Before a single block was put in place, the angle of the pyramid had to be determined. The Egyptians did not think in terms of degrees; they never divided the circle into 360 degrees as we do. Rather, their unit for angles was called the seked. Their unit of length was the cubit, roughly the distance from elbow to the end of the middle finger. This was, of course, standardized. Their measuring rod, the cubit stick, was divided into seven palms, and each palm into four fingers, similar to the way we divide a yardstick into feet and inches. When Egyptian architects were considering angles, they thought in terms of how many cubits you built outward for each cubit of height. For example, if the pyramid rises one cubit and you build out one cubit, you will have a 45-degree angle.The ratio doesn’t have to be in terms of cubits; we could also think in terms
of palms. So if you built upward one cubit but out ten palms, you would have a seked of ten, which is the same as our 35-degree angle.
All pyramids may look pretty much alike to the layman, but they are not. At Meidum, the first attempt at the true pyramid, the exterior angle is 52 degrees. The Bent Pyramid begins at 54 degrees, but toward the top it changes to 43 degrees. The Red Pyramid is 43 degrees and the Great Pyramid is 52 degrees. These pyramids all had white casing stones that were crucial to ensuring that the pyramids’ angles were constant throughout construction.
The thousands of casing stones needed for the Great Pyramid would have been finished at the quarry with their 52-degree angles before transportation to the site. When the angle is carved on the rough block,
the weight is reduced by several hundred pounds. By completing the blocks in the quarry rather than shipping them in rough form to the construction site, you save the shipping and hauling of thousands of tons of what will eventually be rubble. Herodotus was told that the Pyramid was completed from the top down—that the casing stones were put on the surface of the Pyramid while still in their rectangular shape and then, when all were in place, the blocks were given their 52-degree angle by carving from top to bottom. The economic reason mentioned above gives one argument against Herodotus’s account, but there are other arguments. First, where would the workers stand when carving from the top down? There isn’t enough room at the top. Second, as a pyramid rises, the angles at the corners must be repeatedly checked to make certain that the four sides will meet perfectly at the top to create a point. This requires that finished blocks be in place as the pyramid grows. Third, if all the external blocks were finished at the end of the project, this would add several years to the construction time. Thus, for all these reasons, it makes sense to complete each facing block in the quarry before it is placed on the pyramid.
There is also empirical evidence to show that the blocks were finished first and then put in place. The Bent Pyramid at Dashur has more of its casing stones in place than any other pyramid. When these blocks
are examined carefully, one sees numerous blocks with chips that have been repaired with matching limestone plugs. This suggests that the blocks were finished and some damage occurred either during transportation or while setting the blocks in position. If the blocks had been set in place when rough and then finished in situ from top to bottom, we wouldn’t expect to find many chips and repairs.