Subject: (urth) Chemically cast pyramid blocks?

From: Matthew King <automatthew at gmail.com>
Date: Thu, 24 May 2007 23:13:49 +0000

Here's a quote from James Jordan's interview with Wolfe a while back:

http://mysite.verizon.net/~vze2tmhh/wolfejbj.html

Jordan:  [T]here was a book a few years age by a chemist who argued  
that the Pyramids in Egypt were not made of stones dragged up but  
they were bricks cast in place with a chemical regent to fill it and  
they were a box with shelves pour in a regent and make the brick  
right there in place.

Wolfe: ...It is certainly a very interesting idea. There are stones  
in South America so closely fitted that you wonder if somebody hasn't  
been doing something like that. Now maybe they just very laboriously  
carved these stones so that they fit right into each other, but you  
would think they would just carve them flat like Joe blocks so they  
would do that but they don't. They wave round and so forth but they  
fit. They key into each other nicely.

When I read this bit, I immediately went a-Googling for information,  
but couldn't find any at the time.  Today I saw that someone has  
continued that work:

http://www.materials.drexel.edu/Pyramids/

 From the white paper:

"In the mid-1980s, Davidovits proposed that the pyramids were cast in  
situ using granular
limestone aggregate and an alkali aluminosilicate-based binder that  
he named a geopolymer. Hard
evidence for this idea, however, remained elusive until our very  
recent paper in which we present
compelling microstructural evidence that supports his idea in part.  
Based on our work, it now appears
that the glue that held the limestone aggregate together is not an  
alkali aluminosilicate-based binder,
but more simply, an amorphous silica binder. Also, in disagreement  
with Davidovits, we do not believe
that the entirety of the pyramids are cast; only select critical  
parts such as the outer and inner casings,
and most probably the upper echelons."

The original research was:

J. Davidovits, "X-rays analysis and XRD of Casing Stones from the  
Pyramids of Egypt, and the Limestone of Associated Quarries",
David, R.A. (ed.), Science in Egyptology Symposia, Manchester U  
Press, Manchester, UK 511-520, (1986).