This may surprise readers, but copper was, for the pyramids, a strategic resource of first importance.

Give it the credit it deserves; without copper, the pyramids would have never been built.

Despite common conceptions and what some archaeologists claimed, copper was never used to directly cut the stone; it is not hard enough for that.

But copper alloy might have been used for the support and drive of the hard stone cutting edges, which first had to be embedded in a copper support pad.

But foremost, the main interest in copper for the construction site is its density of 8.9.

Builders used it as ballast, and they needed dozens of tons of it to make the elevator floats function and to power the driving force of the pendulum.

Phenomenal quantities of copper were used, probably in the form of bars weighing around 40 kg that could be easily handled and stacked up.

The consumption was so heavy that a permanent logistic road was established between the Sinai mines and the construction site, as attested by recent searches of Wadi el-Jarf led by P. Tallet from the Sorbonne.

The copper was also used to build roller tracks to ensure the transportation of the blocks.

By examining the cone roller characteristics, we notice that these rollers could, in contact with the ground, rapidly exert a pressure that exceeds the nummulites limestone filling stone resistance, which is around 40 N/mm2; it exceeds that of Turah quarries, evaluated around 60 N/mm2, and even that of Aswan granite, around 220 N/mm2. The copper is hammer-hardened and has a constriction resistance of around 320 N/mm2. Copper is then completely hammer-hardened and has a compression resistance of 320 N/mm2.

The ancient Egyptians could therefore have used this property to harden copper into the furrows that guided the rollers on the stone transport pavements.

According to recent archaeologists ‘searches, the copper available at that time was “pure” with a certain impurity degree of arsenic, depending on where the ore was mined and how it was obtained. Bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, was not yet in use.

For the study, I will keep the physical characteristics of hammer-hardened copper, whether it is referred to as bronze or copper.

The compression elastic limit is 300 N/mm2, the Young’s modulus is 125 Kn/mm2, and the density is 8.9 T/M3.

The alchemical symbol of copper is strangely close to “Ank”, the key to life that the Egyptian gods held in their hands.