THE PYRAMIDS of the COLD • Chapter 51 The giant stone sarcophagi at the Serapeum are the mandatory airtight storage tanks for chemical products such as natron salt

In summary: so far, we’ve seen that ancient Egyptians most probably mastered the Solvay process about 4,500 years before it got reinvented in Europe during the industrial revolution, and we’ve seen that both the disc of Sabu and the stone basins at Abu Ghorab were proofs that Egyptians used both counterflow plates and individual reacting chambers that can be seen as the signature of a Solvay or Solvay-like process. But so far, we didn’t see how the products of such chemical manufacturing industry were stored; because many, if not all these products are extremely sensitive to humidity and they need airtight containers for long term storage.

In this chapter, we’ll see that of course, Egyptians couldn’t avoid the airtight storage problem linked to their Solvay process, and that they managed, with their own way, to produce airtight containers. These containers, every body knows them, because they are the famous and striking so-called sarcophagi that have been found next to the Step Pyramid of pharaoh Djeser, in the Serapeum of Saqqara.

If the giant ‘sarcophagi’ that have been found in the Greater Vaults of the Serapeum at Saqqara, are weighing about 65 tons each, with 25 tons just for the lids, and if their interior has been beautifully crafted with extreme precision to produce extremely flat surfaces, while the exterior was left almost crude, just like it didn’t have the slightest importance how it looked from the outside, it only is because these sarcophagi only were the missing airtight tanks for the long term storage of chemical manufacturing products.

[illustration from] “Egypt Underground: The Enigmatic Serapeum Of Saqqara”, video by Brien Foerster: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfv3vRrfp2E

51.01  The tendency of egyptologists to mix everything up

We’ve already seen many times that egyptologists are so embarrassed about having to continue telling the same cute little stories since the early 1800s, that often they are obliged to either hide the truth (like hiding the presence of a sand filter a few meters away of the so-called ‘burial chamber’ in Sneferu’s Bent Pyramid), or omit part of the information so that everything could be mixed up by people listening to them; and that’s what happened for the Serapeum of Saqqara, discovered in 1851 by French egyptologist Auguste Mariette.

This is coming from Wikipedia: “The Serapeum of Saqqara was the ancient Egyptian burial place for sacred bulls of the Apis cult at Memphis. It was believed that the bulls were incarnations of the god Ptah, which would become immortal after death as Osiris-Apis, a name which evolved to Serapis (Σέραπις) in the Hellenistic period, and Userhapi in Coptic. It is one of the animal catacombs in the Saqqara necropolis, which also contains the burial vaults of the mother cows of the Apis, the Iseum. Over a timespan of approximately 1400 years, from the New Kingdom of Egypt to the end of the Ptolemaic Period, at least sixty Apis are attested to have been interred at the Serapeum.”

But there is one problem here: there is no distinction whatsoever between the two parts of the Serapeum. If it is true that both mummified bodies of humans and bulls have been discovered in wooden sarcophagi in the so-called ‘small gallery’ and that other treasures or bull artifacts have also been found in this small gallery, nothing of the sort has ever been found in the so-called grand gallery, precisely were are all the giant sarcophagi.

Auguste Mariette, around 1861. Photograph by Nadar, Bibliothèque nationale de France

Egypt Underground: The Enigmatic Serapeum Of Saqqara, by Brien Foerster: youtube.com/watch?v=nfv3vRrfp2E

51.02  Mummies don't need to be protected inside airtight containers... but chemicals do

The last sentence is key: “Because the Egyptologists do not know the actual purpose, they claim that Apis bulls were also buried in these monster coffins”. And that is the problem with egyptologists, they don’t know what these giant monster boxes only found in the large gallery were made for; but still, they have to say something, and something that doesn’t contradict the entire story. So, if it implies that the giant airtight boxes were made for mummified bodies of bulls which didn’t need the extra precaution, and if it also implies that much more work was made for the bulls than for any other sarcophagi of pharaohs, it doesn’t matter. If people are buying it, it doesn’t matter. But what you can be sure of, is that the only purpose of these boxes was because inside them, was something that needed to be protected from air, and mummies don't.

51.03  The crucial difference between the small and large galleries of the Serapeum

This is an excerpt of what Gregor Spörri is saying about the Serapeum: “In 1851, Auguste Mariette discovered the entrance to a tomb near the Pyramid of Djoser, where he suspected precious treasures were hidden. […] In the so-called large gallery, he came across 24 bricked-up niches. Stelae covered with hieroglyphics were embedded in the outer walls. Mariette tore down the walls and was startled. Because in 22 of the 24 niches were stone sarcophagi as huge as no one had ever seen at the time. Several additional layers of small stone blocks were piled on top of the massive coffin lids, giving the impression that they were intended to weigh down the coffin lids. But why and for what purpose? […] The containers had been carved out of a single block of granite. There were coffins made of rose granite, gray granite, diorite, syenite, granodiorite and so on. All very hard materials that are difficult to work with. Mariette’s companion, Monsieur Linant de Bellefonds, measured one of the sarcophagi and calculated that it weighed at least 65 tons. A second container even weighed over 70 tons.

Although the find was an absolute sensation, Mariette was very surprised by something: All the coffin lids – weighing over 20 tons, as heavy as the vault doors of Fort Knox – had been pushed slightly to one side. So the coffins were ajar. A quick glance inside was enough to see that they were all empty. Mariette and his companions were highly irritated by this, as there was no evidence that the site had been raided by grave robbers or plundered in any other way. Only one of the 24 sarcophagi was still untouched and sealed. Mariette and his helpers tried unsuccessfully to push aside the cover, which weighed several tons. In the end, they even used dynamite on the coffin. After they had blown a hole in the container, their astonishment was all the greater because this container was also empty. This made the mystery all the greater. The official doctrine: The Serapeum was once used to worship the sacred Apis bulls that lived in the stables above ground. After their death, the bulls were embalmed and buried in the underground necropolis.”

“Gregor Spörri’s objection: The Serapeum consists of two separate areas: The so-called large gallery and the small gallery. Mummified bodies of humans and bulls were actually found in wooden sarcophagi in the small gallery. This part of the necropolis is also where Mariette found the treasures and bull artifacts that were sold as medicine at the markets in Cairo at the time. The large gallery is something completely different, because only here are the giant stone sarcophagi. Because the Egyptologists do not know the actual purpose, they claim that Apis bulls were also buried in these monster coffins.” [text and photograph] Copyright © by Gregor Spörri, Switzerland: https://gregorspoerri.com/info/the-tomb-of-the-giants-in-sakkara/?lang=en

[photograph] © Gregor Spörri inspects the sarcophagus blown open by August Mariette in 1851.

The storage of sodium carbonate soda ash, the salt called natron by ancient Egyptians and used for the mummification process, must be made in airtight containers as the product is very sensitive to humidity. [illustration] https://learn.bulkflow.net/another-option-to-handling-and-transporting-sodium-carbonate/

The common characteristic of all the 22 giant boxes found in the so-called large gallery of the Serapeum at Saqqara, additionally to have been crafted from  very costly granite or granite-like rock, is that no effort what so ever have been made for the exterior of the boxes and their lids  (their general design and their decoration. Most of them appear completely neglected; and if  you really believe that the lid on the above image as an example, would be appropriate to cover the sarcophagus of anything or anybody, I guess it’s a good thing you’re not the one responsible for having building the thing; pharaoh would probably have fired or killed you for your incompetence, if the purpose of these boxes really was to be sarcophagi for a mummified body. [illustration] “A typical sarcophagus in the Ptolematic section of the Serapeum”. Photograph by Richard Mortel: https://www.flickr.com/photos/43714545@N06/52088626606/

Egypt Underground: The Enigmatic Serapeum Of Saqqara, by Brien Foerster (9.06): youtube.com/watch?v=nfv3vRrfp2E

51.04  About the full timeline regarding these 22 giant airtight containers

One of the most discussed intriguing characteristics of the giant boxes found in the large gallery, is the striking difference in the craftsmanship between the interior of the boxes and the hieroglyphic markings that appear on some of the boxes; and it seems that some people are suggesting that it simply can’t be the same civilization that built the boxes, and wrote the markings. The interior of the boxes are so precisely crafted that one can ask how the hell did they do that thousands of years ago, the surface is incredibly flat and the angles almost perfectly at 90°. On the other hand, the writings look like they have been made by children, using very poor tools, as shown on the above photograph. So, the question is: what really happened during all these years?

Maybe we’ll never know the whole story, but what’s sure is the original purpose of the boxes, i.e. airtight containers for chemical manufacturing. But was it for related to the Solvay process and the production of sodium carbonate natron, sodium bicarbonate or ammonium chloride? One starting point in the deciphering of the history of the boxes could be about as old as the Step Pyramid of Djeser (the Serapeum is just next to the Pyramid); and remember, that Pyramid was the one the ancient Egyptians called ‘the Pyramid of the Refreshment of the Gods’. Now, we know there was no such thing as ‘Refreshment of the Gods’, because the real name of the Pyramid was ‘the Cooling by the Gods’; and that means Egyptians were already dealing with chemical manufacturing in the Step Pyramid; so there is no  surprise if they had to store their products into airtight hollowed out containers made of hard stone like granite.

What happened next is the mystery. Because for a long time, I thought Egyptians had stopped their engineering era after the Great Pyramid was built, that no more chemical manufacturing was made after the Fourth Dynasty; but the fact that many centuries after that some pharaohs would have identified some of the boxes for themselves, could indicate that they actually have pursued what their ancestors had started.

Illustration of the very poor quality of the lid of one of the giant hollowed out boxes in the large gallery of the Serapeum at Sakkara: https://subterranologie.com/visite-virtuelle-du-serapeum-de-saqqarah/

Operating diagram of the Great Pyramid of Khufu for flash-evaporative cold production, hypothetically for cooling down a Solvay-like process and the manufacturing of chemically manufacturing of 100% pure natron, the salt used by Egyptians for the mummification process.

Preface

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Table of contents

Operating diagrams of the Great Pyramid

Timelines

Index