Just a shower thought. Seeing how these structures took decades to build in their times, and that too entirely with manual labour, I was wondering how long these architectural marvels would take to be built in this post modern era with the help of our technological advancements.
Imagine the world has dedicated its focus and the entirety of its resources on building just one Pyramid as quickly as possible out of the same materials and in the same location as the original ones. The medium of construction has no constraints but the end result must be indistinguishable, structure and composition wise.
I would love to hear how the process would take place in addition.
Skyscrapers typically take 2-5 years to build. I’m going to hazard a guess that a pyramid like the Great Pyramid of Giza would take more like 5-10 years.
There’s a lot of variables to this, especially the location and the source (quarry) and transportation of the high-quality limestone that you would need. You would also want to use some granite and other stone materials if you’re trying to match what the ancient Egyptians did. (If you’re allowed to use modern concrete and steel, it could change things dramatically.)
The Great Pyramid is about 147m tall and 230m wide along each side. Assuming it’s mostly solid stone, You would need roughly 2.5 million cubic meters of material.
Preparing and grading the site would go much faster with bulldozers and graders and the like, but is still a time-consuming process. Quarrying the limestone would also go much faster than the ancients because we have explosives, hydraulics, etc. But there’s still a lot of precision cutting and fitting to be done. Cranes would make placing the stones go faster but again, still time-consuming.
CAD software would also make the whole project faster and easier (and would further highlight how ingenious the ancient people were with this accomplishment). Experts already know a lot about the pyramids, but I bet if they built one they’d learn even more.
My wild guess is: if you marshaled enough resources and put a highly competent person in charge of it, you could get it done in 5 years.