this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2026
364 points (96.2% liked)
interestingasfuck
9428 readers
1533 users here now
For exceptionally interesting content
Rules:
- Posts must be interesting
- Posts must be based in reality
- No hateful content
- No harmful content
- Beauty is in the eye of the beholder
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
From what I understand the polished limestone is accurate for many pyramids, but the gold pyramidion seems to be more of an edge case on some smaller pyramids.
A gold top wouldn’t even be visible from the ground on a large polished white pyramid.
The point of pyramids was of religious nature, it was to be closer to the sky and allow dead pharaohs to go in their version of the after life so it's likely that the gold wasn't to be pretty but for a religious something
Also, i wonder if it was a gold alloy and not pure gold
You are close but gold is conductive. And souls are capable of traveling through such conduits. Especially gold. It is a direct conduit into the sky where they can go back to doppelpopulous to worship Queen doppelpopolis of the doppelgangers.
Why not both?
If it was for religious reasons they would definitely use pure gold
Just looked on wikipedia and they say
"... and were sometimes covered with plates of copper, gold or electrum." (electrum is an alloy of gold and silver IIRC)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramidion Which makes a lot of sense, gold was and is very expensive
"Plates of" especially makes sense. And you do recall correctly, electrum is a natural alloy, which means they wouldn't have had to create it from scratch.
I remember the signs there and museum did tell that the great pyramids also had golden Pyramidions.
If it was capped in gold, dusk and dawn could have been very pretty.