Ben Carson: The Pyramids Weren’t Tombs, They Were Built By Biblical Joseph To Store Grain

According to Ben Carson, Egypt’s pyramids were built by the biblical Joseph to store grain. The Washington Post reports:

On Wednesday, a 17-year-old video surfaced of Ben Carson claiming that the Old Testament figure Joseph built the Egyptian pyramids to store food. “My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids to store grain,” Carson said in a 1998 commencement speech at Andrews University, unearthed by BuzzFeed. “Now all the archaeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But, you know, it would have to be something awfully big — when you stop and think about it, and I don’t think it’d just disappear over the course of time — to store that much grain.” Social media quickly overflowed with scorn. Critics — and not just archaeologists — pointed to well-documented evidence that the structures were built as tombs, not granaries. Photos of pyramid burial vaults circulated on Twitter. Soon, Carson’s comments had become a meme with references to the food pyramid and “Stargate.”

More from the Guardian:

Asked on Wednesday if he still held these views, Carson told CBS News: “It’s still my belief, yes.” Speaking to MSNBC’s Morning Joe on Thursday, rival Republican candidate Donald Trump said: “He’s informed me about the pyramids. I think I’ll have to put that in my repertoire about Ben. That was a strange deal.” In his 1998 address, Carson said: “And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons.“And various of scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how, you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you’.” In the old testament book of Genesis, Joseph, one of the 12 sons of Jacob, was said to have “stored up grain in great abundance like the sand of the sea, until he stopped measuring it, for it was beyond measure”. After seven years of plenty, the story in Genesis says, Egypt suffered seven years of famine, during which Joseph was able to feed the people with the grain he had stored.

I’ll meet you by the third pyramid.