30 December 2008
Answer: (Nabil Swelim): "In Egypt stone is in abundance and it is easier to quarry than make."
Question: (by Semir): "Have you read dr. Khavroshkin's article about the Chemical composition o the stone blocks from the Red pyramid in Dahshur? They had it analyzed in four institutions (three in Moscow, one in Philip Lab)?
Answer (by Nabil): "I have and I made a phone call to the person one consults on these matters."
"Dear professor Klemm. Did Rainer really find that Nail? If he did NOT, amusingly It reminds me of the hair Davidovitz claims to have found at Khufu. I called Rainer Stadelmann but they seem to be out of town. My first comment to the sender of the article was: " In Egypt stone is in abundance
and it is easier to quarry than make". Please Advise.
"Dear Dr. Swelim, I studied the paper "Geochemical fields of Pyramids" etc., and, frankly, found it somewhat curious. Especially the results of the chemical analysis I found very much confusing. Our own analysis of the Red Pyramid core stones resulted for Mg and Fe within the chemical frames of 1000 - 3000 ppm. This is much less than 1 % weight, and the authors found for MnO between about 2 - 20% and Fe2O3 between 27 - (nearly) 48%.
I really don't know what they analysed. Due to the very close chemical and petrographical appearance of the stones qualities of the pyramids core material and those of the nearby quarry areas, we did not take too many samples from both sites, because the aim of our investigation was the identification of the provenance of the pyramids building stones and here was no doubt.
But please, find the binary diagram of Fe/Mn and Mg/Fe of the Red Pyramid core stones and those from the quarry sites as an attachment. Petrographically the core stones of the Red Pyramid are of a sandy coquinal limestone with lots of fossils such as oyster shells and many others and geologically they are from the Khom el Shalul formation (Pliocene). The authors regard the outer altered rims of the pyramids building stones as "casing" and the inner part as "under casing".
This might cause some confusion as the real casing stones of the pyramid are limestone blocks from most probably the Maasara gallery quarries from Eastern Bank, opposite the river Nile. Sorry, but the story about the iron nail seems to me a complete nonsense. It is certainly no problem to find a rusty nail even in a fallen block part after this many modern excavation work.
But regarding such a nail as antique, perhaps from the time of Senerferu, is really somewhat naive. Please, note that I don't doubt in the seriousness of the chemical analysis, presented in the paper, but I very much doubt in the expertness of the sampling, taking untypical stone specimens not representing the average of the pyramids building stones. I suspect the authors wanted to support with the nail the funny concrete story, created by J. Davidovits to power his "Pyrament" cement as a "geopolymer" already used by the ancient Egyptian. This is a trap, in which also more recently Prof. Barsoum (Barsoum, M. W., Ganguly, A. and Hug, G. (2006): Microstructural Evidence of Reconstituted Limestone Blocks in the Great Pyramids in Egypt. Journ. Americ. Ceramic Soc. 89 (12), p. 3788-3796) and C Nickerson (your attachment) seem to stepped with his "A new angle on pyramids". Rosemarie and I published years ago a paper (1991): Mortar evolution in the Old Kingdom of Egypt.-Archaeometry'90.-Birkhaeuser Verlag Basel, pp 445-454.
During this investigation of the various types of mainly gypsum (anhydrite) cemented mortars we found, that from Chufu on occasionally also burned lime mortars were used, and in some very special mortars used by Khafra, some structural remains indicate that he invented (most probably only by accident) also so called C2S-Portland cement phases within the mortar only. But, please, note this was only done in small quantities for mortar, and only for a very limited time, because burning limestone for cement lime needs a lot of fuel, not so extended available even to the strong Old Kingdom rulers.
I studied petrographically and chemically about 1500 samples collected from 26 stone pyramids of the Old Kingdom and found (apart the referred mortar samples) exclusively natural stone blocks from which in most cases also the provenance quarries could be identified. Forget about the concrete story, its nice but wrong. Prof. Dr. Dietrich Klemm"
