The Innovation that it comes from the ancient past: The Pyramid's stones Enigma

INNOVATIONS in CEMENT INDUSTRY - 01

Frequently we think the innovations could only come from the recent investigations in laboratories or technology developments using modern techniques, but the case I will share comes from more than 5,000 years ago in the ancient Egypt.

The Pyramid's stones Enigma

In my daily route to WNCC Plant (Egypt), I always see in my right hand the new Tourah Cement Plant and the the Limestone Quarry from which is related in several books that it was used to make the blocks of the Pyramids. This trigger me to investigate more about it, because many questions have been generated from my first visit to the British Museum in London, when I see in the Egyptian room the one piece giant sculptures and the perfect angles of the sarcophagus. Now, the same questions appear again: how the old Egyptian cut the stones in perfect shape to assembly the pyramids? how they made the perfect angles of the sarcophagus and the smooth shape of giant sculptures? Without use modern machines and without known the steel?

For years many theories has been developed to explain how carved the stones to obtain this perfect shapes but no one has been demonstrated completely. The enigma finally has been solved for a French Chemist: The limestone blocks were cast in situ, employing an advanced technology that was later lost.

Davidovits, The Chemist

Since the early eighties, Prof. Joseph Davidovits is proposing that the pyramids and temples of Old Kingdom Egypt were constructed using agglomerated limestone, rather than quarried blocks of natural limestone. This type of fossil-shell limestone concrete would have been cast or packed into molds. Egyptian workmen went to outcrops of relatively soft limestone, dis aggregated it with water, then mixed the muddy limestone with lime and alumina-silicate materials such as kaolin clay, silt, and the Egyptian salt natron (sodium carbonate). The limestone mud was carried up by the bucketful and then poured, packed or rammed into molds (made of wood, stone, clay or brick) placed on the pyramid sides. This re-agglomerated limestone, bonded by Geo chemical reaction (called Geo polymer cement), thus hardened into resistant blocks.

Imhotep The Alchemist

Imhotep the alchemist designed and built the first pyramid in human history, the Sakkara step Pyramid. Imhotep was a high priest that invented the chemical formula of the stones used to build the pyramids. Under earth, below the base of the Sakkara Step Pyramid, Imhotep built a series of corridors and inner chambers, some thirty thousand stone vessels of the highest perfection were found in these subterranean chambers. There are unique hard stone vessels, made of slate, diorite and basalt. Some of these materials are harder than iron. No sculptor today would even attempt to work with such material. The big question is: how could they have been carved? Their design is extremely beautiful and impossible to carve. No tool marks are found on their surfaces. They must have been cast in molds, in accordance with the indications suggested by the Irtysen Stele at the Louvre gallery.

Le Chatelier, The Cement Investigator

The first man to formulate a reasonable solution to how the Egyptians made their stone statues, was Henri Le Chatelier, a chemist, ceramist and metallurgist, born in France in 1850. He noticed that the famous statue of Pharaoh Khafra, revealed no sign of tool marks. Yet it had been made of diorite, the hardest type of stone, at a time when artisans had only simple stone or copper chisels. He concluded that with tools like these it would have been impossible to produce such a masterpiece. Le Chatelier suspected that it had not been carved at all, but made of agglomerated stone cast in molds, so he began to examine other statues. He looked at ones that were apparently enameled, and cut thin sections of them with a diamond-tipped saw, and found that the enamel was not an applied coating but part of the material from which the statue was made. He asserted that they were cast in some kind of synthetic material not sculpted in natural stone.

Michael Barsoum, The Materials Professor

Michel Barsoum, professor of materials science at Drexel University. Barsoum, a native of Egypt, along with a graduate student (Adrish Ganguly), began studying samples from the inner and outer casings of the Pyramids. His analysis indicates the Egyptians did not use clay in the Geo polymer mixture, as Davidovits proposed, but rather Diatomaceous earth, a naturally occurring, commonly found soft sedimentary rock formed from the fossilized remains of algae. Barsoum suggests that the Egyptians used both cast stones along with limestone block quarried and hauled to the site, he believes that only the exterior casing blocks and the blocks at the higher levels of the pyramids were cast Geo polymer blocks.

Geo Polymer Cement, the Green Cement discovered for Imhotep

Always ahead of their time, the ancient Egyptian’s knowledge of materials allowed them to create man-made stone from little more than raw earth. This means that the Egyptians appear to have pioneered a Geo polymer concrete made from abundant common materials found almost everywhere on the planet, with a very low CO2 emissions.

Imagine how we could revolutionize the cement industry by re-discovering the Egyptian’s formula!

This is an INNOVATION that it comes from the past!

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