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In the middle of the desert in Egypt, the statue of Amenhotep III is estimated to weigh approximately 700 metric tonnes and was moved over 700 km. The pieces that were carved from the mountain that made the sphinx weigh approximately 200 metric tonnes. These were later neatly stacked into a temple in front of the sphinx.

Here is a video of some guys moving a 200 metric tonne ship, just for reference :)

Oddthinking
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Kristoffer Nolgren
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    Hmm, Egyptians had battle chariots. They knew what wheel is. – Daniel Iankov Dec 30 '11 at 15:12
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    Welcome to Skeptics! While I accept it is a notable claim that the Egyptians moved large stones long distances, you make a number of positive claims in this question, that are not referenced: (e.g. weight of the statue, the distance travelled by the statue's stones, the source of the Sphinx, that the Egyptians are believed not to have invented the wheel, etc. Please cite a notable source from which these claims come from, so we may assess them. – Oddthinking Dec 30 '11 at 15:43
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    Possible dupe: http://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/377/how-were-the-pyramids-built – Sklivvz Dec 30 '11 at 16:35
  • @Oddthinking Thankyou! What are the general demands for sources? Is for example an highly active wikipedia-page acceptable? – Kristoffer Nolgren Dec 30 '11 at 17:32
  • @Sklivvz I disagree, that question primarily concerns the labour requierd. Please correct me if I'm wrong! – Kristoffer Nolgren Dec 30 '11 at 17:33
  • The ancient Egyptians had the wheel, and bronze (which is stronger than copper - but then so is wood, depending on what you want to do with it). – DJClayworth Dec 30 '11 at 18:58
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    I'm sorry but... what is the question here? – nico Dec 30 '11 at 22:49
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    @Kristoffer: That's slightly complicated. Normally: In a *question*, you should cite *someone else's* claim, that you may or may not be true for us to investigate. We look for "notability" by which we mean many people believe it, not just two guys in a pub came up with it. Wikipedia is fine. In *answers* (and sometimes in questions), the author makes claims that they personally accept as true. In those cases, we eschew Wikipedia for (more) primary sources. If you are just defining an uncontroversial term (e.g. [Amenhotep III](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amenhotep_III)), Wikipedia is useful. – Oddthinking Dec 30 '11 at 23:25
  • Is it really that surprising? For a humorous view: http://www.despair.com/achievement.html – matt_black Dec 31 '11 at 13:28
  • Aside: The inconsistency between 700 tons and 700 tonnes hurts the inner SI OCD part of me, but I can't fix it... – Oddthinking Dec 31 '11 at 23:17
  • @Oddthinking fixed – Sklivvz Jan 02 '12 at 11:21
  • I don't have a citation but I saw on the History/Discovery channel that by creating channels in the stone (which they have found in the stones of the pyramids), they are able to send water down the channels and it becomes relatively simple for 3 or 4 people to slide the massive stones up a ramp using ropes and pulleys. – Dunk Jan 03 '12 at 16:17
  • This is not a cause for skepticism!!!!!!! here is a list of the largest stones in history: up to ... 1,168 tons!!! In france, there is a stone that was 20 meters tall and around 300 tonnes from 4500 BC it's not just the Egyptians!!! http://www.ancient-wisdom.co.uk/top50stones.htm... I can tell you that, to carve them, often times, it was easiest just to whip slaves to bang rock agains rock in pits, rather to use masons with bronze/copper chizels. until the slaves died choking on the dust, adn then to get new slaves. Egyptians had alot of manpower. – bandybabboon Dec 06 '14 at 10:37

2 Answers2

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I'm going to copy my answer from the linked question here, and highlight the relevant part in bold for you. With this link being the most pertinent.

ScienceDaily has a nice article on this, as well as many related articles. In the cited article, they state:

But the process of building pyramids, while complicated, was not as colossal an undertaking as many of us believe, Redford says. Estimates suggest that between 20,000 and 30,000 laborers were needed to build the Great Pyramid at Giza in less than 23 years. By comparison, Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris took almost 200 years to complete.

I think what gets people so confused is they mistake old cultures for being unintelligent. Humans have had the same level of intelligence for nearly 200,000 years, just not the full benefit of technology. (Citation: Hominid Brain Evolution Testing Climatic, Ecological, and Social Competition Models, Drew H. Bailey & David C. Geary, Hum Nat (2009) 20:67-79, DOI 10.1007/s12110-008-9054-0)

Furthermore, in the article, it states "laborers". A common misconception is that slaves built the pyramids, which is not the case. Archaeological evidence shows the builders were skilled and paid for their efforts. From the same article:

the image most people have of slaves being forced to build the pyramids against their will is incorrect.

An additional collection of articles can be found at this Discover Magazine Blog post by Andrew Moseman. It starts out saying:

Forget the myths about massive numbers of slaves or Jews building the great pyramids, Egypt‘s chief archaeologist argues this week. He says Egyptian researchers have found the tombs of more pyramid builders, and in those tombs more evidence that free men erected these monumental tributes to the ancient pharaohs.

And continues with numerous links to even more articles.

As to the assertion that it was impossible to do many of the things that the builders of the pyramids did, that is a common misconception people seem to have. Most people don't consider ancient humans to have been as intelligent as we are, when in fact they possessed the exact same intellect as we do today, just not the technology. And since we rely so much on advanced technology, many people make an argument of incredulity because we just don't do things the old fashioned way. Some people have started to collect reconstructions of those methods on the web.

The same argument regarding the mathematical precision could be made. Also, in ancient times, without our calendars and clocks, astronomical observations played a much more important role than today (i.e. when to plant, when to expect rains, etc.). Again, ancient humans were not stupid.

Larian LeQuella
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    Very nice answer. To add another impressive example: ancient Romans were able to build acqueducts such as [the one connecting Uzès and Nîmes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pont_du_Gard) in Southern France, that was 50km (31mi) long with only 17m (56ft) of height difference at the two ends. – nico Jan 02 '12 at 14:55
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Egyptians at the time were known to use the six simple machines, known to humankind since almost the dawn of time:

http://bookbuilder.cast.org/view_print.php?book=21173

A lot of resources about the technology of ancient Egyptians, how they built their monuments and so on, are also here:

http://www.digitalegypt.ucl.ac.uk/

Sklivvz
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