Isotope Analysis Helps Uncover Technology Underlying Great Giza Pyramid
Cutting-edge isotope analysis has enabled researchers to shed light on breakthrough solutions used by the Ancient Egyptian civilisation and, in particular, the origins of the Great Pyramid of Giza, the grandest landmark of the Cairo outskirts and one of the Seven World Wonders, as revealed by Amazon Prime’s “Egypt’s Unexplained Files”.
“Investigators begin considering how in a time before people know how to smelt iron, the ancients carve out the pyramid’s estimated 2.3 million stone blocks”, the programme on the world’s “first mega-monument”, Khufu’s Pyramid that has to date survived 4,500 years, recounts.
The series goes on to explain how isotope analysis was used on artefacts made of ancient copper, a relatively soft metal, to determine their origin – it was ultimately found to be from the Sinai Peninsula, hundreds of miles away from the pyramid. This is where it was purportedly supplied from, as copper chisels tended to blunt or break easily when carving rock, and experts believe this “posed a significant logistical problem”, the narrator notes.
The realisation that Sinai was home to copper kickstarted “a whole mining enterprise” that fulfilled not only the demand for necessary tools to erect Khufu’s Pyramid, but also the tombs in the Valley of the Kings centuries later.
