The Ancient Alien Question (15 page)

First aired as a hypothesis in 1974, his theory has come a long way. Davidovits was given samples of the Great Pyramid by Egyptologist Jean-Philippe Lauer in 1982, which he identified
as fragments of geopolymers. In more recent years, his work has received the backing of several other experts in the field, and when his team gave samples of modern reagglomerated stone produced at the beginning of the year 2002 to two leading geology laboratories for blind analysis, the scientists stated that the sample was natural limestone! When even geologists get it wrong, it underlines how difficult it is for Egyptologists to understand, who—as mentioned—remain unwilling to venture where they truly should go.

Davidovits has used chemical analysis to show that the stones of the pyramids are different from the native stone in the quarries, demonstrating that the traditional stance of the Egyptologists can, from a scientific standpoint, no longer be maintained. The analysis shows that the stones did not just come from nearby quarries, but are indeed cast. To quote Davidovits:

The results [of the quarry samples] were compared with pyramid casing stones of Cheops, Teti and Sneferu. The quarry samples are pure limestone consisting of 96–99% Calcite, 0.5–2.5% Quartz, and very small amount of dolomite, gypsum and iron-alumino-silicate. On the other hand the Cheops and Teti casing stones are limestone consisting of: calcite 85–90% and a high amount of special minerals such as Opal CT, hydroxy-apatite, a silico-aluminate, which are not found in the quarries. The pyramid casing stones are light in density and contain numerous trapped air bubbles, unlike the quarry samples which are uniformly dense. If the casing stones were natural limestone, quarries different from those traditionally associated with the pyramid sites must be found, but where? X-Ray diffraction of a red casing stone coating is the first proof to demonstrate the fact that a complicated man-made geopolymeric system was produced in Egypt 4,700 years ago.
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That is an extraordinary claim to make: that a science that we thought was invented in the last few decades was actually already in use in Egypt 4,700 years ago. And furthermore that the ancient Egyptians used the best building technique ever designed: creating stone blocks that are so identical to natural rock that, from a chemical position, geologists often cannot tell them apart! Davidovits is therefore convinced that this method of stonemaking was the origin of alchemy. He points out that the deity specifically linked with Khufu was Khnum, which means “to bind,” “to join,” “to cement,” “to unite,” and which typifies the process of geopolymerization.

Egypt was seen as the birthplace of alchemy, but for Davidovits, it is also the cradle of chemistry. He argues that certain names, such as
mafkat
, which Egyptologists have been unable to translate or explain, were “invented words”—that is, technical terms—as they described compounds that ancient chemists had constructed. He believes that when Imhotep is credited as “the inventor of the art of constructing with cut stones,” it is actually a mistranslation of the Greek
xeston lithon
, which does not translate as “cut stone,” but rather means “the action to polish stone.” For Davidovits, Imhotep is actually the inventor of working with geopolymers, and it was specifically for that reason that he was considered to be a god. In short, Imhotep was an Ancient Egyptian who somehow created a science 4,700 years ahead of his time. Without this invention, the Egyptian Pyramid Age would not have been. The key question is, therefore, how Imhotep accomplished this seemingly impossible feat.

Davidovits believes that Imhotep created two different chemical formulas: a very simple one for the casting of the limestone core blocks, and another one to produce the high-quality stones of the exterior layer. The first and major ingredient in these techniques is soft limestone. Soft limestone can be easily disaggregated either under pressure or by diluting it in water. To that end, he writes, “shallow canals were dug in the soft limestone
along the Nile, forming ideal basins for producing large quantities of muddy limestone. Imhotep’s men began disaggregating the clayish soft rock with its water, until the lime and the clay separated, forming a mud with the fossil shells at the bottom.”
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Next, a substance called natron salt (sodium carbonate) was poured in. Salt is a very reactive substance that has a petrifying effect, which is why it is used to avoid the putrefaction of organic tissue by mummification. Natron is found in great quantities in the desert and in the Wadi-El-Natron (60 miles northwest of Cairo and named after the substance) and Davidovits has shown that the ancient Egyptians of the Pyramid Age used it in massive quantities.

Next, more lime, the mineral that binds, was added. Lime is a powdery residue obtained by burning and reducing to ashes sedimentary rocks such as limestone and dolomite. The fire oxidizes and converts the rocks into a powdery residue, which is lime. Lime mixed with natron and water produces a third substance, a much more corrosive one, which sparks off a strong chemical reaction and transforms other materials. The water dissolves the natron salt and puts the lime in suspension, forming caustic soda. Caustic soda is the catalyst Imhotep needed to trigger off a powerful chemical reaction, one that would produce the fast integration of silica and alumina.

According to Davidovits, the ancient Egyptians then mixed the ingredients in the canals until a homogenous binder paste was obtained. Imhotep now had a water-based cement, which he then had to convert into concrete. For this, he added more fossil shells, limestone rubble, and silt from the river Nile, producing a concrete paste, which was carried to where hundreds of small wooden molds had been prepared. These molds had been smeared with rancid oil to facilitate the release of the concrete once hardened. The mixture was rammed into the molds, becoming a dense re-agglomerated limestone, which was let to dry in the shade, to avoid its cracking under the hot sun.

The preceding description is a proven chemical procedure, but was it known to Imhotep? For an untrained eye, the process seems terribly complex. How could it have been known millennia ago?

Davidovits thinks that ancient records have left us clues that this was indeed the manner in which the pyramids were built, as well as showing the total cost of the mineral mixing ingredients required in the process. He believes that this information was actually left behind on the pyramid covering stones and pointed out to Herodotus when the Greek writer visited Giza. Herodotus reported that a sum of 1,600 talents, or roughly the equivalent of 150 million dollars, was spent on garlic, onions, and radishes, which he and everyone else considered a phenomenal amount of money for what seem to be secondary dietary requirements for the workforce. As such, the story is taken with...a pinch of salt, and the argument that Herodotus was lied to by his locally hired tourist guide. But Davidovits believes that those names (“garlic, onions, and radishes”) were misinterpretations of what was actually written on the pyramid. We have to remember that our ancestors mostly referred to substances based on their colors: “rubber” comes from the Latin word for “red,” as rubber was red. And so Davidovits argues that these words are not “garlic,” “onion,” or “radish,” but technical terms whose true meaning had become lost. Davidovits has used other inscriptions, including several stelae from the Fourth Dynasty, to show that specific mining venues were exploited during the Pyramid Age, but that the materials quarried there have no clear purpose within the traditional methodology of constructing the pyramids—but they do make sense within his theory.

Is there hard evidence to credit Imhotep and his colleagues of the Third and Fourth Dynasty with the invention of geopolymers? Perhaps. The Famine Stele, found on the island of Elephantine in southern Egypt, does describe the invention of building with stone through processing different minerals and
ores, which could be chemicals involved in the fabrication of man-made stone. On the Giza plateau, Davidovits has shown that several stones have weathered unnaturally: One single block was sometimes left unfinished for the day, and thus it hardened overnight before being brought to the desired height the following morning. This meant that one block was made in two phases, with slightly different materials, and created under different circumstances. Six millennia later, it means that sometimes the lower section of a stone has weathered badly, but the higher section has not, even though the stones next to it do not reveal such lower weathering. Such weathering does not conform to the traditionalist view of quarried blocks.

There is also circumstantial evidence. For example, we know that the ancient Egyptians were familiar with cement as such: At several places in the Great Pyramid, remains of 4,500-year-old cements are found, and are still in excellent condition. This ancient mortar is far superior to the cement used in modern buildings, as well as the cement used to restore the ancient Egyptian monuments—much of which has already degraded and cracked after only 50 years.

Davidovits has gained some acceptance from Egyptologists for his idea that some Egyptian artifacts, specifically some vases, were geopolymers. Thus, it is accepted that the ancient Egyptians had the necessary chemical and technical knowledge (of copper, alkalis, and ceramics) to mold vases in this way. Davidovits argues, “So if the Egyptians knew how to make such a high-quality cement for vases and statues, what was there to stop them adding aggregates such as fossil shells to produce a high-performance reagglomerated limestone? Clearly, nothing.”
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The most recent support (and headlines) for Davidovits’s findings has come from Linn W. Hobbs, professor of materials science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Hobbs has stated that he believes that mainstream archaeologists have been too contemptuous of work by “other scientists”—read:
Davidovits—suggesting the possibility of concrete. “The degree of hostility aimed at experimentation is disturbing,” Hobbs said. “Too many big egos and too many published works may be riding on the idea that every pyramid block was carved, not cast.”
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In 2006, research by Michel W. Barsoum at Philadelphia’s Drexel University confirmed Davidovits’s conclusion that samples of stone from parts of the Khufu Pyramid were microstructurally different from limestone blocks. Barsoum, a professor of materials engineering, said microscope, X-ray, and chemical analysis of scraps of stone from the pyramids “suggest a small but significant percentage of blocks on the higher portions of the pyramids were cast” from concrete—thus confirming Davidovits’s conclusions.
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When Barsoum, a native of Egypt, went public with these findings, he said he was unprepared for the onslaught of angry criticism that greeted the peer-reviewed research by himself and scientists Adrish Ganguly of Drexel and Gilles Hug of France’s National Center for Scientific Research. “You would have thought I claimed the pyramids were carved by lasers,” Barsoum said.
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Egyptologist Zahi Hawass’s reaction was typical of the onslaught: “It’s highly stupid,” he said. “The pyramids are made from solid blocks of quarried limestone. To suggest otherwise is idiotic and insulting.”
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These are just a few examples in a long list of evidence that argues that the most likely method of construction was the use of geopolymers, and not hewn limestone slabs that were perfectly moved into position. As recently as 1951, the German Egyptologist Otto Neugebauer argued that “ancient science was the product of very few men; and those few happened not to be Egyptian.”
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Neugebauer’s statement was in sharp contrast with men like Aristotle, who saw Egypt as “the cradle of mathematics,” crediting Egyptians with inventing geometry, astronomy, and arithmetic. Eudoxus, like Pythagoras, studied in ancient Egypt before being admitted to Plato’s Academy in Athens,
showing that the ancient Greeks throughout their history knew that Egypt held certain knowledge that was of vital importance for an educated Greek—and that was apparently a type of knowledge that they were unable to attain in Greece itself.

Though it has been studied by so many, it is clear that the Great Pyramid has not yet given up all of its secrets. These are just a few more of its peculiarities:

Flautist Paul Horn has noted that the granite sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber resonates at a frequency of 438 cycles per second (Hz).

Acoustics engineer Robert Vawter claims that the King’s Chamber was designed specifically as a resonant chamber in which the sound of specific frequencies would resonate.