The MOST precisely made granite object of Ancient Egypt - and why it's NOT geopolymer!

[Music] hey everyone my name is ben and this is the uncharted x channel in today's video we're going to take a look at what is probably the most precisely made granite object ever to come out of ancient egypt famed archaeologist flinders petrie called this perhaps the finest piece of mechanical work that was ever executed in such a hard and intractable medium i'm also going to give you my thoughts about why i don't think this box or the other granite objects of egypt are made from some form of geopolymer so i hope you'll stick around and let's get to it in this video we're taking a look at the area known as lahoon or it's also sometimes called illuhun or kahun and it's located to the south of the traditional pyramid belt of giza and sakara dashur and then down to maidum lahun itself sits very close to the opening of what is called the fium region or the foam oasis which you can see here from the satellite imagery is this large green leaf shaped space that is to the west of the nile and it has lake morris on its north western corner i talked a lot more about the phone in my video about hawara and the labyrinth in fact the ancient name for this site literally meant mouth or opening of the canal there are a number of ancient egyptian sites that are in the general area of the fayum hawara is one of them that is the theorised location for the great labyrinth there's also a mud brick pyramid there and my doom is nearby my doom has the broken down pyramid that is allegedly from sneferu or perhaps his father huni from the end of the third start of the fourth dynasty there's also mastaba 17 at my doom i've done videos on both of these structures the most notable feature on this site at least above the ground is the remnants of this mudbrick pyramid this structure is associated with pharaoh senestret ii who was also known as usurperson and he was a ruler of the 12th dynasty in the middle kingdom which was around 1890 bce which makes this structure at least 4 000 years old although other areas of this site have recently been found to be significantly older than that looking at this pyramid today you can still see a few large white limestone blocks in its structure it was once cased in white limestone like this but it unfortunately suffered the same fate as did so many other structures and monuments from ancient egypt and that was the usurping and the reuse of its stone by the notorious ramses ii of the 19th dynasty he took the limestone off this pyramid for his own building purposes and today we're just left with the mud brick internal structure that is slowly eroding of course what is of more interest to us is beneath the ground here and our exploration in this video will lead us down this shaft and into a tunnel system that leads to underneath the pyramid i had the chance to visit here in late 2020 as part of the uncharted x egypt trip that i hosted along with jimmy from the excellent bright insight channel i'm sure most of you have seen his work before but if not make sure you do go check it out and subscribe there's a link below we were joined by a great group of people who were all adventurous enough to make the journey to egypt despite all of the challenges of 2020. uh we got the chance to go out here and to visit the underground tunnel the shafts the passageways that lead to a couple of rooms that are located directly beneath the pyramid and the footage that you're going to see is is from that trip both my footage as well as a footage from a couple of other people that were on the trip in the modern era this site was really first explored and documented by sir william flinders petrie he spent a couple of years in this site and in fact in the in the volume region in general in 1888 to around 1890 and then a couple of decades later he again came back to this region in around 1914 and did more work here this site has only recently been opened up to the public in 2019 after renovations of this particular segment that we're visiting in the video this is pretty cool this is bedrock it's all bedrock this is deep oh we got blocks down here too halfway down the entrance shaft there is this strange little room with a couple of alcoves and it's all been cased in what looks to be very fine work in white limestone i'm really not sure of the purpose but this is about halfway down this southernmost shaft that leads to these tunnels the whole area around the lahoon pyramid is fairly riddled with shafts tombs and underground structures the sheer proliferation of shafts is one of the reasons that it took flinders petri so long to find the actual entrance to the chambers that are in fact beneath the pyramid another reason for this is the fact that this entrance lies to the south of the structure which is very much out of character for most of the pyramids they typically have entrances on their northern sides i guess this was part of the slab they had to move this probably whole slab came out the one in the middle here so just before he was due to leave the site petrie had his workmen explore just another shaft opening that was on the southern side of the pyramid and it ultimately led him to this discovery here you can see petrie's drawings of the tunnels and chambers from his book illahun kahun and gerob which was published in 1891. petrie's shaft when he excavated it led him into what proved to be a broad tunnel that's quite wide and tall and that ascends slightly up in the direction of the pyramid and at the end of this he found a couple of chambers one of those is cased in limestone and the other one is made entirely from granite and it houses a spectacular precision granite box that's still in place today something else about these maps just note at the other end of the passage petrie was guessing that there was another entrance because after he measured the precision granite box he found that it was too large to have been moved in through the original shaft that he used to enter the tunnel so you can see that the question marks he had left on his map here at that he had theorized that there was another builder's main shaft further south of where he entered the tunnel system now although he never actually excavated down in this way he was in fact correct and this main shaft is how we enter the site today we're sneaking in to the lahoon pyramid which i have not been in before and it opens up a bit here this lighting system that they put in 2000 years ago it's really nice isn't it it's held up really well yeah this small alcove area that we're approaching is the original shaft entrance that petrie used and as you watch the shot will actually pan up and you can see the size of the shaft that petri originally got into this tunnel area with and you can tell it's quite a small shaft you probably wouldn't have been able to fit this granite box down it so as we proceed down in the video into the tunnel system it's worth mentioning a couple of details about the history of this site there have been some wonderful discoveries made in this area of ancient egyptian artifacts most notably some jewelry from the tomb of a princess which included a golden crown that was fully complete including the urayus which is the snake adornment that you find on the front of other pharonic crowns and there was one of these as well on the front of the sphinx there's a piece of it still in the museum now personally while the the jewelry is beautiful and interesting and i'm i'm sure it came from the dynastic egyptian civilization and burials of their royalty i think the real treasure that is on this site is in the precision carved granite box which i promise we'll get to and we'll examine here pretty soon but the other thing that i wanted to cover about this is the attribution of this site to the middle kingdom when petrie first found the chambers that are at the end of the tunnel in them petrie found part of a limestone stele that mentioned the pharaoh senescerate ii who back in petrie's time was known as usurperson and this was a primary factor for linking the site to the middle kingdom that said archaeology on this site is still ongoing as there are still many unexplored areas and shafts and other tombs around lahoon pyramid and in 2010 there were some additional discoveries made of other tombs and burials near the site that have been dated legitimately dated back to the very first and second dynasties of ancient egypt which really throws the relation of this whole site to the middle kingdom kind of into question in the footage we're now getting down to the business end of the structure we're directly beneath the pyramid 30 feet or so down into the bedrock and these are the chambers that were drawn on petrie's map the first room is cased in fine white limestone the room with the box is just beyond it and it's constructed entirely of granite it has an arched ceiling also of granite and there is one other location in egypt that i know of with a similar arched ceiling see if you can guess where that is before i give the answer later on in the video before we take a closer look at the box i wanted to point out another strange feature here and that is the tunnel that wraps around the central chamber as shown on petrie's diagram just loops around doesn't it and connects up just talking a little bit [Music] opens up a bit here [Music] hello little guy little bat he's looking at it [Music] it won't land on don't move it won't land on you wait mine but jumanji okay [Laughter] there doesn't seem to be any purpose to this i have heard that some people try to say it relates to the number five and to osiris somehow but it just seems to wrap around and then exit next to the box in the central chamber the only other thing that i can think of is that perhaps it had some function if this box and chamber really ever had an original functional purpose but i really have no idea what it could be this tunnel that wraps around the chamber gives us a second entrance into the main room and it's here that we find this just superlative precision carved granite box which is of course labeled as a coffin it is no stretch to say that this is quite likely the single most precisely carved granite object that comes to us from ancient egypt when petrie found it it was just like this there was nothing in it there are no inscriptions anywhere and there was no trace of any lid a couple of features you might notice straight away it seems to be somewhat tilted to the eye and in fact it is the exterior height of the box changes by about four inches along its length yet the inside walls of the cavity are cut very precisely square with the top which is just utterly flat the floor in here in this room is level so ultimately it's like the whole box is somehow leaning over now it's possible that the box was moved at some point in the room you can't take it out of the room because it's too big for the doorways and it's also possible that there may have been originally something beneath the box that had brought it up to level or perhaps the lean was some sort of deliberate measure taken for functionality i really don't know certainly the precision that is evident on the rest of the box meant that this slope was a deliberate step that was taken in its manufacture but as far as i know none of the other precision carved boxes anywhere in egypt have this feature just like none of them have the large lip that this one does around the top it makes this box a very very unique piece the precision of this box becomes evident once you begin to measure it the margin of error when measuring the flatness of the surfaces or the margin of error between how parallel each surface is to each other for example each end of the box is only within a few thousands of an inch one way to imagine this is to imagine carving up a single inch into a thousand equal segments and that's the scale that you have to measure within in order to define the accuracy of the work that went into creating this artifact it's simply astounding and it's certainly not the product of any crewed hand tools like flint chisels or diorite pounding stones note also that the surfaces of the box have not been polished like other boxes they're just so finely ground as to be basically perfectly flat the interior corners are equally exquisite and you can see here that the radius of these internal corners is about equal to the width of the tip of a ballpoint pen and this is an order of magnitude finer work than even the incredible boxes of the serapium what's more these tiny corner radius values are consistent as far as i can tell and not just on the inside the same degree of care and precision has been applied to the corners that exist underneath the lip of the box on the outside when you remember that this is carved from a single piece of granite and that a single mistake could mess up the dimensions of the whole artifact it becomes almost entirely impossible to assume that this work was done by some primitive culture using hand tools it just isn't possible and if somebody claims that it is possible then the only way that you can prove that is to actually replicate this type of work with all of the most difficult measures that go into it the internal corner radius the flatness within thousandths of an inch and you need to do so using the techniques that you claim they used to make it and as far as i know no one has ever even come close to this something else to keep in mind is when you add in the lip around the top of this box it adds significant geometry and many more corners into the construction it's really just remarkable there's one more unique feature about this box that i haven't seen in any other boxes and that is that the edges around the lip are consistently beveled we also see a similar beveling on the edges of the granite blocks that make up the room itself when flinders petri discovered this box and he began to investigate it he was simply astounded by it and he did his best to measure it and report on just how precisely this box seems to have been constructed personally i think this artifact should be scanned with modern laser-based 3d modeling tools as well as measured with a modern surface roughness meter that is accurate down to the microns however and as usual this type of work is just not a priority for modern egyptology it's a little sad because i'm sure that had petri had access to such tools he would have enthusiastically utilized them in order to learn as much as possible about incredible ancient objects just like this one here is what he wrote about this box in 1891's illahun kahun and gerob quote the sarcophagus is perhaps the finest piece of mechanical work ever executed in such a hard and difficult material the form is quite unlike that of any other coffin known having a wide lip all around the top another strange peculiarity is that the bottom is a varying thickness or the inside depth being equal all over the outside depth slopes down nearly four inches from end to end as the sides are cut square with the top and the floor is level the ends all lean over and the top slants in short the whole thing is tilted by standing on a sloping bottom the surface though not polished is smooth ground to an impalpable fineness and most exquisitely flat for instance along the top length of 106 inches the error from a straight line are an average of seven thousandths of an inch of error on the ends both 50 inches long the errors are an average of four thousandths of an inch the errors of parallelism are also very small the north end is 50.053 and south end 50.073 or a 50th of an inch of difference on a 106 inches length the curvature of the planes is almost nothing over the length of 82 inches the east side hollowing 5 and the west side bulging two thousands a difference which is probably covered by the errors of measurement owing to a slight tilt of the sarcophagus sideways the skew of the planes of the inside is five thousandths on the west and seven thousandths on the east which again may be confounded by the slight tilt of the whole sideways but it is almost inappreciable in any case lastly after straightness flatness and parallelism there is the question of ratio between the dimensions or accuracy of proportions this is far more difficult and it requires all the previous accuracies and in addition a truly divided scale and an irredeemable truth of work since nothing can be corrected by removing more material this is indeed a brilliant piece of skill in such an untractable material it would be desirable to level up the sarcophagus and then measure it more accurately when the planes are as nearly vertical as may be for doubtless some errors have come in the course of measuring it in its present slanting position end quote in this passage petri is basically admitting that he didn't have the ability to accurately measure the degree of error or the margin of error in the box when he says that the quote difference is probably covered by the errors of measurement end quote it's utterly remarkable to think that no matter how old you think this artifact is that we did not have the technology available to accurately measure it in the 19th century only 120 to 150 years ago copper chisels and pounding stones indeed one other factor to ponder on with this box and with the chamber itself is that they are all very well aligned to the cardinal points of the compass how exactly was this alignment managed in antiquity we're more than 25 feet down inside the bedrock there is no way to see the stars from up here so i'm not sure what technique we can attribute to the supposedly primitive ancient egyptians in order to accomplish this feat maybe it was just luck or maybe it's yet another sign that there was far more going on from a technological perspective in the distant past than we currently believe i certainly can't explain it so if you have any ideas please do leave a comment below now before i get into explaining why i don't believe this box nor any of the other granite works of egypt are made up of geopolymer or some form of ancient concrete let's return to the ceiling of the room itself with its arched granite slabs if you guessed that the other ancient egyptian site with this feature was the pyramid of mankara at giza then a gold star for you petrie himself noted the similarity between the chambers in these structures and given that the mencara pyramid is generally attributed to the fourth dynasty it seems to throw the whole middle kingdom dating of this site at lahoon into some question although i personally think that both of these constructions could be significantly older here you can see the arched ceiling inside the chamber of the pyramid of mankara on the giza plateau and this footage was taken several years ago on an earlier trip of mine to egypt it's interesting that they went to the trouble to do this because just like at lahoon this chamber has been carved from the bedrock beneath the pyramid and it was then lined with what seems to have been a very accurately arched ceiling and although it's not there anymore there once was a precision carved granite box housed in this chamber beneath the pyramid of mancara it certainly does make one wonder about any possible connections or original functional purpose for both the shape of the room and perhaps of the box so now i want to get into some of the reasons why i don't think this box or really any of the granite artifacts or even the limestone artifacts for that matter in egypt are made from some form of geopolymer or port aggregate now i wanted to talk about this because you know i think i know there's been a really long documentary that's come out recently on this topic and i i wouldn't be exaggerating to say i probably had more than 100 comments about people asking for my opinion on this or that they're just stating that that's how this stuff was all clearly done that it was all you know melted down and then reformed and re-poured i don't think that's the case i'm not saying it's impossible in fact i think the geopolymer theory does have some merit and some promise particularly in south america sites like tiwanaku in particular i know there's been some studies done there but i really i really am still quite skeptical about it i think it's got a long way to go and you know as with any theory like this that claims to know or say that they know how it was done it has to overcome all the aspects of the problem and it has to address all of the challenges with the problem you know that said i do hope that there is more legitimate scientific studies and experiments and work done in this area you know who knows maybe they'll be right maybe you'll one day be able to buy a bag of aggregate mix and have it coming out looking like granite i certainly have my doubts but before you write that comment saying that you know how it was done and it was done with geopolymers at least listen to the other side of this argument as i explained some of these reasons first of all we have quarries and we have unfinished works you we almost have in egypt examples of the work from the quarry to the shaping to the finished product uh we have examples of almost every phase of these things whether you think it was done uh with pounding stones and copper chisels or you know with advanced tools and technology which i think there's certainly a case to be made for some of the objects when it comes to granite i mean some of the best examples we have are in the aswan quarry in the in the granite quarry there we literally have stones that are in the process of being shaped and pulled out of the bedrock most famously we have the unfinished obelisk there but it's not the only stone that's in the bedrock that is being shaped and it is being removed from the quarry now if you were just there to either melt the stone and collect it and somehow reset it or you were just looking to to grind it into a powder you wouldn't be shaping those stones out of the quarry we also have unfinished items for a good example of this is the box that sits in the hallway of the serapium there's also a couple of other unfinished boxes there you can clearly tell from this box that it still has a lot of work to be done to it and for that matter we actually have hammering tool marks on those boxes they have been worked on with some form of iron chisel or some form of chisel that's been we literally have the tool marks in the stone and we know that there are other boxes in that site that are in a finished state so there is work being done on them with tools of one form or the other in order to get them into that shape this is also the case for a lot of the limestone blocks that are used in large egyptian construction projects for example the pyramids i've heard it said by a lot of people that you know the blocks that were made up in the pyramids or the casing stones of the pyramids were made by some form of geopolymer it's just not the case because we have quarries for that stone there there if you look behind the second pyramid the pyramid of kufra at the back where the hill has been carved out right in the corner you can actually see the square blocks in the ground that show you where they've quarried blocks out and they've cut them off they're in that shape and then they've been used in the construction of the pyramid secondly and this is kind of just a logical point it's it's the fact that every stone is a different shape and size and this applies more to the giant building projects than it does to sort of single piece objects but in the case of things like the pyramids or like the valley temple for example every block is a different shape and size and this is also the case for the casing stones on the pyramids not just the ins internal stones also the casing stones are all individually shaped this presents quite a big problem for the geopolymer theory because you have to make a mold for every single stone it just doesn't make any sense so if and to take the case of the great pyramid there's something like 2.3 million blocks of limestone used in its construction if you were doing that with a geopolymer you would have had to make 2.3 million molds it really doesn't make sense we use geopolymers in modern construction today with bricks and things like that but typically you'll get one mold and you might make millions and millions of bricks from that one mold and all of the blocks that are used in construction are of the same shape and size thirdly is that we we have tool marks and we have machining marks we have both the i guess the primitive style of tool marks and machine marks that i think were done by the dynastic egyptians but we also have advanced tooling and machining marks that come from some of the more precision objects the granite objects the stuff that i think may have come from an earlier period now that just doesn't i mean if you're casting this or you're making these these objects in a mold why then do you need to cut them with a massive circular saw we see examples of sort of massive circular saw cuts at abuser we see them at abira wash they're in other places we have overcuts in the granite in statues for example and in obelisks and some of those types of things there are cuts where saws have gone a little too far into the material and then been backed out we also have the tubular drill marks this is actually also the case in tiwanaku even on that site in various locations you still have machining marks and indications that that rock has been shaped with tools a fourth reason and this is something that i think applies to both granite and limestone but we'll start with granite is that the geopolymer idea it's just not how granite works for want of a better term granite the term granite itself is something of a coverall term for all of the different types of stone that sort of fall under that granite family every outcropping of granite is slightly different you've got granite granodiorites you've got different colors of granite they have different levels of material in them and granite itself is an aggregate inside the granite when you wash off the stone or you polish the stone you can see the different types of materials and they're actually chunks of material there's quartz there's feldspar there's mica there's hornblende there's all sorts of components that that make up granite so if your idea is that you're melting all of that stone then how are you forming these individual lumps of different types of stone inside the mix itself or if you're grinding the stone how are you getting lumps of quartz that are of varying different sizes based on wherever the quarry was for that matter we also have veins of material that are quite clear on several granite objects there's a box in the serapium or a couple of them actually they have these large veins of material that are really only possible because that's how the material was formed over thousands or millions of years of heat and pressure in in the crust of the earth as as as it cooled we also have other types of stone like that there are even objects made from conglomerate which is even more of a mix of materials than granite itself and you might have flint and quartzite and things like that all mixed together there's an example of just what must have been a massive statue at tennis you can see its thumb here this is made of a conglomerate of different materials this is not something that can be achieved by you know grinding up a material or melting a stone and then recasting it you clearly have different forms of different materials in the stone this is also the case for the limestone in particular i'm going to talk about the limestone of the giza plateau because that's where i've seen so many of examples of this limestone being a sedimentary stone the the the giza plateau was once a seabed so you find quite often you'll see sea shells and fossils and things like that in the limestone that's at the giza plateau you see this in the bedrock you also find these fossils in the blocks and this is how you know these blocks have been taken from the giza plateau they've been carved out but in both cases we've got fossils actually in the bedrock we've got fossils actually in the limestone that is in the monuments and again these wouldn't exist if you were either grinding up the stone to make some sort of uh powder that then you mixed and poured as an aggregate and they wouldn't be in there if you were just melting the stone either and really the last point that i wanted to make about this uh and this is kind of just the the one theory that i've heard from so many people is that you know there was somehow the the ancients were were creating these giant solar magnifying glasses these huge lenses that would focus sunlight and that's how they would they would melt to the granite or they would melt the diorite and and form these slurries and somehow pour these stones the idea of creating massive lenses out of quartz that then you would use to melt other stones that include quartz first of all you've got to ask how are you melting the quartz in the first place to create this lens and secondly i would encourage anyone who is really interested in this idea to go and look at just how difficult it is to create the large pieces of glass that get turned into mirrors for for large telescopes there's really only one or two places in the world that even attempt this these days but you're quite literally talking about years of cooling years of polishing to create these huge pieces of just flat glass that then get you know covered and turned into a mirror uh you almost have a high degree of precision that's required to create something that's convex enough to then focus sunlight and create a magnifying glass this is a seriously high technology undertaking and there's i really don't know that there's any evidence for it apart from the fact that i just you know someone needs to demonstrate this start melting granite and see how far you get in any case all i'm really saying here is that i think there are significant hurdles to that theory there are significant problems with it i'm certainly not saying that i definitely know it wasn't done i really do hope there is more experimentation done and maybe i'll i'll be proven wrong and i'd be happy to if we you know if we get to a point where we can say we definitely know how this was done i just think there are significant not only you know practical problems with the theory but also logical ones when you look at the evidence that's on these sites you look at the evidence in the quarries and you look at the geology of the stone itself it's just not how it works so i just encourage everyone to keep an open mind it's always good to explore all of these alternative theories but then you've got to put them against the test of sort of logic and look at the evidence that's that's at hand okay so coming back to this remarkable precision box that's underground the pyramid at lahoon where do i think this leaves us well once again i think it's possible that we're looking at a case of inheritance of renovation and of reuse and an underground structure that is possibly far older than orthodox history would have us believe once again we see a case of some tremendously advanced technological sophistication found beneath the ground in this case in the tunnel system and in the room and the box that are made from granite once again we see that these underground structures have a very low technology work that's built on top of them in this case a mud brick pyramid can we really confidently say that the work below the ground happened at the same time as that above it remember that the primary method of dating these sites and relating them into the story of history is by the writing that is found on them or on objects in them while petrie did find a 12th dynasty limestone stella down here one that is now in a museum there are no inscriptions to be found anywhere on the granite not on the chamber and not on the box itself which was also found entirely empty if i had found this place as an egyptian king and i found it to be profound i might have claimed it and used it for my purposes it's just human nature after all we discovered this site in modern times thanks to flinders petrie we have renovated it and today we reuse it for our own purposes and not as a tomb but rather as a tourist attraction just something to think about [Music] so there it is there's a look at the just wonderful precision carved granite box that's beneath the lahoon pyramid i was very happy to get the chance to go there i've also given you some thoughts on why i don't think this was made from a geopolymer although i'm sure i'll see plenty of contrary opinion to that in the in the comments section i hope you all enjoyed the video i wanted to say just a massive thank you to everybody that supports the channel you guys are really the only reason that i'm able to continue making and producing these videos so thank you very much anyone that's interested in supporting the channel all the details are on my website it's uncharted x.com support i hope you enjoyed the video i've got a lot more content planned for this year and i'll see you all in the next one cheers [Music] you

Channel: UnchartedX

Views: 536,974

Rating: 4.9161782 out of 5

Keywords: Egypt, megalithic, pyramid, serapeum, granite, tomb, pyramids, cheops, khufu, Osiris, peru, Bolivia, Giza, Technology, ancient aliens, Ancient, History, Archaeology, Egyptology, graham hancock, randall carlson, Underground, Catacombs, Limestone, Caves, Tunnels, yousef awyan, Apis, Greek, Strabo, Roman, Masonry, brien forester, younger dryas, comet, evidence, science, scientific, dynastic, joe rogan, documentary, lahun, flinders petrie, precision, box, geopolymer, concrete

Id: d8Ejf5etV5U

Length: 35min 11sec (2111 seconds)

Published: Sun Jan 10 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/LegalizeGayPot]

Best channel on YouTube for this sort of stuff. Ben is an excellent host and narrator and his content is leagues better than comparable videos.

Until anomalies like these granite boxes can be thoroughly explained, I hold the firm opinion that we have absolutely no fucking clue what the original purpose of these ancient buildings were.