What the hell happened with the Abydos Pyramid?

[Herkimer Jitty]

Why does it look exactly like the pyramids on Earth? Shouldn't it have an exterior casing still, since I'd imagine that Ra would have bitchslapped any punks who dared to peel bling off of his pyramid.

I know, it's creative license, but - it doesn't make sense.

 

[Silvercrest]

But Ra never actually sees the outside of the temple. His ship always covers the top of it. That temple casing was stripped and sold for crack money thousands of years ago, and Ra never noticed.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Personally, I think the casing was used to build the kind of Zat gun that vapourizes.
Also, it was a gift to Ra from the Furlings.

 

[gastrof]

Forgive my being so ignorant...

What SHOULD the pyramid have looked like? What "bling" did the ones on Earth originally have, and how do we know?

Sorry, I'm no expert on ancient Egypt.

 

[Gepard]

^This is a really poor image, but it shows roughly how it should have looked. A white limestone casing topped by a cap of gold. I can't recall if this is true or just speculation I read somewhere, but the sides of the pyramids might have been painted with giant hieroglyphs, like billboards.

Wikipedia is silent on the the subject in their great pyramids articles, but I recall that they know all this because of microscopic traces of the materials left on the surface of the pyramids, and historical documents describing the original appearance. Much like the painted statues and buildings of Greece and Rome, time and vandalism has simply wiped out the original color scheme.

 

[Brent]

Um, well it would have faded just like the ones on Earth, in fact, it is probably a lot older than the ones on Earth, so the bling faded away, most obvious answer

 

[Gepard]

If it were abandoned, yeah. But Herkimer makes a good point that the culture (and Ra's ship) were still around and functioning after all that time. Surely somebody would have been tasked with maintenance and re-gilding every now and then.

 

[RoJoHen]

Maybe the Earth casing was just decoration. Maybe Ra ran out of money before he could case the rest of his pyramids.

 

[Gepard]

Or maybe the pyramids weren't landing platforms for giant alien spaceships so the movie needn't match reality?

 

[Jenee]

Or, maybe there wasn't any limestone on Abydos.

 

[RoJoHen]

Or maybe the pyramids weren't landing platforms for giant alien spaceships so the movie needn't match reality?

Wow, how surprisingly not fun of you.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Or, maybe there wasn't any limestone on Abydos.

Perhaps. But the pyramid would still need to have a smooth exterior to match the ones on Earth. They were both presumably designed as landing pads, so I'd imagine they were built to spec.

Um, well it would have faded just like the ones on Earth, in fact, it is probably a lot older than the ones on Earth, so the bling faded away, most obvious answer

They didn't fade away on Earth.

The limestone was stripped off by later civilizations to build a buttload of stuff across the river in Giza.

 

[Gepard]

Wow, how surprisingly not fun of you.

Then the fundectomy worked!

 

[Jenee]

Or, maybe there wasn't any limestone on Abydos.

Perhaps. But the pyramid would still need to have a smooth exterior to match the ones on Earth. They were both presumably designed as landing pads, so I'd imagine they were built to spec.

Maybe the limestone was added to the Earth pyramids after Ra left - ... maybe so he couldn't get any traction or something ...

 

[Lindley]

There's a much better question to be asking.

Why the heck are the landing pads four-sided pyramids, if Hatak vessels are three-sided pyramids?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

BUT ITS SPACE LOL

 

[Checkmate]

There's a much better question to be asking.

Why the heck are the landing pads four-sided pyramids, if Hatak vessels are three-sided pyramids?

The real Ra's ship (the one from the actual movie) was four-sided. The ships and technology used in the series made significantly less sense than the movie's, even if the movie had some questionable stuff, too.

 

[Hyperspace05]

Yeah, it always bugged me that they got the original appearance of the pyramids wrong. It's not that hard to look up! Here is a picture of the remnants of the flat surface near the top of Khafres pyramid: (it would have been even flatter and whiter in its original form)
http://www.konyagi.org/blog/images/2009_dubai_egypt/960/Limestone_Hood_of_Khafres_Pyramid.jpg

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Simple answer: Because the viewer expects a pyramid look that way. Just like he expects to hear sound in space or a car to explode.

 

[backstept]

has anyone noticed that hatak ships are triangular pyramids, while the landing pyramids are square pyramids? how does that work?