It’s crazy that even on the centuries old photo on the top, Cairo in the background was already that developed!
The pizza hut across the street was probably fire back then
I didn’t know they had such nice cameras either. Really ahead of their time those caironians.
This gave me a much needed giggle. Thanks!
These stones were mostly removed from the great pyramid just 700 years ago. After an earthquake people began removing them for a few centuries to build other things until they were all gone. The great pyramid had its casing stones for 85% of its life.
Edit: I highly recommend “history for granite” on youtube.
its amazing how we look at historical constructions and assume thats always how it looked.
You are right, The Pyramids used to be shining white beacons of marble, but the stone was… “repurposed” for building after the end of the pharos.
Medieval castles too, all anyone sees today are grey, bare rock, dingy, cold, drafty castles… But when they were new? before photographs and film? They were plastered white, and filled with rugs and tapestries that made them beautiful, stunning, and warm.
Never been in the “we” category here, it’s just so obvious that ruins of any kind and even just old-ish (like within 200 years) buildings rarely look like they were supposed to. It’s disturbing and sad that most people can’t seem to realise that by themselves.
When kids were shown the white marble buildings in ancient Rome on TV and history books and whatnot, and then end up thinking that’s how it was, instead of with colourful paint - if that is disturbing to you, you must have been a rather recent arrival on earth, no?
There’s quite a few Reconstruction Castles, newly built castles that have tried to be as historically accurate as possible
So you don’t have to imagine, you can actually visit a (reconstruction of based on evidence of the time) living piece of ancient history
Thanks for the additional insight!
I see, another wirtual viewer /s
Imagine being the first person to realize that the Empire is dead and you can just fucking climb up there with your buddies and take that gold cap lol.
They should refurbish them.
Why not? Just because they haven’t been yet? Historical significance? Blah, blah blah. I’m sure the people who made them would want it. And I bet it would increase tourism. We take this shit way too seriously.
I weirdly agree.
Similarly, I would like to see the Coliseum rebuilt and used as a football stadium.
It would have to be remodeled as well, the floor isn’t quite big enough for a U.S. football field, let alone a European football field.
Think I saw it was 83 meters long
Perhaps not a football stadium then, but… do you like gladiators?
I like movies about gladiators.
I think a politician already meantioned bringing them back to force immigrants to fight to the death. So uh, think I’m going to play it safe and say no until the details are more flushed out
That’s interesting bc I was going to reply to a different comment that we should put corrupt officials and billionaires in there.
That may be a little small for a lot of the viewers, but then again people go to boxing matches.
Lions vs referees until then
its big enough for a naval battle, its big enough for a football game.
The one in Verona is used for concerts. So that works.
I’m for it, but I think it would be very expensive to get it up to code.
The Pyramids are just piles of rocks, with no modern purpose.
Really, we should use these things for their intended purpose, if possible. And, keep them in good condition. We do it with other historic buildings.
I would object because of the bureaucracy. It would cost less to make a new one. Then you could do both. And in 5000 years we might get new alien conspiracies about why we have two sets of pyramids in two different time periods.
The neopyramidal period. For some reason they stopped building pyramids for 4000 years but decided to start again
It would certainly shift focus from all the plastic bags blowing around it in the wind
From what I understand the polished limestone is accurate for many pyramids, but the gold pyramidion seems to be more of an edge case on some smaller pyramids.
A gold top wouldn’t even be visible from the ground on a large polished white pyramid.
I remember the signs there and museum did tell that the great pyramids also had golden Pyramidions.
If it was capped in gold, dusk and dawn could have been very pretty.
A gold top wouldn’t even be visible from the ground on a large polished white pyramid.
The point of pyramids was of religious nature, it was to be closer to the sky and allow dead pharaohs to go in their version of the after life so it’s likely that the gold wasn’t to be pretty but for a religious something
Also, i wonder if it was a gold alloy and not pure gold
You are close but gold is conductive. And souls are capable of traveling through such conduits. Especially gold. It is a direct conduit into the sky where they can go back to doppelpopulous to worship Queen doppelpopolis of the doppelgangers.
Why not both?
If it was for religious reasons they would definitely use pure gold
Just looked on wikipedia and they say
“… and were sometimes covered with plates of copper, gold or electrum.” (electrum is an alloy of gold and silver IIRC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidion Which makes a lot of sense, gold was and is very expensive“Plates of” especially makes sense. And you do recall correctly, electrum is a natural alloy, which means they wouldn’t have had to create it from scratch.
Bright white casing stones, yes. 50 foot tall gold capstone, no.
Humans own 23³m³ of gold total
Humans have mined more than 200000 metric tons of gold, which is about 10000 cubic meters, not 23
Whoops. 23³ m³
23 cubed cubic metres? Why not just put a few zeroes in the first place?
I guess, because that way it easier conveys the point of ‘it’s a cube with 23 meters side’, which makes sense as it’s easier to imagine than just an arbitrary amount of cubic meters.
Correct. Cube 23m on each side. I think I meant to write (23m)³ but forgot the parentheses.
Most of it’s used in tech so how much of it is owned and not licensed? 🤔
Very little gold is used in tech
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Note, this is from the ruined Black Pyramid, no the Great Pyramid. But what a remarkable artifact, still amazingly intact.
This is in the right community. It is indeed interesting as fuck.
A bit ironic that they removed their comment that was remarkable and interesting. I guess it was about the capstone from Black Pyramid?
They posted an image of this capstone with the text “actual capstone in the Cairo museum.”
It is a genuine capstone, or pyramidion, from a pyramid, one of very few that survives intact to the present day. It’s black basalt, still beautifully polished and inscribed. It’s just not from the Giza pyramids, it’s from the Black pyramid at Dahshur, tomb of Amenemhat III. This is 12th dynasty, centuries later than the 4th dynasty necropolis at Giza, but it does give us an idea of what the pyramidion of Khufu’s pyramid might have been like. Knowing Khufu, his was probably granite. He had a thing for granite, the entire King’s Chamber of his pyramid is lined with it.
The article I linked doesn’t give any sense of scale, Amenemhat’s pyramidion is 1.85 meters tall and weighs 4.5 metric tons. No problem for the mega masons that built the rest of the actual manmade mountain it would rest upon, but still a far cry from a 100 foot tall chunk of gold.
I believe it’s generally accepted that they were usually capped with electrum, not gold. Electrum is a naturally occurring alloy of mostly gold and silver, with some copper or platinum and other metals.
It looks like gold though
I think one of the purposes of the pyramids was to be a sort of ancient beacon. The stone reflected the sun and moonlight, making it pretty tough to get lost. In the days of no GPS or electricity, I’m sure this was of great importance.
Have you ever been playing Minecraft and wandered too far from base before building a bed and just had to abandon that base until you find it by accident later? Imagine that IRL and you can’t just build a new base real quick
I think they just wanted to build a giant titty.
The original original Tomb Raider
Feels quite secondary to the “I have the biggest” contest that we saw later with cathedrals and now skyscrapers.
I think one of the purposes of the pyramids was to be a sort of ancient beacon.
Aliens needed to know where to land.
I think castles in Europe are similar. They used to have plastered, white washed facades. Over time they wore down, giving way to the raw stone look most of us associate with castles.
Classical statues too
Right! Those white Greek marble busts used to be fully painted. But we only think of them as plain white sculptures.
Man, the aliens were sure good at building these
And green/greener lands, as far as I know.
No but shockingly close. The pyramids were built starting around 2630 BCE. But the African Humid Period ended about 5000-6000 years ago, so about 2974 BCE on the near end.
About 350 years is shockingly close. That’s about the length of the Ptolmaic dynasty. That’s Isaac Newton being active to today. Not recent by any means, but that’s “we still know about this” time scales
Remember the Great Pyramid of Giza? This is it today. Feel old yet?
Don’t they have some maintenance company? Fix that!
pls fix thx
Should have bought the extended warranty.
yeah but did they have shitty gray flooring to match the white walls?
Though given that the white columns and statues of ancient Greece were originally painted in bright colours, can we be sure that wasn’t also the case for the pyramids, at least while the civilisation that built them was maintaining them?
Menkaure’s pyramid may have been painted red.
It’s the newest and smallest of the three pyramids of the Giza necropolis. Where Khufu and Khafre’s pyramids were cased top to bottom in polished white limestone, Menkaure’s pyramid is cased several courses up in red granite, then the top 2/3 of the pyramid’s height in limestone. I’ve seen a theory put forward that the upper limestone was painted red to stand out among the larger megaliths.
Kind of reminds me of Pete Conrad, commander of Apollo 12. The Johnson Space Center in Houston has a grove of trees grown from seeds flown in space, each is planted for an astronaut who passed away. During the Christmas season they’re lit with white lights…except for the tree planted in Conrad’s honor, which is lit with red lights to honor his motto “If you can’t be good, be colorful.”
I’m pretty sure, with all the pyramids there are, there’d be some evidence or residue if this were the case. It’d also be an absolute shitload of paint. There would probably be archeological evidence for massive paint making in the region. They did paint stones, but I don’t think they painted the outside of the pyramids.
