Hacker News Reader

Comment by jbandela1 | Hacker News Reader

As an aside, a lot of people are joking about the pyramids. However, 3200 years ago is 1200 BC which is New Kingdom. The pyramids were built in the Old Kingdom. When these workers were complaining, the Great Pyramid was already 1000 years old.

(The bosses probably talked about how back in the day when their ancestors built the pyramids, workers were much tougher and dedicated)

View on HN

As I find always interesting, we are as far to the Romans in history as the Romans were from the construction of the pyramids.

Cleopatra was closer to the moon landings them to the building of the pyramids!

She can't have been that far away, didn't she live in Egypt? I'm fairly sure the moon is always further away

I'm pretty sure the poster above you is referring to the differences between the number of letters in the following words: "CLEOPATRA" is closer to "MOON LANDING" than "THE BUILDING OF THE PYRAMIDS".

Actually its the distance in time.

I think the question was sarcastic

As was his answer.

As was this explanation

What if you compare the coordinates in the galactic frame at their respective times?

I will read this comment as being intentionally, and gloriously, deadpan comedy.

Lived from 69 to 30 BC according to Wikipedia… definitely closer to th moon landing .. by almost a thousand years..

I know people generally consider "Roman history" to be around the time of Julius Caesar, but the empire itself spanned over 1000 years.

What people usually refer to the Roman Empire is the unified empire which was only around for 4 centuries. Heck pretty much past 286 AD is when the Roman Empire is no longer the classical Roman Empire. (Rome was no longer the capital, eastern / western split begins).

Even a bit earlier if you want to consider the shift to the monotheism (not yet Christianity) of Sol as the line of demarcation.

If you want to be utterly pedantic then yes the Eastern Roman Empire survived until 1453 aka the Fall of Constantinople. So more like 1500 years in total.

https://waitbutwhy.com/2013/08/putting-time-in-perspective.h...

Provides a nice representation of such events. Very insightful!

Roman Empire ended around 1450, so…

> (The bosses probably talked about how back in the day when their ancestors built the pyramids, workers were much tougher and dedicated)

They likely didn't.

The Egyptians recorded many things, including excuses for missing work, with incredible detail. They never once recorded how they built the pyramids.

Either religious/spiritual/ritualistic reasons prevented them from doing so, or they didn't build them. Either way, they didn't record it and probably didn't speak of it.

This is not true. https://www.history.com/news/egypts-oldest-papyri-detail-gre... There are plenty or records about the pyramid constructions, it was also proven that they were built by a paid voluntary workforce rather than slaves like most people believe.

That describes a project receiving pyramid facing stones quarried from white Tufa limestone.

But I doubt there is any indication whether this was for maintenance work, or original construction.

Pharaohs were always embarking on patch-up and upgrade projects on ancient stuff, and tagging everything they touched with their personal cartouches (often having their predecessors' chiseled out, first). So it is very hard to know who really built what, or when. The Sphinx is officially ascribed to a Pharaoh who leaned a stela on it bragging about maintenance work he had ordered (a thing there are also a lot of).

But they never tagged pyramids.

Just cos they were technically paid don't mean they weren't de facto slaves

Some things never change I guess...

Well hey, that's news to me, and utterly fascinating!

Thank-you.

Yeah, that papyrus is bonkers. Imagine what still exists out there in the desert!

We can only hope there's one that details the process of the laying of the stones.

Or the landing of the spacecraft :)

Papyrus describing laying is unlikely unless it somehow related to accounting.

But, do you know the Shabakti stone? That is supposedly a copy of a first dynasty papyrus by the Nubian pharaohs. While likely to be embellished, no reason not to believe. Helps describe the role of Ptah, the god of design.

I appreciate the guts to seriously bring up ancient aliens on hackernews.

I don't support that theory at all, and didn't mention it. I even gave a completely reasonable explanation why they might not want to discuss it.

I'm sorry, I thought

>or they didn't build them.

implied somebody else built the pyramids.

That needn't be aliens. Human culture existed prior to the old kingdom.

Alternately, the records were simply stored in a place that was destroyed or we haven't found yet.

A sibling comment to yours has noted a recently-discovered Papyri that details some scant information about quarrying limestone for Khufu's pyramid.

https://www.history.com/news/egypts-oldest-papyri-detail-gre...

> or they didn't build them.

What are you implying here, exactly? That humans didn't build them at all?

I was suggesting the possibility that they didn't build them. It wouldn't be the only time that a civilization set roots upon the remains of a preceding civilization.

That said, a sibling content to yours provided recently discovered evidence that the quarrying of stone for the pyramids was recorded.

Of some stone. Not necessarily for original construction.

Maybe the pyramids are the records and the instructions…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com