Jun 01, 2020 07:00:00

It will be like this if the number of workers who built the pyramid is calculated from the potential energy of the pyramid

The

Three Pyramids of Giza in Egypt were completed over 4,500 BC, around 2500 BC. Although there are many mystery parts in the method of constructing the pyramid, Mr. Vaclav Smir, emeritus professor of environmental studies at the University of Manitoba, speculates how many workers worked on the construction day. I will.

How Many People Did it Take to Build the Great Pyramid?-IEEE Spectrum
https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-history/heroic-failures/how-many-people-did-it-take-to-build-the-great-pyramid

Of the three major pyramids, the Khufu pyramid is the tallest, with a height of about 138.8 meters in 2020 and an estimated height of 146.6 meters when completed. Although some parts of the work were gradually revealed, such as the fact that the pyramids carried material stones from the area more than 800 km away from the literature, there are many mysterious parts about the construction method.

Mr. Smir guessed how many people were mobilized for the construction of the pyramid, not from the construction method of the pyramid itself, but from the potential energy of the pyramid, the potential energy of the pyramid, and the energy used by each adult male for labor.

First, it was assumed that the construction period was 20 years, since the period under which Khufu ordered the construction of the pyramid was approximately 23 years from 2589 BC to 2566 BC. Smil speculates that the potential energy of the pyramid is about 2.4 billion kilojoules from the mass of the limestone and mortar that make up the pyramid and the height of the pyramid.

An adult male of about 70 kg needs about 7500 kilojoules per day to maintain basal metabolism. Smil assumed that there was 2250 kilojoules of surplus energy, which was about 30% of the maintenance of basal metabolism, and about 20% of that, about 450 kilojoules, was devoted to labor. Dividing the potential energy of the pyramid, which is approximately 2.4 billion kilojoules, by 450 kilojoules, it took about 5.3 million

man-days to put stones on the pyramid. Given that 300 days a worker worked each year, Smir speculated that about 900 people per day had been working on the stones for 20 years.

Also, Mr. Smir speculated that it took about 900 workers a day to carry the stone used for the pyramids from the quarry. And in order to quarry all the 2.6 million cubic meters of stone used in the pyramid within 20 years, about 1500 quarryers would have to work 300 days a year to produce 0.25 cubic meters of stone per person. ..

This means that the total number of workers to cut, carry, and load stones into the pyramid is estimated to be about 3,300 per day. In addition to the construction workers, suppose there were an additional 3300 workers doing designers, supervisors, repairing tools, building and maintaining homes for workers, cooking, washing, etc. Smir predicts that there were less than 7,000 workers.

In the 1990s, the dwellings and graveyards of the workers involved in the construction of the Three Great Pyramids were discovered, suggesting that there were about 20,000 workers living at the time of construction. Since the total population of Egypt at the time of construction of the pyramid was between 1.5 million and 1.6 million, the labor force of constructing the pyramid would not have put a heavy burden on the country's economy, Smir said.