Steve Clayton Wrote:
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>
> Tell me then, how did they do it, and was it water
> tight. Did they let water drain down like a sieve
> into the Pyramids. Other than the lowest chamber
> in G1, is there water damage found throughout the
> surfaces, ie. mineral stains. I have never been
> inside to know for sure.

While I've not seen it firsthand, others describe rubble, sand, loose blocks, imprecise fitting, etc. comprising the core filler in G1. The idea is that we get a brief glimpse of what almost appears to be a random piling up of blocks as you view the walls and roof in Mamoun's hole and also as you look at the huge vertical excavation on G1's south wall that was blown out by Vyse gunpowder archaeology. So I'm not sure what coniditions would be necessary to allow each course to hold a shallow pool of water during construction and still leave the impression of such roughshod filler within the core.

Regarding Lehner, yes, he was talking about the planing of the foundation bedrock before any construction ensued. I recall that the process in question is that the builders excavated an approximate plane that contained many coarse peaks, ridges, etc.. Then they added a very shallow layer of water in a slight trench around the perimeter which, originally, was below the level of that intiial roughshod bedrock, but as the bedrock was slowly chiseled down (e.g.,starting from the outer aspect of the perimeter), it met the water level, and this chiseling continued around the perimeter of G1 until it was all at water level. Lehner's argument is that such chiseling would add so much dust and chips to the shallow water that it would be too messy and problematic of a method to achieve the horizontal precision plane we see there today.