Unveiling the Enigma of the Serapeum: Impossible Feats of Ancient Technology
The Serapeum Temple is a series of tunnels, crypts, and caves carved deep beneath the rocks of the Saqqara plateau, extending 400 meters. How did the ancient Egyptians manage to use technology and tools to carve such tunnels 5,000 years ago, which would typically require machines like those used for drilling the Suez Canal?
Strangely, the Serapeum contains 26 massive granite sarcophagi, meticulously crafted, with the lid of each sarcophagus weighing 30 tons and the body itself weighing 70 tons. This means that it would take nearly 500 men to move each one of these boxes!
What's more puzzling is that the tunnels cannot accommodate such a number of workers to bring these sarcophagi inside. Additionally, these colossal sarcophagi are all made of very hard stones (red granite, black granite, basalt, schist, quartz) — materials that can only be worked with diamond cutters and technology that exists only in modern warship factories. It is inconceivable that someone could carve them using the primitive tools available during the dynastic period, which included stone, copper, bronze, and later iron, none of which could possibly handle these materials, let alone polish them, smooth them out, and engrave them as seen!
But the question remains: why were these sarcophagi created, for whom, and why were all the sarcophagi empty and sealed when they were discovered, except for one? When the archaeological mission attempted to move the lid of one sarcophagus using dozens of workers, they were unable to do so. They then resorted to using dynamite to open it, but found nothing inside. Why was no mummy or body of the Apis bull found in any of the sarcophagi, as claimed by August Mariette Pasha, the discoverer of the tomb? Who created them? How? Why were they made, and why are they so enormous? Lastly, how were they transported into the narrow corridors and tunnels of the Serapeum?
The catacombs of the Serapeum are, in themselves, a complex riddle. In the summer, you find them cold, and in the winter, they are hot, causing you to sweat inside them. The tunnels, stretching 400 meters, are carved into the heart of the rock of the Saqqara Plateau and not amidst the sands. The tunnel descends via a stepped ladder, and if you look at the map of the tunnels below, you will find numerous branches.
In the main tunnel at those visible gaps on the map, there are boxes, and there are other branches as well. If we look at the main passage, we find it perfectly straight. Could this long tunnel have been excavated solely with picks?
The tunnels of the Serapeum have only one door, which serves as the entrance and exit. The visibility inside the tunnels, even with the sun, is extremely dim. Did they excavate all that distance at that depth in the dark and remove tons of rubble by the light of torches? It is strange that there are no signs of torch placements on the walls of the tunnel. Additionally, having any torches that deep among the rubble and dust would be a laborious and suffocating task.
Looking at the curvature and straightness of the tunnel, can a human hand really dig a tunnel with such precision and straightness over this distance? It could even be said that this is impossible without a drilling machine, because the tunnels are not dug in sand, but in the limestone of Saqqara. This certainly requires an incredible amount of effort if done solely by human hands. However, it was powerful and advanced machines that completed this task. If we look at our contemporary civilization, we will find that to excavate a tunnel like this, we would need a tunneling machine.
Now we come to the sarcophagi of the Serapeum, which can be considered a scientific and engineering marvel even in our time. These sarcophagi were not constructed; they were carved like any coffin. It consists of four sides, a base, and a lid. The body of the sarcophagus itself was carved by cutting a solid block of granite from various quarries in the south of the country, such as Luxor, Aswan, Sudan, Sinai, the Red Sea, and Faiyum. After cutting that block, estimated at about 80 tons, from the quarry, it is then hollowed and polished, and finally, the lid is sculpted.
There is no doubt that primitive tools and hammering machinery could not produce such a unique engineering product. All internal and external angles of the box are exactly 90 degrees—not 90.1 or 89.9. The flatness has a margin of error of less than 0.02%, a degree that cannot be reached in modern times without using high-precision machines or optical laser technology to achieve complete flatness.
Then we come to the most important question: how were those giant sarcophagi placed inside a tunnel that has only one very narrow entrance? It is worth mentioning that King Farouk attempted to remove one of the sarcophagi from the tunnel and sought the help of many workers and mules, but he could only move it a few meters and it remains in place to this day!