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Customer Reviews of This Old Pyramid

This film proves that NOVA is one of the great TV shows ever. The only documetary series that can't make you fall asleep no matter how hard they try. This Old Pyramid will not board you and is high on my list of recamendations.

Angry Bob Villa+ Bookish Indiana Jones = HILARITY!
Accurate, shmaccurate. I have wonderful memories of catching this episode of nova on television with my family, and went looking for it on Amazon on a whim. I ordered it and watched it again, and if anything it has gotten better. I guess I don't really care if Nova lied about their methods, or if they inaccurately claim their data supports that of "Egyptology" - (what, the entire field of Egyptology?) - I do however value the oafish and volatile humor of the Massachusetts stonemason, boarishly out of place in his tourist clothes and big sunburnt nose, bonding with his non-English speaking crew while not speaking adequate Arabic himself. Take Mr. This Old House and pair him with a dorky version of Indiana Jones, and you have CHEMISTRY, people, CHEMISTRY! Watch with guilty pleasure as the bookish archaeologist gets in the way of the builders and antagonizes the pyramid theorists. Perhaps my favorite moment is the night of completeion celebration, when angry stonemason guy dances with his crew and smiles goofily as he watches a local erotic dancer, who is decked out to look more like a sequined Cyndi Lauper on acid than what I pictured an Arabic dancer to look like, but does that bother our boy? Heck no.

I think Margaret is right in her review when she says that Nova was not very honest or scientific about their methods, but there is a healthy smattering here of good pyramid lore and architectural information that only adds to the entertainment of the frustrated builders. When "This Old Pyramid" first premiered, I predicted a place on the underground cult classics list. Unfortunately, this didn't happen. Check it out.

This Old Pyramid Nonsense
NOVA built its mini pyramid with a front-end loader (see the Houston
Chronicle (Wrap-up, Saturday, November 13, 1993), while leading its
audience to believe that the NOVA pyramid was built using strictly
ancient means. The opening narration states, "They'll [NOVA's
workers] use the methods and materials available to the Egyptians to
build them [the pyramids]." NOVA repeated this protocol,
"Roger wanted to lower these blocks in place with a fork-lift,
but Mark has insisted on ancient methods." Because of these
statements, vague references to machines, if noticeable, lead viewers
to assume the use of inconsequential devices acceptable to the
experiment. Examples might be instruments for checking leveling and
vehicles for transporting equipment and people. The front-end loader
brought all blocks from the quarry and installed them into the
mini-pyramid, except for the three or four one-ton blocks needed for
the on-camera demonstration. The front-end loader even placed those
few blocks onto NOVA's mini-ramp. Even if the crew did not have time
to build the pyramid by hand during its three weeks on location, the
film should have been honest with its audience about how the pyramid
was really built. NOVA's goal was to simulate the work of the ancient
pyramid builders, who could have built a tiny pyramid in three
weeks. After all, NOVA's 18-foot high unfinished mini-pyramid only
incorporated less than 200 blocks each weighing either one or two
tons. Egyptology calculates (and NOVA repeated this figure) that an
average of one block was set in the Great Pyramid every two or three
minutes per work day. Clearly, despite NOVA's claims, NOVA never
proved its case. Other fatal flaws make this misleading film useless
as documentary.... First, although the film stated that only ancient means
would be used, NOVA used modern steel tools to quarry and shape all of
its pyramid blocks. NOVA's blocks were of the softest limestone at
Tura. This stone is much softer than the blocks of the Great Pyramid,
which are mostly medium-hard to hard and cannot be leveled or
otherwise correctly shaped with the copper tools of the Pyramid Age.
Moreover, fossil shells in Giza limestone make it particularly
difficult to shape correctly with primitive tools. NOVA's modern
steel tools are unacceptable for an experiment showing how the ancient
Egyptians might have quarried, leveled and otherwise correctly shaped
fossil shell limestone blocks. Pyramid Age tools were made of wood,
copper (a relatively soft metal) and stone, and their capabilities
have no relationship to those of steel tools. Thus, NOVA defied both
scientific methodology and up-to-date Egyptology. Dieter Arnold, for
instance, admits that the means of quarrying is unknown. Arnold
writes, "The question as to what kind of tools were used to cut
the separation trenches and to lift the blocks from their beds has not
been answered satisfactorily because of the contradiction between the
tool marks left on the quarry walls and the tools actually found in
ancient Egypt" (Building in Egypt, 1993). Second, the film
advocates that copper tools were used to shape ancient pyramid blocks,
ignoring the most up-to-date Egyptology. For instance, Arnold's
Building in Egypt acknowledges that copper tools could not have been
used. Aside from the inadequacy of copper tools, the mines could not
have supplied the amount of copper needed. Third, while ramps are
suitable for building small pyramids, engineers, including Peter
Hodges, showed that the Great Pyramid would not exist if its
construction depended on any kind of ramp. NOVA should not have
implied that its experiment solved major problems of building the
Great Pyramid. Yet, the film concluded by claiming that NOVA solved
the major unresolved problems. Fifth, there is a basic methodological
distortion in drawing conclusions from such a
mini-experiment. Engineering problems multiply in full-scale
operations. The congestion on a ramp of the size required for the
Great Pyramid would be extraordinary. The frequent application of
water would quickly cause such a ramp, made of clay and stone rubble,
to become unstable. Sixth, NOVA suggested that using a spiral ramp
solves outstanding construction problems. However, such a device
produces more problems than it solves with regard to the Great
Pyramid's construction. The film displayed a three-dimensional
computer-rendered image of a cantilevered spiral ramp. In reality, its
special cantilever support beams would have to be built into the
pyramid faces to meet complex engineering requirements. For instance,
the beams would have to extend far enough into the core masonry to
counterbalance the weight of their unsupported lengths extending
beyond the pyramid's faces. Each beam must also have enough
counterbalance to support the weight of its proportional load of the
finished ramp, plus the proportional load of the heaviest weight
moving along the ramp (like the 27 foot-long beams over the King's
Chamber). The cantilevered ramp system is so demanding that it would
dramatically impact calculations for building the Great
Pyramid. Theorists, for instance, mostly work with an average block
size of 2.5 tons, but they would need to factor in the elevation of
thousands of enormous cantilever beams for the ramp itself. Given the
overwhelming demands of the cantilevered ramp, it is surprising that
NOVA introduced the idea. Critics of the spiral ramp point out that
it would obscure the true reference points (the four corner stones at
the pyramid's base, the angle of the pyramid's sides, and its
baseline). Failure to make all measurements from these absolute
reference points would introduce errors that would compound as the
pyramid rose. Even the slightest error would have compounded as
workers took successive measurements from inaccurate reference
points. The result would be a structure with irregular sides that
would not form a proper pyramid shape. NOVA offered no solution to
this problem, making it impossible to take this design seriously.
This misleading film is an affront to scientific methodology. It sends
a terrible message to students, who need to learn honesty and respect
for scientific method.