The Great Pyramid of Giza

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the most substantial ancient structure in the world - and
the most mysterious. According to prevailing archaeological theory - and there is
absolutely no evidence to confirm this idea - the three pyramids on the Giza plateau
are funerary structures of three kings of the fourth dynasty (2575 to 2465 BC). The
Great Pyramid, attributed to Khufu (Cheops) is on the right of the photograph, the
pyramid attributed to Khafra (Chephren) next to it, and that of Menkaura (Mycerinus)
the smallest of the three. The Great Pyramid was originally 481 feet, five inches tall
(146.7 meters) and measured 755 feet (230 meters) along its sides. Covering an area
of 13 acres, or 53,000 square meters, it is large enough to contain the European
cathedrals of Florence, Milan, St. Peters, Westminster Abbey and St. Paul's.
Constructed from approximately 2.5 million limestone blocks weighing on average
2.6 tons each, its total mass is more than 6.3 million tons (representing more building
material than is to be found in all the churches and cathedrals built in England since
the time of Christ). The Great Pyramid was originally encased in highly polished,
smooth white limestone and capped, according to legend, by a perfect pyramid of
black stone, probably onyx. Covering an area of 22 acres the white limestone casing
was removed by an Arab sultan in AD 1356 in order to build mosques and fortresses
in nearby Cairo. Herodotus, the great Greek geographer, visited in the fifth century
BC. Strabo, a Greco / Roman historian, came in the first century AD. Abdullah Al
Mamun, son of the Caliph of Baghdad, forced the first historically recorded entrance
in AD 820, and Napoleon was spellbound when he beheld the fantastic structure in
1798.

According to our present knowledge the Great Pyramid of Giza is mostly solid mass,
it’s only known interior spaces being the Descending passage (the original entrance),
the Ascending passage, the Grand Gallery, a mysterious grotto, an equally mysterious
subterranean chamber, and the two main chambers. These two chambers, called the
King's Chamber and the Queen's Chamber, have unfortunately retained the misleading
names given to them by early Arab visitors to the pyramid. It is an Arab custom to
bury men in tombs with a flat roof and women in rooms with a gabled roof; therefore,
in the Great Pyramid, the flat-roofed granite chamber became the King's Chamber,
while the gabled, limestone chamber below became the Queen's. Even those
archaeologists who still stubbornly subscribe to the tomb theory of the pyramid do not
believe that a queen or anyone else was ever buried in the limestone chamber. The
King's Chamber is 10.46 meters east to west by 5.23 meters north to south by 5.81
meters high (a series of measurements that precisely expresses the mathematical
proportion known as the Golden Mean, or Phi). It is built of enormous blocks of solid
red granite (weighing as much as 50 tons) that were transported by a still-unknown
means from the quarries of Aswan 600 miles to the south. Within the chamber, in the
western end, sits a large, lidless coffer (7.5 feet by 3.25 feet, with sides averaging 6.5
inches thick) of dark black granite estimated to weigh more than three tons. When the
Arab Abdullah Al Mamun finally forced his entry into the chamber in AD 820 - the
first entry since the chamber was sealed in some long ago time - he found the coffer
entirely empty. Egyptologists assume that this was the final resting place of Khufu,
yet not the slightest evidence suggests that a corpse had ever been in this coffer or
chamber. Nor have any embalming materials, any fragments of any article, or any
clues whatsoever been found in the chamber or anywhere else in the entire pyramid
that in any way indicates that Khufu (or anyone else) was ever buried there.
Furthermore, the passageway leading from the Grand Gallery to the main chamber is
too narrow to admit the movement of the coffer; the coffer must have been placed in
the chamber as the pyramid was being built, contrary to the normal burial custom
practiced by the Egyptians for three thousand years.

The foolishness of the common assumption, that the Giza plateau pyramids were built
and utilized by fourth Dynasty kings as funerary structures, cannot be overstated. It is
a matter of archaeological fact that none of the fourth Dynasty kings put their names
on the pyramids supposedly constructed in their times, yet from the fifth Dynasty
onwards, the other pyramids had hundreds of official inscriptions, leaving us no doubt
about which kings built them. The mathematical complexity, engineering
requirements, and sheer size of the Giza plateau pyramids represent an enormous,
seemingly impossible leap in abilities over the third dynasty buildings. Contemporary
Egyptological explanation cannot account for this leap, nor can they account for the
clear decline in mathematics, engineering and size of the constructions of the fifth
dynasty. Textbooks speak of "religious upheaval" and "civil wars," but there is no
evidence whatsoever of these having occurred.

The attribution to Khufu of the Great Pyramid of Giza is founded solely upon three
very circumstantial pieces of "evidence":

 The legends told to and reported by Herodotus who visited the pyramids in
443 BC
 The funerary complex near the Great Pyramid with inscriptions citing
Cheops/Khufu as the reigning pharaoh
 In the pyramid itself, on a granite slab above the ceiling of the main chamber,
some small, red ochre paint marks that have a slight resemblance to a
hieroglyphic symbol for the name of Khufu

Pharaoh Khufu himself left no indication whatsoever that he built the Great
Pyramid of Giza. He did, however, claim to have done repair work on the
structure. On the nearby "Inventory" Stele (dating to about 1500 BC, but showing
evidence of having been copied from a far older stele contemporaneous with the
fourth dynasty), Khufu tells of discoveries made while clearing away the sands
from the pyramid, of his dedication of the monument to Isis, and of his building of
the three small pyramids for himself, his wife, and his daughters next to the Great
Pyramid. Regarding the red ochre paint marks found within the pyramid, most
hieroglyph experts now believe these to be forgeries left by their "discoverer"
Richard Howard-Vyse, rather than being quarry inscriptions left by the original
builders. Howard-Vyse was under pressure to equal the discoveries of his rival,
the Italian explorer Caviglia, who had found inscriptions in some of the tombs
around the Great Pyramid. Modern researchers now suspect that, in the battle for
one-upmanship, Howard-Vyse sought to overshadow his rival and gain renewed
support for his own projects with a similar but more spectacular "discovery", by
forging quarry inscriptions inside the Great Pyramid. In other words, no firm
evidence in any way connects the pyramids of the Giza plateau to the dynastic
Egyptians.
Let us briefly consider a few matters concerning the construction of the Great
Pyramid of Giza; matters which clearly indicate that the builders of fourth dynasty
Egypt did not have the engineering capacity to erect the Great Pyramid (we do not
have the capacity even today) and that this structure was used for a purpose altogether
different from mere burial.

The Great Pyramid of Giza is constructed with approximately 2,300,000 limestone

and granite blocks. Weighing between 2.5 and 50 tons each, these stone blocks had to
be quarried from the earth. Herein lays our first unsolved problem. In the Cairo
museum one can see several examples of simple copper and bronze saws, which
Egyptologists claim are like those utilized in the cutting and shaping of the pyramid
blocks. These tools present a problem. On the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, copper
and bronze have a hardness of 3.5 to 4, while limestone has a hardness of 4 to 5 and
granite of 5 to 6. The known tools would only barely cut through limestone and would
be useless with granite. No archaeological examples of iron tools are found in early
dynastic Egypt, yet even if they were, the best steels today have a hardness of only 5.5
and thus are inefficient for cutting granite. Some years ago Sir Flinders Petrie, one of
the "fathers" of Egyptology proposed that the pyramid blocks had been cut with long
saw blades studded with diamonds or corundum. But this idea presents problems too.
The cutting of millions of blocks would require millions of rare and expensive
diamonds and corundum, which constantly wear out and require replacement. It has
been suggested that the limestone blocks were somehow cut with solutions of citric
acid or vinegar, yet these very slow-acting agents leave the surface of the limestone
pitted and rough, unlike the beautifully smooth surface found on the casing stones,
and these agents are completely useless for the cutting of granite. The truth is, we
have no idea how the blocks were actually quarried.

The unsolved problem of how the 2,300,000 very heavy blocks were transported to
the building site of the pyramid is even more mystifying. How were the blocks taken
to the nearly 500- foot height of the pyramid’s summit? A Danish civil engineer, P.
Garde-Hanson, has calculated that a ramp built all the way to the top of the pyramid
would require 17.5 million cubic meters of material, this representing more than seven
times the amount of material used for the pyramid itself, and a work force of 240,000
to build it in the time allotted by Cheops' reign. But if this enormous ramp were built,
it would then require a force of more than 300,000 laborers as much as eight years to
dismantle. Where would all the ramp material have been placed, since it is not to be
found anywhere near the Great Pyramid? And what of maneuvering the precisely
carved blocks into place without damaging the corners? Various lifting devices and
levers have been proposed by modern engineers (remember, no existing dynastic
records, paintings, or friezes give any clue to this mystery), but none solve the
problem of how the 50-ton blocks of the main chamber were lifted and positioned
using an area where only four to six workers could stand, when the strength of at least
2000 would be needed.

Next we come to perhaps the most extraordinary problem, that of the fashioning and
placement of the highly polished limestone casing stones that covered the entire
pyramid. The finished pyramid contained approximately 115,000 of these stones, each
weighing ten tons or more. These stones were dressed on all six of their sides, not just
the side exposed to the visible surface, to tolerances of .01 inch. They are set together
so closely that a thin razor blade cannot be inserted between the stones. Egyptologist
Petrie expressed his astonishment of this feat by writing, "Merely to place such stones
in exact contact would be careful work, but to do so with cement in the joint seems
almost impossible; it is to be compared to the finest opticians' work on the scale of
acres." Herodotus, visiting in the fifth century BC, reported that inscriptions of
strange characters were to be found on the pyramid's casing stones. In AD 1179 the
Arab historian Abd el Latif recorded that these inscriptions were so numerous that
they could have filled "more than ten thousand written pages." William of Baldensal,
a European visitor of the early fourteenth century, tells how the stones were covered
with strange symbols arranged in careful rows. Sadly, in 1356, following an
earthquake that leveled Cairo, the Arabs robbed the pyramid of its beautiful casing of
stones to rebuild mosques and fortresses in the city. As the stones were cut into
smaller pieces and reshaped, all traces of the ancient inscriptions were removed from
them. A great library of ageless wisdom was forever lost.

Still further evidence that the dynastic Egyptians did not construct the Great Pyramid
of Giza may be found in sediments surrounding the base of the monument, in legends
regarding watermarks on the stones halfway up its sides, and in salt incrustations
found within. Silt sediments rising to fourteen feet around the base of the pyramid
contain many seashells and fossils that have been radiocarbon-dated to be nearly
twelve thousand years old. These sediments could have been deposited in such great
quantities only by major sea flooding, an event the dynastic Egyptians could never
have recorded because they were not living in the area until eight thousand years after
the flood. This evidence alone suggests that the three main Giza pyramids are at least
twelve thousand years old. In support of this ancient flood scenario, mysterious
legends and records tell of watermarks that were clearly visible on the limestone
casing stones of the Great Pyramid before those stones were removed by the Arabs.
These watermarks were halfway up the sides of the pyramid, or about 400 feet above
the present level of the Nile River. Further, when the Great Pyramid was first opened,
incrustations of salt an inch thick were found inside. While much of this salt is known
to be natural exudation from the stones of the pyramid, chemical analysis has shown
that some of the salt has a mineral content consistent with salt from the sea. These salt
incrustations, found at a height corresponding to the water level marks left on the
exterior, are further evidence that at some time in the distant past the pyramid was
submerged halfway up its height.

Let us turn our attention briefly to the matter of the purpose or multiple purposes of
the Great Pyramid, drawing for our discussion on both the exact measurements made
by modern scientists and the mythic legends of the remote past. A few facts:

 The sides of the pyramid are lined up almost exactly with the cardinal points
of the compass. The accuracy of this alignment is extraordinary, with an
average discrepancy of only about three minutes of arc in any direction or a
variation of less than 0.06 percent.
 The Great Pyramid functioned as an enormous sundial. Its shadow to the
north, and its reflected sunlight to the south, accurately marked the annual
dates of both the solstices and the equinoxes.
 The basic dimensions of the Great Pyramid incorporate measurements from
which the earth's size and shape can be calculated. The pyramid is a scale
model of the hemisphere, incorporating the geographical degrees of latitude
and longitude. The latitude and longitude lines that intersect at the Great
 Pyramid (30 degrees north and 31 degrees east) cross more of the earth's land
surface than any other lines, thus the pyramid is located at the center of the
land mass of the earth (the pyramid is built on the closest suitable site to this
intersection). The original perimeter of the pyramid equals exactly one-half
minute of latitude at the equator, indicating that its builders measured the earth
with extreme precision and recorded this information in the dimensions of the
structure. Altogether these measurements show that the builders knew the
exact dimensions of the planet as precisely as they have been recently
determined by satellite surveys.
 The foundation of the Great Pyramid is amazingly level. No corner of its base
is more than one-half inch higher or lower than the others. Considering that
the pyramid's base covers more than thirteen acres, this near-perfect leveling
far exceeds even the finest architectural standards of the present day.
 Measurements throughout the pyramid show that its constructors knew of the
proportions of pi (3.14...), phi or the Golden Mean (1.618), and the
"Pythagorean" triangles thousands of years before Pythagoras, the so-called
father of geometry, lived.
 Measurements show that the builders knew the precise spherical shape and
size of the earth and had accurately charted such complex astronomical events
as the precession of the equinoxes and the lunar standstill dates. The minute
discrepancies of the lengths of the base of the pyramid (several inches over the
230 meter length of its base) reveal not an error on the part of the builders but
an ingenious means of incorporating into the pyramid the "discrepancies" of
the earth itself, in this case the flattening of the earth's globe at the poles.
 Shafts leading upward from the two main chambers, previously thought to be
air shafts for ventilation, have been shown to have another possible purpose. A
miniature electronic robot mechanically crawled sixty-five meters up the
shafts and its findings suggested that the south and north shafts in the Kings
Chamber are pointed to Al Nitak (Zeta Orionis) and Alpha Draconis
respectively, while the south and north shafts of the Queens Chamber point to
Sirius and Beta Ursa Minor. The scientists conducting this research believe
that the layout of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau precisely mirror the
position of the three main stars in the Orion constellation. (While crawling
along one of the shafts in the Queens chamber, the robot's cameras
photographed a previously unknown closed door that may lead to some hidden
chamber.) Readers interested in these new findings should consult The Orion
Mystery by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert.

What does all this mean? Why did the ancient builders of the Giza pyramids,
whoever they may have been, encode so much precise mathematical, geographic,
and astronomical information into their structures? What was the purpose of the
Great Pyramid? While no authoritative answer can presently be given to this
question, two intriguing matters suggest a direction for further inquiry and
research. The first has to do with the persistent legends that the Great Pyramid of
Giza, and especially the main chamber, was used as some sort of sacred initiation
center. According to one legend, students who had first undergone long years of
preparation, meditation and metaphysical instruction in an esoteric school (the
mythic "Hall of Records" hidden deep beneath the desert sands somewhere near
the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx) were placed in the granite coffer of the main
chamber and left alone throughout an entire night. The coffer was the focal point
of the energies gathered, concentrated, aimed, and directed at the main chamber
by virtue of the precise mathematical location, alignment, and construction of the
pyramid. These energies, considered to be especially potent at certain precisely
calculated periods when the earth was in a particular geometric alignment with
solar, lunar, and stellar objects, were conducive to the awakening, stimulation, and
acceleration of spiritual consciousness in the suitably prepared adept. While it is
now nearly impossible to spend an evening alone in the coffer of the main
chamber, it is interesting to read the reports of those persons who have done so in
the past. Mention will be made of experiences both terribly frightening (perhaps
because of the lack of any appropriate training on the part of the experimenter)
and also deeply peaceful, even spiritually illuminating. Napoleon himself spent a
night alone in the chamber. Emerging pale and dazed, he would not speak of his
powerful experiences, only saying, "You would not believe me if I told you."

A second matter needing further inquiry from the scientific community studying
the Great Pyramid of Giza - and one that might help explain the subject just
discussed - concerns the matter of unexplained energetic anomalies frequently
noticed and recorded in the main chamber. In the 1920s, a Frenchman named
Antoine Bovis made the surprising discovery that, despite the heat and high
humidity of the main chamber, the dead bodies of animals left in the chamber did
not decay but completely dehydrated. Thinking that there might be some
relationship between this phenomena and the position of the main chamber in the
pyramid, Bovis constructed a small-scale model of the pyramid, oriented it to the
same direction as the Great Pyramid, and placed the body of a dead cat at the
approximate level of the main chamber. The result was the same. As he had
observed in the Great Pyramid, the cat's body did not decay. In the 1960s,
researchers in Czechoslovakia and the U.S., conducting limited studies of the
geometry of the pyramid, repeated this experiment with the same results. They
also found that the form of the pyramid somehow mysteriously kept foods
preserved without spoiling, sharpened dull razor blades, induced plants to
germinate and grow more quickly, and hastened the healing of animals' wounds.
Other scientists, in consideration of the high quartz content of the granite blocks in
the main chamber and the incredible pressures those blocks are subjected to,
theorized that the main chamber may have been the focal point of a powerful
piezoelectric field; magnetometer measurements inside the chamber indeed
showed higher levels than the normal background geomagnetic field.

Although much research remains to be done in these areas, legend, archaeology,

mathematics, and earth sciences seem to indicate that the Great Pyramid was a
monumental device for gathering, amplifying, and focusing a mysterious energy
field for the spiritual benefit of human beings. We do not know exactly how the
pyramid and its main chamber were used, and the geometric structure of the
pyramid has been subtly altered by the removal of the casing stones and the cap-
stone. None-the-less, the Great Pyramid of the Giza plateau still emanates great
power as a transformational power place. It has done so for uncounted thousands
of years and seems destined to continue for ages to come.