6047095france-great-pyramidsff.jpgFrench archi­tect Jean-Pierre Houdin has unveiled a quite fas­cin­at­ing the­ory of pyr­amid con­struc­tion. Appar­ently based on a dec­ade of invest­ig­a­tion, he is able to pro­posed a series of con­cepts pro­pos­ing that internal con­struc­tion ramps allowed for the effi­cient and remark­able con­struc­tion of the Pyr­amid of Cheops. Addi­tion­ally he demon­strates the most effi­cient means by which the pyr­amidium was raised along with the pyr­amid itself and the con­struc­tion of the King’s cham­ber at the heart of the pyr­amid.

The archi­tect uses a slick 3d visu­al­iz­a­tion sys­tem to cre­ate an edu­ca­tional video that is quite impress­ive. Load times seem to be gla­cial, but the wait is worth it. An anim­ated model of the archi­tect him­self appears on screen and wander about the pyr­amid itself explain­ing the find­ings and demon­strat­ing through anim­a­tion the con­struc­tion processes.

I am not sure how much of this is actu­ally that rad­ical, but the present­a­tion is very enter­tain­ing and the visu­al­iz­a­tion of work­ers haul­ing the stones through the inner cham­bers or using the hoist to raise the pyr­amidium are very impressive.

I don’t want to spoil much of the dis­cov­ery presen­ted in the visu­al­isa­tion, but the concept of internal hall­ways is quite an intriguing one. Corners of the pyr­amid are left exposed to allow for rota­tion of build­ing blocks as they travel along the con­struc­tion ways, and this allows for haul­ing to take place in a shaded and stable envir­on­ment. I gather this this also reduces the sug­ges­ted num­ber of people involved in the con­struc­tion and also solves the huge issue of the bulk of the external ramp as pre­vi­ously pro­posed that actu­ally would have dwarfed the achieve­ment of the pyr­amid itself.

It would be inter­est­ing to see a full doc­u­ment­ary on these find­ings. Houdin was involved in National Geographic’s 2002 I won­der about the corners of the pyr­amid and whether if they were built after the fact and pos­sibly less tightly tied into the over­all con­struc­tion might have given way or showed the effects of weath­er­ing faster than other com­pon­ents. Moreover, I would have thought that finding/proving the exist­ence of these internal hall­ways, even if filled in after the com­ple­tion would have been a reas­on­ably simple task, so am left won­der­ing whether the pro­posed engin­eer­ing prin­ciples have been invest­ig­ated or are sub­ject to ongo­ing debate. There are inter­est­ing sites ded­ic­ated to explor­ing such ques­tions and the­or­ies, albeit by height­en­ing the mys­tery and appear­ing rather con­spir­acy the­ory like.

Very cool anim­a­tions and ideas.