Simple Beauty

Methods of Construction: Ramps

Once the blocks were on site, they would have to be lifted to their final resting place, often hundreds of feet up. Without access to modern construction techniques to lift the blocks straight up, the Egyptians were left to innovate some simple but clever tools to get the blocks to their final resting locations. One such tool they likely used was a ramp. A ramp is an inclined plane, a type of simple machine which decreases the amount of force needed to lift an object by increasing the distance that it must travel.

Ramps can be optimized in various ways, by reducing the friction on the surface, or customizing the shape or gradient of the ramp. In the case of the construction of the pyramid, variations in these factors could have affected how many blocks could have been moved up the ramp at a given time and how easily it might have been accomplished. There are two general designs which have been proposed as possibilities for the ramp design the Egyptians might have used at the pyramid site.

Straight Ramps:

(Image Credit: commons.wikimedia.org)

One commonly proposed ramp design is a straight ramp. This design allows for a long, wide path to the top of the pyramid construction site that would provide several advantages:

It would allow for multiple work teams to traverse it at a time

The gradient of the ramp could be easily customized and optimized by changing the length of the ramp

It could provide a straight path for the blocks to be dragged up, free of any sharp turns that the blocks must be maneuvered around

However, once the pyramid reached a certain height this design would have become infeasible. With a reasonable gradient of 1 in 10 for dragging the blocks up the slope, a straight ramp would have been an incredible construction project in and of itself. With some calculations indicating that it would have had a volume greater than the pyramid itself in order to reach the top, making it impractical extending to this height⁴.

With that being said, the ramp itself may not have had to have reached all the way to the top of the pyramid. The vast majority of the volume of the pyramid was comprised in the bottom 50% of the structure, thus a ramp stretching up only a portion of the pyramid could still vastly reduce the work of hauling the heavy stones to such immense heights. From there, the rest of the stones could have been carried up the pyramid by other methods.

Spiral Ramps:

(Image Credit: cheops-pyramide.ch)

One of the most widely accepted ramp design among Egyptologists is a spiral ramp⁵. This design overcomes many of the problems with the straight ramp. It could be built into the side of the pyramid itself and thus would not require an additional massive construction project. It could also progress easily with the construction of the pyramid to much greater heights.

But even this design is not without its flaws. A spiral ramp could only be so wide, it would be constrained by the geometry of the pyramid itself. And this constraint presents several disadvantages:

A narrow ramp cannot allow for multiple teams to be on the ramp at once

The tight, right hand corners of the pyramid would force the blocks to be adjusted at each corner before the work teams could continue carrying it up the pyramid

Despite these limitations it is still theorized that this method may have been used, particularly near the completion of the project when the pyramid was tall and the straight ramp design began to fail.

Building the Great Pyramid

Methods of Construction: Ramps