Egyptian Pyramids Start Making Sense
I came across a remarkable explanation from Geoffrey Drumm on YouTube of the Egyptian Pyramids’ purpose. He nailed it! In short, each pyramid was a chemical plant, and various pyramids produced various chemicals. For example, he suggests that the Red Pyramid was built as a plant that produced ammonia from methane and nitrogen by a process, for which Fritz Haber was awarded a Nobel Prize about a century ago.
Arguably, for agriculture and for our civilization it was one of the most important inventions. Ammonia is the main component for soil fertilization. For Egypt, since predynastic civilization, this product was as important as it is for us since the 20th century. Geoffrey Drumm compares chambers in the Red Pyramid and in Fritz Haber’s process, provides chemical analysis of residues in those chambers, discusses pressure and temperature conditions for chemical processes. Pyramids retain gases and water in tunnels and chambers under high hydraulic pressure needed for chemical reactions. Geoffrey Drumm suggests that the main source of methane was cured manure. But in my opinion, the source could be the same as it is today — natural gas (which is easier to handle in tunnels). According to European Space Agency, Egypt, especially in the Nile area, emits a lot of methane:
Natural gas is often trapped in caves and comes out through Earth cracks. Egyptians would need some construction to gather it from gas wells and route to the pyramid/processing plant. And something like that has been known since ancient time and was recently confirmed:
Flinders Petrie in his books described a grid-like structure of labyrinths covering a vast area and filled in with stone chip stratum. Such a porous structure could collect methane, which then could travel through some tunnels to the pyramids. Check Geoffrey Drumm’s channel The Land of Chem for the suggested timeline — from pre-dynastic Egypt, when these plants were built, to dynastic Egypt, when these constructions were reused. For example, during the 12th Dynasty that labyrinth was repurposed for something less advanced.
Tremendous efforts in building a pyramid as a tomb for a dead man, whose corpse was not found inside, never made sense. That reminded me of real graveyards used for nitrates production in Europe in 16th century at industrial scale:
I strongly agree with Geoffrey Drumm’s conclusions. As a physicist, I have a different opinion from Geoffrey’s on the tools used for stone cutting and transportation, but that does affect the “pyramids as chemical plants” explanation. Let’s examine the physical aspects.
Pressure
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Pressure/temperature
Ammonia synthesis loop operates at temperatures of 300–500°C (572–932°F) and pressures ranging from 60 to 180 bar depending upon the method used.
60 bars = 60 atmospheres, or the pressure of water at the depth of 600 m, or, if you replace water with granite, which is 2.7 times denser, then the height required to produce/retain such pressure would be 200+ m. But the Red Pyramid is about 100 m high. And in tunnels, through which gas, water and other materials were supplied, pressure should be maintained with something mobile or liquid like water, rather than by a permanent granite block. Even if we assume that ancient engineers/chemists could have used another catalyst, or they used a less productive smaller pressure (still the output would be huge because of the huge chamber volume), the problem of retention an extraordinary pressure should be solved one way or another. A sophisticated configuration of stones that expands toward the top, like we see in the Red Pyramid chamber walls, can retain extra pressure:
In addition to such configuration, a technology that manages gravity can boost retention power of the chamber. We explored physics of such technology in Time Matters, and this technology can solve two other problems:
Stone Cutting
No saw blade can cut perfect 90°×90°×90° inner corner in a granite box:
But that can be done with the technology based on time dilation. This technology can evaporate any material, better than lasers do (we discussed about it at the page 93 in Time Matters).
Moving 100-ton Stones
The same technology can counter gravity to transport huge stones like this one (and whatever 10–1000 ton blocks found in megalithic architecture):
Next suggested reading New Perspective on Ancient Egyptian Creation Myths.
