Egypt's Oldest Pyramid Is Being Destroyed By Its Own Restoration Team 246
Taffykay writes The oldest pyramid in Egypt, the Pyramid of Djoserat Saqqara, is being destroyed by the very company the Egyptian government has hired to restore it. The roughly 4,600-year-old structure has been in trouble since an earthquake hit the region in 1992, but in a difficult political and economic climate for the country, those now tasked with preserving the pyramid are said to be doing more harm than good.
Re:Why SPAM? (Score:4, Informative)
The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Oldest stone complex? (Score:2, Informative)
This happens when writers compulsively replace words with what they think are synonyms. Some writer with thesaurus OCD didn't want to use the word pyramid twice.
Re:a shame but... (Score:5, Informative)
The pyramids being made by slave labour is something of a myth. There's not much evidence available for early pyramids, but there's plenty of evidence that later pyramids were made by skilled craftsmen [wikipedia.org] and not slaves.
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:5, Informative)
In 1994 there were 23,730 homicides in the USA source [nytimes.com].
Isis are responsible for way more than 23,730 deaths source [wikipedia.org].
Read in to that what you like :)
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:5, Informative)
Let's not forget that Christians and Muslims are both religions with divergent sects. As such it might be helpful to see the following list:
By that account the Catholic Church is still the biggest religion.
Re:a shame but... (Score:4, Informative)
Looking at that picture I wonder how people can be so amazed by it.
That's exactly the problem. Pyramids are like the Grand Canyon. Modern photography may have gotten super good at capturing a likeness of their image, but nothing actually beats going there in person and seeing those things in real life!
Doesn't even sound hard other than the heat (which was called fucking life back then, cause no one had air conditioning).
Actually, don't believe your hollywood movies, Egypt was lush with vegetation and had plenty water (which provided its own natural air conditioning during the time those pyramids were built). Please read this article [pyramids-of-egypt.com] and this article [pyramids-of-egypt.com].
Considering that it was made with slave labor, makes it even less impressive.
Yes, that was the totally unproven interpretation of the Europeans when they first visited Egypt. And as another poster already replied (and provided a reference), they're now finding physical evidence that this wasn't actually the case.
There's these steps in northern california, laid by like 80 japanese slave laborers like 100 years ago...
If you think the work of 80 laborers 100 years ago is equivalent to the work of ~10,000 laborers ~7,000 years ago, then that's your choice. Personally, I can't even visualize a period of 7,000 years. So if you're not impressed by several supremely huge man-made structures that have stood the test of time for 7,000+ years, then let's just agree to disagree because I am surely impressed by them.
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:3, Informative)
It is how Neil Degrasse Tyson said when talking about how religion can kill progress "The Arab world was the center of science and mathematics for centuries, and then came Islam"
You mean the Islamic golden age [wikipedia.org]? Which many consider to have ended at the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols [wikipedia.org]?
Re:... all in the name of "Allah" (Score:4, Informative)
Money, including tourism dollars, is very much a motivating factor for the parties involved. I don't have a comprehensive knowledge of the politics, but the locals I talked to reviled Morsi precisely because of his lack of money (and his allegiances). Most visibly, infrastructure and the jobs created in its construction and maintenance, that Mubarak had, was sorely missed.
Re: Oldest stone complex? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:The biggest risk to the pyramids is Islam (Score:4, Informative)
Oh you want precise data? Like large support across muslim countries, where terrorism is supported. [clarionproject.org] 20% of muslims support the 7/7 bombings [telegraph.co.uk] 1:4 muslims in the UK say the bombings were justified [cbsnews.com] 31% of muslims in turkey support suicide bombings against westerners [people-press.org] 32% of palestinians support the murder of jews, including children. [ynetnews.com] 55% of muslims support hezbollah [pewglobal.org] 26% of young muslims in america believe suicide attacks are justified [pewresearch.org] 26% of egyptian muslims believe that suicide attacks are justified [people-press.org]
You're now enlightened to this "tiny minority." Which is roughly 25% having extremist views, out of 1.6 billion that would be a "mere" 400,000,000 individuals. You know, I could keep going and posting, so again--there is something fundamentally broken with islam and muslims. And I haven't even gotten to the stuff on specific groups, which vary between 6% as a low to 51% support across muslims. Or the 50-75% that believing that killing apostates is a good idea. I guess none of that is large swaths.