Men Who Vandalized Great Pyramid To Prove 'Theory' Face Charges

Slayer, once againm the Great Pyramid HAS been carbon dated. They've dated the organic material in the mortar of the joints of the remaining casing stones, and even mortar in the packing stones. "But there's no mortar in the inner packing stones..." you might ask. Well, yes there is. The inner packing stones had gaps, up to 6", which was crammed with everything from debris, stone dust, gypsum, and charcoal. It was done to fill the gaps. The process used to make the mortar involved fire and charcoal, organic materials needed for carbon dating.

Mark Lehner:

A pyramid is basically, most basically, two separate constructions: it's an outer shell of very fine polished limestone with great accuracy in its joints, but most of that's missing; and the other construction is the inner core, which filled in this shell. Since most of the outer casing is missing what you see now is the step-like structure of the core. The core was made with a substantial slop factor, as my friend who is a mechanic likes to say about certain automobiles. That is, they didn't join the stones very accurately. You have great spaces between the stones. And you can actually see where the men were up there and they didn't, you know, they may have like four or five, even six inches between two stones. And so they'd jam down pebbles and cobbles and some broken stones, and slop big quantities of gypsum mortar in there. I noticed that in the interstices between the stones and in this mortar was embedded organic material, like charcoal, probably from the fire that they used to heat the gypsum in order to make the mortar. You have to heat raw gypsum in order to dehydrate it, and then you rehydrate it in order to make the mortar, like with modern cement.

So it occurred to me that if we could take these small samples, we could radiocarbon date them, not with conventional radiocarbon dating so much, but recently there's been a development in carbon-14 dating where they use atomic accelerators to count the disintegration rate of the carbon-14 atoms, atom by atom. So you can date extraordinarily small samples. So we set up a program to do that. And it involved us climbing all over the Old Kingdom pyramids, including the ones at Giza, taking as much in the way of organic samples as we could. We weren't damaging the pyramids, because these are tiny little flecks and it's a very strange experience to be crawling over a monument as big as Khufu's, looking for a bit of charcoal that might be as big as the fingernail on your small finger. We noted, not only the samples of charcoal, sometimes there was reed. Now and then in some of the pyramids we found little bits of wood. But we saw in many places, even on the giant pyramids of Giza, the first pyramid and the second pyramid and the third one, fragments of tools, bits of pottery that are clearly characteristic of the Old Kingdom. And it occurred to us, you know, these are not just objects, these, the pyramids themselves were archaeological sites during the time they were being built. If it took 20 years to build them—and now we begin to think that Khufu may have reigned double the length of time that we traditionally assign him—if people were building the Great Pyramid over three decades, it was an occupied site as long as some camp sites that hunters and gatherers occupied that archaeologists dig out in the desert.

He goes on at length about his teams process for dating the GP based on the mortar and human debris within the GP itself.

MARK LEHNER, Archaeologist, Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago, and Harvard Semitic Museum
(NOVA interview)

Lehner once believed that the pyramids predated Egypt, that there was once an older civilization there (along the line of Edward Cayce), etc., and went there to find that evidence. Instead, after decades of research he supports the established theories that place the GP and all the stone built pyramids right in the Old Kingdom.

Blackmarketeer
He goes on at length about his teams process for dating the GP based on the mortar and human debris within the GP itself.

Reread it again.

Quote where it states from "within the GP itself" please


Also, Which Feb?

We were getting dates from the 1984 study that were on the average 374 years too old for the Cambridge Ancient History, (the Cambridge Ancient History is a reference) dates for the kings who built these monuments. So just recently we took some 300 samples, and in collaboration with our Egyptian colleagues, we are now in the process of dating these samples. The outcome we are going to announce jointly in tandem with our Egyptian colleagues, and maybe we can pick up the subject of the results when we're over there in Egypt together with Dr. Zahi Hawass (during the February excavation of the bakeries at Giza).

What's the beef here ?

Everyone knows the pyramids were giant landing pads for space ships built by RA. Then they rebelled.

On a serious note.

If your a guest in someones country you don't mess with their stuff.

Rather simple.

neo96
What's the beef here ?

Everyone knows the pyramids were giant landing pads for space ships built by RA. Then they rebelled.

On a serious note.

If your a guest in someones country you don't mess with their stuff.

Rather simple.

edit on 21-2-2014 by neo96 because: (no reason given)

Sometimes it's necessary to mess with their "stuff" to get past the lies.

Since you need everything spelled out for you...

NOVA: When it comes to carbon dating, do you need organic material?

LEHNER: Right. There has been radiocarbon dating, or carbon-14 dating done in Egypt obviously before we did our studies, and it's been done on some material from Giza. For example, the great boat that was found just south of the Great Pyramid, which we think belongs to Khufu, that was radiocarbon dated—coming out about 2,600 B.C.

NOVA: But how do you carbon date the pyramids themselves when they're made out of stone, an inorganic material?

LEHNER: We had the idea some years back to radiocarbon date the pyramids directly. And as you say, you need organic material in order to do carbon-14 dating, because all living creatures, every living thing takes in carbon-14 during its lifetime, and stops taking in carbon-14 when it dies. And then the carbon-14 starts breaking down at a regular rate. So in effect, you're counting the carbon-14 in an organic specimen. And by virtue of the rate of disintegration of carbon-14 atoms and the amount of carbon-14 in a sample, you can know how old it is. So how do you date the pyramids, because they're made out of stone and mortar? Well, in the 1980s when I was crawling around on the pyramids, as I used to like to do and still do, I noticed that contrary to what many guides tell people, even the stones of the Great Pyramid of Khufu are put together with great quantities of mortar. We're looking, you see, at the core.

NOVA: How do we know how old the pyramids are?

PyramidsLEHNER: It's not a direct approach. There are people coming from a New Age perspective who want the pyramids to be very old, much older than Egyptologists are willing to agree. There are people who want them to be built by extraterrestrials, or inspired by extraterrestrials, or built by a lost civilization whose records are otherwise unknown to us. And similar ideas are said about the Sphinx. And in response to the evidence that we have for the time in which the pyramids are built, the criticism is often leveled at scholars that they're only dealing with circumstantial information. It's all just circumstantial. And sometimes we smile at that, because virtually all information in archaeology is circumstantial.

Rarely do we have people from thousands of years ago who are writing, who are signing confessions. So there's no one easy way that we know what the date of the pyramids happens to be. It's mostly by context. The pyramids are surrounded by cemeteries of other tombs. In these tombs we find bodies. Sometimes we find organic materials, like fragments of reed, and wood, wooden coffins. We find the bones of the people who lived and were buried in these tombs. All that can be radiocarbon dated, for example. But primarily we date the pyramids by their position in the development of Egyptian architecture and material culture over the broad sweep of 3,000 years. So we're not dealing with any one foothold of factual knowledge at Giza itself. We're dealing with basically the entirety of Egyptology and Egyptian archaeology.

NOVA: Can you give us an example of a single aspect of material culture, from ancient Egypt that you might use as a starting point for dating the pyramids?

Egyptian PotteryLEHNER: The pottery, for example. All the pottery you find at Giza looks like the pottery of the time of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure, the kings who built these pyramids in what we call the Fourth Dynasty, the Old Kingdom. We study the pottery and how it changes over the broad sweep, some 3,000 years. There are people who are experts in all these different periods of pottery or Egyptian ceramics.

So to bring it down to a level that almost anybody can understand, if, for example, you were digging around the base of the Empire State Building, assuming that it was a ruin and the streets around it in Manhattan were filled with dirt, and you started finding ceramics that were characteristic of the Elizabethan era or say the Colonial period here in the United States, that would be one thing. But if you started finding the Styrofoam cups and the plastic utensils of the nearby delicatessen, then you would know by virtue of their position in the overall material culture of the 20th century that that's probably a good date for the Empire State Building. Of course then you'd look at the Empire State Building's style and you'd compare it to the Chrysler Building, and you'd compare it to the Citicorp Building, which is considerably different. And you'd work out the different styles in the evolution of Manhattan itself. But by and large, you would, in the broad scope, be able to put the Empire State Building and Manhattan in an overall context of development here in the United States and in the modern 19th and 20th centuries. And you would know that it didn't date, for example, to the colonial period of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, because nothing you'd find in the Empire State Building ruins, around it, in the dirt surrounding it—maybe it's a stump sticking up above the sloping ruins of Manhattan—nothing really looks like the flowing blue china, or the other kinds of utensils and material culture that they used in the time of the American Revolution. So it's hard to give a succinct answer to that question, because we date things in archaeology on the basis of its context and a broad mass of information and material culture—things that were used by people, styles, and so on.

NOVA: When it comes to carbon dating, do you need organic material?

LEHNER: Right. There has been radiocarbon dating, or carbon-14 dating done in Egypt obviously before we did our studies, and it's been done on some material from Giza. For example, the great boat that was found just south of the Great Pyramid, which we think belongs to Khufu, that was radiocarbon dated—coming out about 2,600 B.C.

NOVA: But how do you carbon date the pyramids themselves when they're made out of stone, an inorganic material?

LEHNER: We had the idea some years back to radiocarbon date the pyramids directly. And as you say, you need organic material in order to do carbon-14 dating, because all living creatures, every living thing takes in carbon-14 during its lifetime, and stops taking in carbon-14 when it dies. And then the carbon-14 starts breaking down at a regular rate. So in effect, you're counting the carbon-14 in an organic specimen. And by virtue of the rate of disintegration of carbon-14 atoms and the amount of carbon-14 in a sample, you can know how old it is. So how do you date the pyramids, because they're made out of stone and mortar? Well, in the 1980s when I was crawling around on the pyramids, as I used to like to do and still do, I noticed that contrary to what many guides tell people, even the stones of the Great Pyramid of Khufu are put together with great quantities of mortar. We're looking, you see, at the core.

A pyramid is basically, most basically, two separate constructions: it's an outer shell of very fine polished limestone with great accuracy in its joints, but most of that's missing; and the other construction is the inner core, which filled in this shell. Since most of the outer casing is missing what you see now is the step-like structure of the core. The core was made with a substantial slop factor, as my friend who is a mechanic likes to say about certain automobiles. That is, they didn't join the stones very accurately. You have great spaces between the stones. And you can actually see where the men were up there and they didn't, you know, they may have like four or five, even six inches between two stones. And so they'd jam down pebbles and cobbles and some broken stones, and slop big quantities of gypsum mortar in there. I noticed that in the interstices between the stones and in this mortar was embedded organic material, like charcoal, probably from the fire that they used to heat the gypsum in order to make the mortar. You have to heat raw gypsum in order to dehydrate it, and then you rehydrate it in order to make the mortar, like with modern cement.

Are you reading this? He's explaining that within the joints of the core there is organic material - gypsum, charcoal - that they were able to find and date.

So it occurred to me that if we could take these small samples, we could radiocarbon date them, not with conventional radiocarbon dating so much, but recently there's been a development in carbon-14 dating where they use atomic accelerators to count the disintegration rate of the carbon-14 atoms, atom by atom. So you can date extraordinarily small samples. So we set up a program to do that. And it involved us climbing all over the Old Kingdom pyramids, including the ones at Giza, taking as much in the way of organic samples as we could. We weren't damaging the pyramids, because these are tiny little flecks and it's a very strange experience to be crawling over a monument as big as Khufu's, looking for a bit of charcoal that might be as big as the fingernail on your small finger. We noted, not only the samples of charcoal, sometimes there was reed. Now and then in some of the pyramids we found little bits of wood. But we saw in many places, even on the giant pyramids of Giza, the first pyramid and the second pyramid and the third one, fragments of tools, bits of pottery that are clearly characteristic of the Old Kingdom. And it occurred to us, you know, these are not just objects, these, the pyramids themselves were archaeological sites during the time they were being built. If it took 20 years to build them—and now we begin to think that Khufu may have reigned double the length of time that we traditionally assign him—if people were building the Great Pyramid over three decades, it was an occupied site as long as some camp sites that hunters and gatherers occupied that archaeologists dig out in the desert.

Here he is saying the pyramid itself acts much like a Tel, embedded within it's very core with all the detritus of decades of workers building and occupying it. The PYRAMIDS could be treated NOT as an "object" found on an archeological site, but as an archeological site itself.

So you see the pyramids are very human monuments. And the evidence of the people who built them, their material culture is embedded right into the very fabric of the pyramids. And I think I could take just about any interested person and show them this kind of material embedded in the pyramids as well as tool marks in the stones and say, hey, folks, these weren't lasers. These were chisels and hammers and you know, people who were really out there.

NOVA: What does the radiocarbon dating tell us about the date of the pyramids?

LEHNER: Well, we did a first run in 1984, actually, funded by the Edgar Cayce Foundation because they had definite ideas that the pyramids were much older than Egyptologists believed. That they date as early as 10,500 B.C. Well, obviously for them it was a good test case because radio carbon dating does not give you pinpoint accuracy. If you have a plus or minus factor, but I say it's kind of like shooting at a fly on a barn with a shotgun. Well, you're not going to hit the fly exactly, you're going to know which side of the barn, which end of the barn, you know, the buckshot is scattering. And it wasn't scattering at 10,500 B.C. on that first run of some 70 samples from a whole selection of pyramids of the Old Kingdom. But it was significantly older than Egyptologists believed. We were getting dates from the 1984 study that were on the average 374 years too old for the Cambridge Ancient History, (the Cambridge Ancient History is a reference) dates for the kings who built these monuments. So just recently we took some 300 samples, and in collaboration with our Egyptian colleagues, we are now in the process of dating these samples. The outcome we are going to announce jointly in tandem with our Egyptian colleagues, and maybe we can pick up the subject of the results when we're over there in Egypt together with Dr. Zahi Hawass (during the February excavation of the bakeries at Giza).

Robert J. Wenke also conducted a radiocarbon survey of the GP, the analysis was performed at Southern Methodist University Texas. (1985)
The dates range within +/- 400 years of Khufu's reign. The paper covers the discrepancies based on atmospheric contamination.

A SECOND radiocarbon dating program was run in 1995. This time the results of the GP dating was about 200 years older than the reign of Khufu, but again the range of error allotted to radiocarbon dating still makes this within a date range acceptable for Khufu. The paper offered another explanation for the discrepancies, this one based on the wooden artifacts embedded within the mortar could have been old, recycled wood that had been in use in Egypt for a long time, before finally being burned for the creation of gypsum mortar. A runner, or sledge, may have been used for decades, then the timbers put to use as runners, or ladders, then finally used as fire wood. Wood in Egypt is extremely scarce, most of it had to be imported from Lebanon. So it's not difficult to see how organic material (wood) embedded in the mortar embedded within the core packing stones could be dated to a century or two older than the reign on Khufu.

The dating proved the GP like the other Giza pyramids, firmly belongs to the Old Kingdom.

Spruce

neo96
What's the beef here ?

Everyone knows the pyramids were giant landing pads for space ships built by RA. Then they rebelled.

On a serious note.

If your a guest in someones country you don't mess with their stuff.

Rather simple.

edit on 21-2-2014 by neo96 because: (no reason given)

Sometimes it's necessary to mess with their "stuff" to get past the lies.

Well if it was 'original' to the pyramid it would be etched in stone ?

YES ?

Do pharohs really have to write ' I was here' ?

If you want an exhaustive, thoroughly detailed, detailed analysis of carbon dating studies conducted on the Giza plateau, try this:

The Sphinx: dramatising data ... and dating (ISSN 1567–214X) (2006) (PDF)

It's focus is on the dating of the Sphinx and Khafre's pyramid complex, but goes over the studies on Khufu's as well, and offers illustrations on the quarries as well (many of those are in Lehner's book as well)

neo96

Spruce

neo96
What's the beef here ?

Everyone knows the pyramids were giant landing pads for space ships built by RA. Then they rebelled.

On a serious note.

If your a guest in someones country you don't mess with their stuff.

Rather simple.

edit on 21-2-2014 by neo96 because: (no reason given)

Sometimes it's necessary to mess with their "stuff" to get past the lies.

Well if it was 'original' to the pyramid it would be etched in stone ?

YES ?

Do pharohs really have to write ' I was here' ?

I am not the enemy. All I'm saying is that Egyptian culture is notoriously corrupt. We cannot take their word for it regarding the age of the GP, or on many other things for that matter.

reply to post by Blackmarketeer


Yes now I've read it three times.

I'm not going to bore everybody with repeating myself here.

Quote where it states from "Within the Pyramid" 'The Core doesn't answer squat. Everything you posted now twice talks about the outside blocks and the mortar used between the outside blocks. The core reference is to deep down inside the mortar itself on the Outside of the Pyramid.

If there were a major 20+ year renovation of the Great Pyramid by Cheops/Khufu with people crawling all over it repairing, replacing missing blocks on the outside and fitting new replacement outer stones etc of course there would be Mortar, villages, bakeries, graves and a hell of lot of pottery left by the people from that period.

reply to post by Spruce


Do you not understand that many of the archeologists who have studied Egypt are not actually Egyptian? They're Germans, Americans, British, etc. That it is these Germans, Americans, British, who have established the Giza plateau to the Old Kingdom? Or do you suppose Hawass has mutant powers to control their minds, or that there is a world-wide conspiracy among all the historians and archeologists who study Egypt to keep it a big fat secret?

neo96

Spruce

neo96
What's the beef here ?

Everyone knows the pyramids were giant landing pads for space ships built by RA. Then they rebelled.

On a serious note.

If your a guest in someones country you don't mess with their stuff.

Rather simple.

edit on 21-2-2014 by neo96 because: (no reason given)

Sometimes it's necessary to mess with their "stuff" to get past the lies.

Well if it was 'original' to the pyramid it would be etched in stone ?

YES ?

Do pharohs really have to write ' I was here' ?

The Egyptians seemed to mark everything yet the biggest monument they have is not marked or even labeled with anything but this one little marking? I find it really weird and odd that the GP isn't full of hieroglyphs and pictures of the pharaoh that it is said to belong to. It's just my opinion but every other tomb seems to have markings but the biggest one there?

I think a lot of the Egyptian history like all history is skewed to one side...whose side? I have no idea. Just my thoughts.

Blackmarketeer
reply to post by Spruce

 

Do you not understand that many of the archeologists who have studied Egypt are not actually Egyptian? They're Germans, Americans, British, etc. That it is these Germans, Americans, British, who have established the Giza plateau to the Old Kingdom? Or do you suppose Hawass has mutant powers to control their minds, or that there is a world-wide conspiracy among all the historians and archeologists who study Egypt to keep it a big fat secret?

No ****, Sherlock. The wall of silence regarding the truth is high and wide. Scientists can't stand it when you question the status quo. Ask any graduate student.

reply to post by Spruce

I am not the enemy. All I'm saying is that Egyptian culture is notoriously corrupt. We cannot take their word for it regarding the age of the GP, or on many other things for that matter.Text

Honestly I think the evidence that showed the proof of who built what is long gone.

The original casing of the pyramid. That was taken centuries ago.

reply to post by mblahnikluver

The Egyptians seemed to mark everything yet the biggest monument they have is not marked or even labeled with anything but this one little marking?

Today it doesn't but to repeat that info was probably on the pyramid casing.

That is long since gone.

Here is the PDF version of the carbon dating of the pyramid.

RADIOCARBON DATES OF OLD AND MIDDLE KINGDOM MONUMENTS IN EGYPT
(source: journals.uair.arizona.edu)

Georges Bonani [1] • Herbert Haas [2] • Zahi Hawass [3] • Mark Lehner [4] • Shawki Nakhla [5] • John Nolan [6] • Robert Wenke [7] • Willy Wölfli [1]

ABSTRACT.
Between 1984 and 1995 over 450 organic samples were collected from monuments built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. The most suitable samples were selected for dating. The purpose was to establish a radiocarbon chronology with samples from secure context and collected with the careful techniques required for 14C samples. This chronology is compared to the historical chronology established by reconstructing written documentation

Now by all means Slayer, continue cherry picking data, ignoring evidence that doesn't fit your foregone conclusion. Here, in this paper, is hard scientific evidence that the GP fits in the Old Kingdom. If you want to disprove the established age of the GP you can start by writing a scientific paper that refutes the conclusions made in this one.

So, Let me get this straight, They gained authorization into the archeologist only area and are now having that access revoked and charges pressed after the fact?

Spruce

neo96
What's the beef here ?

Everyone knows the pyramids were giant landing pads for space ships built by RA. Then they rebelled.

On a serious note.

If your a guest in someones country you don't mess with their stuff.

Rather simple.

edit on 21-2-2014 by neo96 because: (no reason given)

Sometimes it's necessary to mess with their "stuff" to get past the lies.

Seeing how Atlantis hasn't been found what do these guys have that they can make a comparison? Sounds like they are making a few lies of their own.

Blackmarketeer
Here is the PDF version of the carbon dating of the pyramid.

RADIOCARBON DATES OF OLD AND MIDDLE KINGDOM MONUMENTS IN EGYPT
(source: journals.uair.arizona.edu)

Georges Bonani [1] • Herbert Haas [2] • Zahi Hawass [3] • Mark Lehner [4] • Shawki Nakhla [5] • John Nolan [6] • Robert Wenke [7] • Willy Wölfli [1]

ABSTRACT.
Between 1984 and 1995 over 450 organic samples were collected from monuments built during the Old and Middle Kingdoms. The most suitable samples were selected for dating. The purpose was to establish a radiocarbon chronology with samples from secure context and collected with the careful techniques required for 14C samples. This chronology is compared to the historical chronology established by reconstructing written documentation

Now by all means Slayer, continue cherry picking data, ignoring evidence that doesn't fit your foregone conclusion. Here, in this paper, is hard scientific evidence that the GP fits in the Old Kingdom. If you want to disprove the established age of the GP you can start by writing a scientific paper that refutes the conclusions made in this one.

Almost all the tests they made was on charcoal, reeds, straw and material. All of these things could have been used when the pyramid was repaired. There was no actual dating of the pyramid itself just trash that was found.

reply to post by buster2010


It wasn't "trash", but the organic material comprising the gypsum mortar, used throughout the pyramid. The process of selecting the samples is described in the PDF. They took hundreds of samples from a wide area of the pyramid.

The stone of the pyramid itself cannot be tested. But the mortar can. In one of the links I posted earlier was another reference Lehner made, of the pottery shards also found, broken and ground up and mixed in with all the detritus packed into the gaps of the core stones. Those pottery shards also date to the 4th Dynasty, stylistically and with C14 testing.

Couple that with the Khufu cartouche buried with in the relieving chamber at the heart of the pyramid, it forms the basis for dating it with a high degree of certainty.

Carbon dating is not the only means of establishing a date for the GP. Other disciplines that connect the GP to the 4th dynasty include:

• stratigraphy: the study of archaeological layers
  
• archaeobotany: seeds/plant remains amongst the ruins
  
• osteoarchaeology: human remains found among the worker villages/cemetaries
  
• zooarchaeology: animal remains found among the worker villages/cemetaries
  
• ceramics: pottery shards found within the pyramid itself, including those found deep within the interstitial spaces of the core packing stones
  
• epigraphy: inscriptions, such as Khufu's cartouche
  
• lithics (intentionally chipped stone, stone tools)

These were the disciplines cited by Lehner in the AERA study linked to above. So it isn't some arbitrary random conclusion they are making when they say the GP is from the 4th Dynasty of the Old Kingdom.


The point of all this radiocarbon drama is that the OP demanded to see a study of carbon dating of the Great Pyramid. It seemed clear from his tone that he did not believe such a study existed.

Great thread.

The crappy thing about debating people is that you have to debate enough to get right information out so those with eyes can see.

Then after that just dont waste anymore time.