White House hopeful Donald Trump on Thursday poked fun at GOP presidential rival Ben Carson for his theory that the Egyptian pyramids were used to store grain, not serve as tombs for pharaohs.
{mosads}”I think I’ll have to put that into my repertoire when I talk about Ben,” the real estate tycoon said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“That was a strange … that was a strange deal,” Trump added.
BuzzFeed on Wednesday published a video of Carson’s 1998 commencement address at Andrews University, which was founded by Sevenths-day Adventists, during which he said he believed the biblical figure Joseph built the pyramids.
“My own personal theory is that Joseph built the pyramids in order to store grain,” Carson said during the speech.
“Now all the archeologists think that they were made for the pharaohs’ graves. But you know, it would have to be something awfully big if 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,” he added.
Asked by CBS News on Wednesday, Carson, who is neck and neck with Trump in national polls for the Republican presidential nomination, said, “It’s still my belief, yes.
“The pyramids were made in a way where they had hermetically sealed compartments,” Carson said. “You would need that if you were trying to preserve grain over a long period of time.”
CBS noted that Carson had in mind the seven years of plenty in Egypt referenced in the Bible, when “Joseph stored up grain in great abundance” and fed Egyptians and others during famine.