The pyramids of Egypt have evoked awe and fascination for years, especially since it is still not known how these great wonders were built. Now a new study has proposed that the Great Pyramid is not merely a structure, but a machine that built itself. Simon Andreas Scheuring, a scientist at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York, has proposed that the Great Pyramid was built from the inside out, without using any heavy machinery. His research, published in npj Heritage Science, states that internal pulley-like systems and sliding counterweights helped create these mammoth structures. However, the most intriguing theory he puts forward is that it was a machine, a system that was designed to lift and place its own building blocks. All of this brushes aside assumptions that immense manpower and ramps might have been used to build the pyramid.

The pyramid is believed to have been built over 20 years. But the mechanism deployed was completely different, according to Scheuring. He states in the study that internal stone-lined ramps and pulley-like setups were placed on the inside that lifted the heavy limestone and granite blocks and put them into place. This method explains how the architects placed one block every one to three minutes, ensuring the fast pace of construction. He also points to some architectural features present inside the pyramid to prove his theory.

He writes that the Grand Gallery and Ascending Passage were used as sloped ramps where counterweights were probably slid downward to generate force. The pulley-like mechanism was present at the Antechamber, which experts have long believed to be a security feature. However, according to Scheuring, the pulley method at this place helped lift blocks as heavy as 60 tons towards the top. The construction was not done like a regular building, he says. Instead of being built equally on all sides, it was built in phases. He states there was a central starting point where internal passages split, and over several phases, the expansion happened upward and outward. This eliminated the need for massive ramps.

There has been no evidence for the presence of these ramps till now. Scheuring says that if such ramps were used to build the Great Pyramid, that would mean they were even bigger than the pyramid itself. But no such structure has ever been found. His paper describes how ropes were threaded over wood beams inside the Antechamber to lift materials through shafts. — making the pyramid itself a tool of its own creation. His theory seems plausible considering the pyramid has more than two million blocks and is 480 feet high. Conventionally known methods could not have built such a structure. But Scheuring’s model divides the work into phases and across the four faces of the pyramid.