Fragment of the book "Different Story About Pyramids"-translation from Polish.

 

Fig. 23 Animation showing the method of increasing the pulling power.

Fig. 21. Transport of the 60-ton statue.

If we presumed that the painter tried to show the real scene of statue transport as precisely as he could, we should notice:

- the painter took himself a lot of trouble to show just the number of people in the team.

- one of the four pulling rows of peaple has different dress:as every second pair has long aprons and first pair has strange head-gears.

- ropes are not attached directly to the sledge, but to the element of strange shape.

-one of the workers probably pours some liquid in front of the sledge.

Because it is physically impossible for 166 people to pull ropes with power of about 9 tons (probablly it is sufficient power to pull 60 ton on the sledge), they had to find some equipment which would enable them to transfer the power and find any support to have possibility for increasing the pulling power. Only the trial of finding the reason, why the pulling row is different than other ones, helped to find mast likely interpretation of the drawing shown below.

The Egyptians did not consider the problem of pulling heavy stones and statues theoretically, they solved it practically. They even checked that 300 or 400 people could not pull with power over 9 tones. Ropes made of fibre besides many advantages have one heavy disadvantage- they stretch up. Extension depends on the stretching power a kind of angle and length of the rope. If row of peoples would try to pull with one rope , the last people in the row had to made a few steps more than the first. Every slowing down the tension would make people to do new (great) effort of tension. And it is very doubtful that 50 people could find new suuports for theirs feet and act synchronously. The Egyptians found brilliant solution.

Fig. 22. Spatial drawing of statue transport.

It appears that when people try to keep running away rope in their hand, the situation changes diametrically. Rope tension is not a trouble any more, legs stand still, only hands change the place of grasp. Besides, a man catching running rope does not do any work, meaning power multiplied by movement, he is able to keep much more than pull.

Egyptians created something like moving fulcrum, combined with the rows of pulling people, able to give a momentary resistance with 65 kG each, which gave in summary 8 tons. Only the fourth row distinguished by dress pulled and did the proper work of pulling the statue. 43 people pulled with power of 25 kG each, which gave in summary over 1 ton. Using very interesting element, the strange shaped wooden beam, which enabled transfer 1:9, workers could pressure the sledge and the statue with power of 9 tons. This power was enough to pull the statue and both sides resisting and pulling had some reserve. If we accept the dimensional proportion from the drawing, we can approximate movement of the statue in one round of work. If the beam spanned by 60 degrees in special nest at the end of runners, the movement of the sledge was about 6 cm. At that time pulling row moved forward within 54 cm, and then moved 48 cm backwards . Rows of resisting people moved 6 cm forward (but without doing any work) and a round might start again.

Fig. 23. The method of fixing the beam to the sledge following the example of knee-joint.

The most loaded element would be the nest of the beam turned at the end of the runners. Stresses existing there caused the need of pouring the water.