Traduction en anglais par Laura Elizabeth Miller de l'ouvrage Nel cantiere della Grande Piramide. Gli architetti egizi svelati, de Marco Virginio Fiorini.
Pour consulter cet ouvrage en sa version originale : cliquer ICI
"Fascinated by that far away world, my passion for Egypt dates back to when I was just a boy. As time went by, that simple curiosity towards an unknown world and its extraordinary civilization grew so much as to turn into the study of the most famous architectural wonder of the world: the Great Pyramid.
The only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to have resisted both sand and time, the Great Pyramid is the extraordinary essence of beauty, majesty, science, skill, wits, spirituality and... so much mystery.
The latter, enshrouding everything together under its cloak, makes of the Great Pyramid that unfathomable enigma, which mankind has been trying to solve for the last forty-seven centuries.
I am an architect. This great passion of mine in understanding how this marvel of engineering has been made possible is therefore natural.
I took up the challenge thrown at the sunrise of civilization by a people extraordinary for their design, organizational and executive abilities, despite their technological means being in the Bronze Age.
Living this adventure, I examined a great number of building hypotheses and met many researchers and lovers of this field.
The more I delved into the subject, the more I realized that, when not impracticable, almost all of the building theories presented more literary than engineering traits.
From a “professional” point of view, those theories reached technically contestable conclusions, reducing or even cancelling their soundness and sinking them into oblivion.
This gave me the impulse to write this kind of book and lay another hand on the subject, although this time placing it in a totally different context.
Not living the research experience as a “modern” technician, but as if I had been commissioned by the Pharaoh Khufu himself, to build a magnificent building in order to pass on the genius, culture and skills of the Egyptian people to posterity, rather than to his (presumed) tomb.
My aim was not to discover the “real” solution used by the Egyptians, but only a “plausible” building method that would allow me to manage to rebuild a copy of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, using the technology of those times.
For years I read and studied everything I could find on the pyramid. I thought it through, writing and drawing on thousands of sheets, in search of a solution. Or better, “The Solution.”
The problem that beset me most was how the Egyptians could have erected such an immense pyramid, managing to “guess” both the inclination and the direction of the four edges, without any clear point of reference to guide them.
It is simplistic, but with no marking or points of reference, it is unthinkable to build a similar structure, without making mistakes.
Therefore, I thought about the use of ropes. It is true, rope stretchers existed in Ancient Egypt and they were surely employed.
But, in this case, how could four ropes be stretched from the four corners at the base of the pyramid and be fixed more than 140 metres high in mid- air?
Magic? Paranormal powers? Extra-terrestrial help? Certainly not! This was a big problem and I could not see any way round it.
Then, one day, the solution came to me. Exactly: “The Solution”. It had been right there before my eyes and, as often happens, it was simple, almost obvious...
I have written this book to share this discovery with all of you. I hope I will have the pleasure to convey all the emotions and feelings that I experienced during the various stages of my research."
Présentation de l'ouvrage par son auteur :
The only one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World to have resisted both sand and time, the Great Pyramid is the extraordinary essence of beauty, majesty, science, skill, wits, spirituality and... so much mystery.
The latter, enshrouding everything together under its cloak, makes of the Great Pyramid that unfathomable enigma, which mankind has been trying to solve for the last forty-seven centuries.
I am an architect. This great passion of mine in understanding how this marvel of engineering has been made possible is therefore natural.
I took up the challenge thrown at the sunrise of civilization by a people extraordinary for their design, organizational and executive abilities, despite their technological means being in the Bronze Age.
Living this adventure, I examined a great number of building hypotheses and met many researchers and lovers of this field.
The more I delved into the subject, the more I realized that, when not impracticable, almost all of the building theories presented more literary than engineering traits.
From a “professional” point of view, those theories reached technically contestable conclusions, reducing or even cancelling their soundness and sinking them into oblivion.
This gave me the impulse to write this kind of book and lay another hand on the subject, although this time placing it in a totally different context.
Not living the research experience as a “modern” technician, but as if I had been commissioned by the Pharaoh Khufu himself, to build a magnificent building in order to pass on the genius, culture and skills of the Egyptian people to posterity, rather than to his (presumed) tomb.
My aim was not to discover the “real” solution used by the Egyptians, but only a “plausible” building method that would allow me to manage to rebuild a copy of the Great Pyramid of Khufu, using the technology of those times.
For years I read and studied everything I could find on the pyramid. I thought it through, writing and drawing on thousands of sheets, in search of a solution. Or better, “The Solution.”
The problem that beset me most was how the Egyptians could have erected such an immense pyramid, managing to “guess” both the inclination and the direction of the four edges, without any clear point of reference to guide them.
It is simplistic, but with no marking or points of reference, it is unthinkable to build a similar structure, without making mistakes.
Therefore, I thought about the use of ropes. It is true, rope stretchers existed in Ancient Egypt and they were surely employed.
But, in this case, how could four ropes be stretched from the four corners at the base of the pyramid and be fixed more than 140 metres high in mid- air?
Magic? Paranormal powers? Extra-terrestrial help? Certainly not! This was a big problem and I could not see any way round it.
Then, one day, the solution came to me. Exactly: “The Solution”. It had been right there before my eyes and, as often happens, it was simple, almost obvious...
I have written this book to share this discovery with all of you. I hope I will have the pleasure to convey all the emotions and feelings that I experienced during the various stages of my research."