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Comment by qqj | Hacker News Reader

Seeing it like this kills all mystic notions I had regarding these tombs. And I don't mean this in a negative way, it sort of opens your eyes to what this thing actually is - a conglomeration, made by many artists and engineers, pouring their hearts and souls into building something to last a millennia. Truly beautiful. That is until you remember it was all in service of some rich guy who thought he was a god, and had them build this as a monument to his supposed might. Ironically, his existence was entirely inconsequential, and merely provided an excuse for the true geniuses of the time to tunnel their talents into a magnum opus. They, together, were the true gods. Only true ideals transcend time, and any individual thinking himself a god would be wise to acknowledge that; you can become a god only if you let youself die and embody an ideal fully. Ramesses missed the point so hard it's hilarious.

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  I met a traveler from an antique land,
  Who said — “Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
  Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
  Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
  And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
  Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
  Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
  The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
  And on the pedestal, these words appear:
  'My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
  Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!'
  Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
  Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
  The lone and level sands stretch far away.”

Ozymandias! My favorite poem.

It's a good one! This is a great video that goes with it too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPlSH6n37ts

I'm not an expert in any way, but aren't you jumping to conclusions (or rather, we, collectively) about what the builders were like, what their worldview was, etc? We don't even know when the pyramids were built, or how. There's a lot of writtings and drawings and other archaelogical treasures left behind; but still, are we at a point where we can say we understand the building, builders and their world? Maybe it's just the inner child in me that wants these things to remain a mystery forever...

Actually, "we" have a fairly good idea when the 115-140-or-so Pyramids were built. We also know a great deal about their construction — the engineers who built them couldn't help but bragging about it. What we don't know is the precise method for moving the blocks up the pyramid. The problem is that Herodotus claims that the ancients hadn't invented cranes, yet, so the pyramids (he's probably discussing the pyramids at Giza) had to have been constructed via a ramp. A damning piece of counterevidence to Herodotus' claim is that the shadoof predates the pyramids, so it's not too far fetched to imagine they might have had some piece of equipment like this.

What's missing is a definitive historical statement; remember, historians require written evidence. Most of our evidence for the building of the pyramids is archeological. The sorts of building devices needed for the pyramids would've been generally useful for all construction — so they wouldn't have been left to rot at the pyramid build site, but repurposed until destruction.

The job of Ramses was diverting colossal resources for decades to make the whole thing possible, and give all these brilliant engineers and artists the medium that will withstand millenia.

Maybe it's not the most beautiful job, but still important and not necessarily easy.

By that way, the pyramid also embodies work of all the stone cutters, animal drivers, all the way to peasants who produced food to feed all them. It was an effort of an entire country.

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