By Waterpower may have given a big lift to builders of Egypt’s oldest known pyramid, the nearly 4,700-year-old Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara.
Ancient architects built a hydraulic system for hoisting stone blocks that were used to assemble King Djoser’s six-tiered, roughly 62-meter-tall pyramid, scientists propose August 5 in PLOS ONE. Controlled flows of water into and out of a large shaft inside the pyramid lifted and lowered a platform that carried loads of building stones to higher levels, say Xavier Landreau of the private Paris research institute Paleotechnic and colleagues.
