How Big Is It?

Thanks to my students for posting questions about the Taj Mahal. We had a fun time "scavengering" for answers. Some of the questions warranted responses on the blogs, while some of them got us some strange looks from the tour guide. I'll tackle a few here and see if I can't answer more when I return.

1. How many stones were used? We weren't sure if you meant how many different types or physically how many rocks. To answer the first, the main stone is white marble, though black onyx was prevalent in the decorative inlay work as well as several other semi-precious stones. To answer the second, our tour guide Ramesh laughingly skirted it by saying, "It took 10,000 elephants" to carry the marble from Jaipur (about 165 miles away) to Agra. He rounded it off to about 1.4 million tons. That's a lot of stones. It took 20,000 craftsmen working 24 hours a day 22 years to complete it. So, yes, it is pretty impressive that Mr. Brooks was able to hold the entire structure in his hands (per the picture).

2. What would it cost if it were built today? We had fun doing some math on this one. This is how we broke it down. In the 17th century when it was built, a gram of gold was worth 5 rupies. Today, a gram of gold is 10,000 rupies. That's 2,000 times the value. The Taj Mahal cost 40 million rupies back then. The exchange rate is about 43 rupies to 1 US dollar. So if you do the math, that would mean that to build another Taj Mahal today, it would cost roughly 1.9 BILLION dollars.

You can see some more pictures from our trip if you visit the Team India blog at http://fcsindia.blogspot.com. When I return, I'll try and tackle some more questions such as "How old do you have to be to be a securiy guard there?" and "Do they have wifi?"