Alternate Angles history, pop culture, landmarks etc

[putnam6]

White limestone, not granite.

Thats what I get for posting at 4 in the morning...

https://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php...lly-white/

The original casing stones were made of highly polished Tura limestone, meant to reflect the sun’s rays, and were accurate within 1/100th of an inch.  All total, they were around five feet long, five feet high, and six feet deep and weighed around 15 metric tons each once the face angle was cut, being around 40 metric tons before that for the full block.
 

• The Great Pyramid is made up of around 2.3 million limestone blocks.  There are also large granite stones in the pyramid, such as in the King’s chamber.  These granite stones can weigh upwards of 70 metric tons.  Astoundingly, these granite stones were transported from around 500 miles away, from Aswan.  All total, around 8,000 metric tons of granite, 6 million metric tons of limestone, and half a million metric tons of mortar were used to build the Great Pyramid alone.
  

• Contrary to popular belief, it is no longer thought that the pyramids of Giza were built by slaves.  Archeological evidence shows that the worker’s town comprised of whole families, not just men as would have been the case if they were slaves.  Further, the people were extremely well taken care of including the highest quality health care available at the time and they were also extremely well fed.  These and other such hints from the past, relatively recently discovered, seem to indicate that the laborers were there of their own volition.
  
• One method the Ancient Egyptians used for cutting blocks of stone to eventually be shaped and polished and the like was to chisel holes in the stone and then pound large wooden wedges into the holes.  They’d then soak these wedges in water, which would cause them to expand and eventually form cracks in the rock.  These cracks could then be exploited to remove large blocks from the quarries, which would then be processed accordingly and eventually shipped off to the pyramid being built, generally by boat on the Nile River.
  
• How accurate was the building of the Pyramids?  As an example, the stones of the Great Pyramid were cut so precisely that no one side differs in length from another side by more than 58 millimeters (around 2 inches).  Further, the four corners align within four minutes of the actual cardinal compass points, with north pointing to true north, not magnetic north.  In addition to that, the swivel door to the Great Pyramid weighed around 20 tons, yet was so well balanced that it could be opened from inside by one person with minimal force applied.  From the outside, the door was nearly undetectable due to the cut being so precise as to have nearly no crack between itself and the surrounding pyramid.  The crack was also sufficiently thin to make it impossible to be used for prying the door open from the outside.
  
• The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only more or less intact member of the “Seven Wonders of the Ancient World”.  It is believed to have been built for the Egyptian Pharaoh Khufu.