Would it have made more sense for them to claim it was a secret mixture of stuff that destroys concrete? If the engineers were obligated to check the structure because they didn’t know what was sprayed on it, that would have delayed construction, even if the liquid was pretty benign.

Although they are both stories based on historical events that have been embellished, the Trojan war and the Hebrews leaving Egypt very well could have been happening at the same time (around 1180 BCE)

Shatters and hits anyone trying to shoot it with shrapnel, sounds like a win to me.