Ispectrum Magazine Ispectrum Magazine #06 | Page 50

T.D. Dr. Davidovits, I have read that you went all the way to the Giza plateau to study the Egyptian pyramids and in your books Why the pharaohs
built the Pyramids with fake stones and The Pyramids: an enigma solved
you have presented a captivating and surprising view of how the pyramids
were built, supported by archeology, hieroglyphic texts, scientific analysis and religious and historical facts. Your theory was that the stones of
the Great Pyramid were not quarried or carved from huge blocks hauled
on fragile ramps, but made on site from re-agglomerated stone (a natural limestone treated like a concrete) cast in moulds, somewhat similar to
modern cement and other artificial building techniques. You first aired this
intriguing theory, which made you famous, in 1974, crippling the conventional Egyptology. What prompted you to undertake this unusually remarkable study? What was the catalyzing factor?

Dr. Davidovits
It was partly chance.
My work as a research
chemist really started in 1972. My target was the creation of
fire-resistant polymeric materials. For two
years, in my laboratory in Saint-Quentin,
Picardie, France, I

worked essentially on
the chemical reactions
with clay minerals.
Nobody took any notice
of us and with my team
we developed the first
applications, for the
building industry. But
in June 1974, I realized that what we were
49

producing were materials that are very close
to natural cements,
such as rocks based
on feldspars, the feldspathoids. One day, as a
joke, I asked my scientific partners, two well
known French mineralogists at the Muséum