these Google Images of various Maps. Basically the symbol looks like a small pyramid only much smaller. Not trying to insult nobody's intelligence, but details are important.
First of all, today's Pyramids are humongous to the point when they still hypnotize with their size and greatness. But did they have the same impact on the people who lived in the 16th, and 17th centuries? What if not so much? Well, Let's take a look at the maps (the last map I don't know the source of).
1570-1587
The above maps can be reference at David Rumsey Map Collection. The first two maps look similar, but they are done by different individuals, and are different if you pay attention. Both are dated 1575 on the DRMC site. Also for whoever wants to do additional research into the above maps, the map file names will provide you with enough info for that.
In the above maps we can see, that some of the depicted pyramids are narrower then the other ones. Yet they all share a common trait: none of the bases exceed the height of the pyramid. Our Great pyramids look either very different, or simply different. Additionally the size of the pyramids shown does not correspond with "bigger then life" achievement of the ancients. May be this is why some of the maps do not have any pyramids at all. Below are two maps dated 1548. One shows pyramids, and the other one does not. There are a lot of maps not showing pyramids at the same DRMC website.
Of additional interest could be the appearance of the possible Sphinx as seen in 1575. An idea of two different maps showing our Sphinx as a female, and one displaying Sphinx with exposed female breasts is strange at the very least.
Returning to the pyramids depicted on the old maps, it's fairly obvious that they were depicted looking like this, more or less. The shape of these pyramids is obvious, even though we can see that they are buried in the sand.
Art:
Pretty much the same theme is dominating the graphical representation of the Egyptian pyramids pre-dating the 19th century. The Greatness is not there and the shape is not the same. Yet, the consistency of the depiction is there. There are pyramids, but not the Great Pyramids.
Where else can we find similar pyramids? They still exist, and the place is just South down the Nile from Egypt. They are pyramids, just not as great as the Great Pyramids. Welcome to Nubia, Sudan.
Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Engravings by Giovanni Battista Piranesi
If you do not know who Piranesi was, you should probably read this article, and the Wikipedia piece. Besides his obvious talents of a Master of Engraving, he also was a renown archaeologist. His attention to detail can be observed in the article: Ancient bridge construction as presented by Piranesi in the 18th century.
Well, hieroglyphs is one thing I have not seen in any of the above images. I should probably rephrase myself. I have not seen any hieroglyphs pertaining to the Great Pyramids. To start with, I have not seen any Great Pyramids yet.
Yet Egyptian hieroglyphs were somehow well known in Europe. I have not seen any material proof of hieroglyphs existing in actual Egypt, but somehow they made it their way to Europe. At least Piranesi was able to provide us with plenty of the engravings depicting them. He also presented the Ancient Egyptian theme altogether.
And the pyramids as understood by Piranesi looked like this.
Prior to Piranesi we have the 17th century Jesuit scholar Athanasius Kircher.
It does not appear that either Kircher, Norden, or Piranesi had ever traveled to Egypt. At least I was unable to locate any reference of them going there. Yet there was some collection of hieroglyphs at the library of Speyer (Germany) in 1628. The first modern study of hieroglyphics came with Piero Valeriano Bolzani's Hieroglyphica (1556).
We clearly have the knowledge about Ancient Egypt in the 16th century. Scientists say that Egypt is pretty Ancient. How ancient it really is remains to be seen. The etymology of hieroglyphics says that English language acquired the word in 1590.
What I'm leading to here is that there had to be a crazy volume of information about the so-called Ancient Egypt in Europe. Individuals like Piranesi, who were known for their attention to detail create super complicated engravings, showing Egyptian theme and hieroglyphs. Yet none of them had a chance to observe the three Great Pyramids of Giza as we know them today. I doubt they would consider the Great Pyramids to be not worthy of their talent, or attention. This leaves us with only one other explanation - they have never seen them.
18th Century Master Builders
Now, if we imagine for a second, that there were no Great Egyptian Pyramids as late as 1798, we would have a question: who was skilled enough to build those at the split of the 17th-18th centuries? Well, may be these master builders were. We are googling 18th Century Architecture.
How they might have done it we will discuss later, but they clearly had the skill. I'm talking about the same people who supposedly built all the above structures.
Napoleon Bonaparte's French campaign in Egypt and Syria
(1798 - 1801)
Obviously we have an official version of the events. Here is why Napoleon spent four years in Egypt, "The French Campaign in Egypt and Syria was Napoleon Bonaparte's campaign in the Ottoman territories of Egypt and Syria, proclaimed to defend French trade interests, weaken Britain's access to British India, and to establish scientific enterprise in the region." - Wikipedia(1798 - 1801)
Just FYI, the duration of WW2 was approximately 4 years.
Napoleon's Army, "The French army was large, although perhaps not large enough to attempt the permanent occupation of Egypt on its own. The original plan included provision for reinforcements to be sent, assuming that France would retain her freedom to act in Mediterranean. Napoleon’s expedition included 30,000 infantry, 2,800 cavalry, 60 field guns, 40 siege guns and two companies of sappers and miners. This was enough for the initial conquest, but as will be seen it was severely stretched to provide both a garrison for Egypt and a field army. The officers that accompanied the army were an impressive group. As well as Napoleon, the army included Berthier, Murat, Marmont, Davout, Kléber, Reynier, Junot and Alexandre Dumas, the father of the famous novelist. To transport an army this size to Egypt required a massive fleet. Nearly 300 transport ships were accompanied by 13 ships of the line and seven frigates." - French Invasion of Egypt, 1798-1801
Interesting enough, "An unusual aspect of the Egyptian expedition was the inclusion of an enormous contingent of scientists and scholars ("savants") assigned to the invading French force, 167 in total. This deployment of intellectual resources is considered as an indication of Napoleon's devotion to the principles of the Enlightenment, and by others as a masterstroke of propaganda obfuscating the true motives of the invasion; the increase of Bonaparte's power.
These scholars included engineers and artists, members of the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, the geologist Dolomieu, Henri-Joseph Redouté, the mathematician Gaspard Monge (a founding member of the École polytechnique), the chemist Claude Louis Berthollet, Vivant Denon, the mathematician Jean-Joseph Fourier (who did some of the empirical work upon which his "analytical theory of heat" was founded in Egypt), the physicist Étienne Malus, the naturalist Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, the botanist Alire Raffeneau-Delile, and the engineer Nicolas-Jacques Conté of the Conservatoire national des arts et métiers. Their original aim was to help the army, notably by opening a Suez Canal, mapping out roads and building mills to supply food. They founded the Institut d'Égypte with the aim of propagating Enlightenment values in Egypt through interdisciplinary work, improving its agricultural and architectural techniques for example. A scientific review was created under the title Décade égyptienne and in the course of the expedition the scholars also observed and drew the flora and fauna in Egypt and became interested in the country's resources.
The Egyptian Institute that Napoleon established saw the construction of laboratories, libraries, and a printing press. The group worked prodigiously, and some of their discoveries were not finally cataloged until the 1820s." - Wikipedia.
* * *
Essentially we have 30,000 soldiers and an army of scientists and artists spending 4 years in Egypt doing whatever. Official version of their endeavors is widely available. But my understanding that after this voyage we end up with this drawing by Napoleon.
Could concrete be used t build the Great Pyramids?
MIT professor says it could. And I like the first two lines in this article.
Not only MIT professors think it was possible. Regular observers agree as well.
Getting back to concrete. Obviously it would not be cement, or concrete we use today. This could be some sort of lime mortar substance.
Here are some of the construction solutions the Great Pyramids display.
Pouring blocks?
How else do you achieve this perfectly aligned curves?
How else do you achieve this perfectly aligned curves?
Filling in the holes with cement?
Woven mat or cloth liner used inside the formwork?
Is there a huge pile of dirt inside the Pyramid?
Why is it sagging?
Why did they use bricks!
Top 10-20 rows have brick blocks intermingled with regular ones.
Is it to better support the cladding?
Synthetic Granite?
Could it be a failed formwork?
Plaster falling off?
_______________________
* * * * *
Additional two cents. The Great Pyramids are falling apart. The science says it is due to the expansion of the planet Earth. What a coincidence. They stood for thousands of years, and suddenly started to fall apart? Could it be because they are only 200 years old and it's simply time for them to start falling apart?
I remember something similar from my school days, "The Great Pyramid sits upon the Giza Plateau, in the desert just southwest of present day Cairo. It soars to a height of 481 feet. Constructed of approximately 2.3 million stone blocks with an average weight of 2.5 tons each, the stone blocks fit together without mortar, yet a knife blade cannot be placed between the seams. It was not eclipsed in height by any other man-made structure until the 14th century - nearly 3800 years later."
Times have changed. You can fit a few chainsaw blades these days.
