The man paused, smiled and added, “For an uneducated guess, you didn’t do too badly. You’ve got a good eye. Mebbe you should be working with the royal architects.”
Without looking at the man, J.B. asked, “How long have you been working on it? Ten years at least.”
“No, just a little over two.”
Tearing his eyes away from the monument, he stared distrustfully at the man who had supplied the information. “Bullshit. I don’t know old Egypt from old eggs, but I know it took at least a generation to build the original pyramid.”
“Longer, probably,” the man replied. “But Pharaoh expanded on the original construction techniques.”
“How do you know so much?” Ryan challenged.
The man shrugged. “I’ve been working at the site since it was staked out. My name is Fasa.”
“Is that your real name or your Aten name?” J.B. asked.
Fasa seemed to experience momentary difficulty in understanding the question. “Since I live in Aten, I guess Fasa is my real name.”
He didn’t ask their names, and neither J.B. nor Ryan provided them.
When they drew closer to the enormous megalith, Ryan and J.B. saw the double-railed track extending out of the compound and stretching upward, supported by a complex and very solid looking framework of beams and cross braces. The angle of the track’s incline was gentle and gradual, eventually leading up to the very apex of the pyramid.
The metal cubes rolled along on their casterlike wheels, drawn by a heavy winch-and-pulley device attached to a pair of scaffolds on the side of the structure, one above the track, one below it. Men operated the winches by turning long crank handles.
It required ten minutes to climb to the top of the pyramid, scaling a stair sunk into the stone-block facade. By the time they reached it, they were perspiring heavily and panting. At that height, the sun seemed only an arm’s length away.
A brisk-looking overseer bustled up to Ryan and J.B. “You’re the newcomers. Get to work removing the blocks from the molds.”
Ryan glanced at J.B., who shrugged, and both turned to obey.
To their surprise, the labor wasn’t quite as back-breaking or as dangerous as they supposed. A fresh wind played over the top of the pyramid, which helped to offset a little of the debilitating heat.
Through close observation and by asking a few questions, they came to understand not only the basic engineering theory but the construction techniques and materials.
The building blocks for the pyramid weren’t slavishly quarried and hauled; they were cast on the spot. The key of the process involved the aluminum and silicon that made up common clays. When alkali, a common substance in the desert, was added in the right proportion, the aluminum bonded tightly to both the oxygen and silicon in the clay.
Pharaoh had developed a powder containing silicon and aluminum that, when added to an alkali-saturated liquid, formed a molecular glue. Limestone and granite were stirred into the mixture and poured into a mold. The acidic sap from cactus dissolved the larger pieces of limestone. Exposed to a low heat for a few hours, the puttylike substance became stone.
According to Fasa, who seemed to take pleasure in acting as a mentor for the newcomers, ancient Egyptian stonemasons understood mineral chemistry enough to transform stone into a plastic, moldable compound.
“After all,” he said, “the Egyptians knew enough food chemistry to make wine, beer and vinegar. And their embalming techniques are proof they understood body chemistry, too.”
Ryan and J.B.’s assigned task was to roll the metal-walled molds containing the dried casing blocks and put them into proper position. The sides of the cubes were equipped with small hinges. Once the block was in place, the mold was easily removed, joining the block with the others so precisely that there was barely a hairbreadth in between.
Fasa explained that the center of the pyramid was hollow, comprising a Grand Gallery and several chambers honeycombed with crawl-spaces and air shafts.
Something else they learned over the course of that hot, sweaty afternoon was how little the laborers resented their servitude. Building the monument to Pharaoh, their god-king, left them with no other responsibilities than obeying orders, and they were essentially content with that.