The Giza Power Plant by Christopher Dunn Page A

much water would be needed to reach a saturation point of the limestone plateau, which would be necessary for the water to remain at a certain level in the canals? The presence of fissures in the limestone possibly could be overcome by packing mud into them. However, this still does not explain why a primitive society, which had supposedlynot yet invented the wheel, felt the need to build to such tolerances. If they did have that need and the grid system was the only method available to them, it would seem that this process would be so arduous and fraught with uncertainty that the very idea would be open to debate and promptly dismissed by the planners.
    There is no evidence to support the theory that water channels facilitated the leveling of the Great Pyramid, and such a method does not seem very reliable. Mark Lehner proposed that a series of holes in the pavement around the Great Pyramid may have held sticks that were used as measuring devices, but this technique does not account for the pyramid's incredible precision. There is a modern instrument similar to that proposed by Lehner—it is called a transit, which is three sticks (a tripod) with a sophisticated measuring device on the top—but even with this instrument modern builders are not required to achieve such precision.
    There is evidence that shows that ancient Egyptian builders used mechanical means to remove material in order to level the limestone bedrock for the foundation of various structures. In
Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh,
Petrie noted, "At El Bersheh (lat. 27°42') there is a still larger example, where a platform of limestone rock has been dressed down, by cutting it away with tube drills about 18 inches in diameter; the circular grooves occasionally intersecting, prove that it was done merely to remove the
rock." 6
    Petrie's observations strongly support the speculation that the ancient Egyptians did not carry out their work with painstaking, back-breaking labor, but completed it with speed and precision through the employment of tools that would not be out of place on today's building sites. It certainly makes sense to cut away excess material by using a rotating "drill" and working it down to a preselected required depth. These methods of removing excess material are common in machine shops today. Therefore, it could be suggested that as far as foundation laying goes, the ancient Egyptians had reached a finite state of the art, where there was little room for improvement.
    From their precisely leveled plateau, the ancient pyramid builders raised a mountain of limestone and granite with the same care and precision with which they laid its foundation. The estimated height of the Great Pyramid is 480.95 feet. It is estimated to weigh 5,300,000 tons and contain 2,300,000 blocks of stone. The stones that makes up the bulk of the pyramid are limestone,which was quarried locally on the plateau itself and in the Mokattam Hills across the Nile River, twenty miles away. The inner stones are poorer quality and are known as nummulitic (nummulitic is used to describe round fossil shells; it literally means "coin-shaped"). The composition of the stone is calcium carbonate (CaCo 3 ),whichisanimportantfact to remember when we later look at the evidence that supports my theory.
    The quantity of stone that had to be quarried, hauled, and hoisted into place in the Great Pyramid becomes even more impressive when it is compared with other civil engineering feats, whether real or imagined. It has been stated that it contains more stone than that used in all the churches, cathedrals, and chapels built in England since the time of Christ. Thirty Empire State Buildings could be built with the estimated 2,300,000 stones. A wall three-feet high and one-foot thick could be built across the United States and back using the amount of masonry contained in the Great Pyramid. The list of such comparative observations is long and could fill many pages, but these few suffice