Nov. 1997. Last revised: Nov. 2023
1. Introduction
2. Scientific knowledge and pyramidology
3. Construction and technology
4. The ‘pyramid age’
5. Forged inscriptions?
6. Khufu: an alternative view
7. Carbon-dating
8. Archeoastronomy
9. Religion and rebirth
10. Temple of initiation
11. The Great Sphinx
12. Megalithic monuments
13. Ancient alignments
14. New discoveries
15. Our unfinished evolution
Appendices
1. Stargazing and astronomical calculations
2. Calculation results
3. An engineer’s perspective
‘Man fears time – time fears the pyramids.’ (Egyptian proverb)
On the rocky plateau of Giza, 10 miles southwest of the centre of Cairo, stands the Great Pyramid, ‘the
most majestic and most mysterious monument ever erected by the hand of man’.1 The Great
Pyramid is the largest stone building on earth, and the last surviving wonder of the ancient world. Its
base covers 13.1 acres, and it is composed of around 2.3 million blocks of limestone,
weighing an average of 2.5 tons apiece, which rise in 203 layers to the height of a 40-storey building.
The
pyramid was originally covered with 21 acres of polished, marble-like casing stones, which, shining
resplendently beneath the sun’s rays, earned for it the ancient title The Light.
The pyramid is an unrivalled feat of engineering and craftsmanship. It is aligned with the four cardinal points more accurately than any contemporary structure, including the Meridian Building at Greenwich Observatory in London. In 1880 W.M. Flinders Petrie conducted a detailed survey of the Giza pyramids. He determined that the Great Pyramid is oriented about 4 arcminutes west of true north, and considered this to be at least partly due to a slight shift in the position of the north geographic pole since it was built.2 He also found that the pyramid’s 350-foot-long descending passage deviates from being perfectly straight by less than 1/4 inch from side to side and 3/10 inch up and down – comparable with the best laser-controlled drilling being done today. In the 150-foot-long section of the passage built through the core masonry, the error is only 1/50 inch, ‘an amazingly minute amount’.3
The limestone casing stones, weighing up to 15 tons, are so perfectly shaped and squared that the mortar-filled joint between them is just 1/50 inch (0.5 mm) – the thickness of a human nail. This means that ‘the mean variation of the cutting of the stone from a straight line and from a true square is but 0.01 of an inch on a length of 75 inches up the face’.4 Petrie described such phenomenal precision as ‘equal to opticians’ work of the present day, but on a scale of acres’,5 and added: ‘To merely place such stones in exact contact at the sides would be careful work; but to do so with cement in the joint seems almost impossible.’6 Moreover, the cement is so strong that the joint is stronger than the limestone itself. The casing stones show no tool marks and the corners were not even slightly chipped.
Remaining casing stones on the north side of the Great Pyramid.
The limestone pavement on which the casing stones stood was levelled to within 0.8 inch (20 mm) over the entire base of the pyramid – comparable to the accuracy achievable with modern construction methods and laser levelling. On the east side of the pyramid there is a basalt pavement, levelled with astonishing precision, on which a temple once stood. Petrie describes it as ‘a magnificent work’.7
The granite coffer in the King’s Chamber is cut out of a solid block of hard red granite to an accuracy of within 0.002 inch, its external volume being exactly twice its internal volume. Engineer and master craftsman Christopher Dunn rejects the theory that it was cut and hollowed using copper saws set with diamond cutting points, because when pressure was applied, the diamonds would have worked their way into the much softer copper, leaving the granite virtually unscathed. In his opinion, the evidence shows that the Egyptians possessed ultra-modern machine tools, including tubular drills that could cut granite with a feed rate 500 times greater than that of modern diamond drills.8
The inner and outer lines indicate the Great Pyramid’s present and original profiles. 1 - Original entrance. 2 - Robbers’ tunnel (tourist entrance). 3 & 4 - Descending passage. 5 - Subterranean Chamber. 6 - Ascending passage. 7 - Queen’s Chamber & its ‘airshafts’. 8 - Horizontal passage. 9 - Grand Gallery. 10 - King’s Chamber & its airshafts. 11 - Well shaft & grotto. Granite rock (red) is used in the King’s Chamber, and three granite plugs block the bottom of the ascending passage. The pyramid is built over a mound of rock, symbolizing the sacred primeval mound which, in Egyptian mythology, first emerged from the waters of chaos at the dawn of creation.
References
The Great Pyramid embodies an advanced knowledge of geometry, geodesy (the
science of earth measurement), and astronomy. It incorporates not only the value of pi (π), the ratio of
the
circumference of a circle to its diameter, but also the golden section, phi (φ), found in the growth patterns
of
living things.1 For example, the angle of slope of the pyramid’s outer casing was 51.85°, the
tangent of which is equal to 4/π, and the cosine to the value of the golden section. The perimeter of the pyramid’s square base is the same length as the circumference of a
circle
with a radius equal to its height; the pyramid
therefore squares the circle – symbolizing the fusion of our higher and lower selves.
The granite-built King’s Chamber contains a Pythagorean 3:4:5 triangle.2
The Great Pyramid is located at the centre of the earth’s landmass: the lines of latitude and longitude on which it stands pass through more land and less water than any others. The line of longitude divides the earth into two halves, each containing the same area of land and water. It also cuts the Nile Delta into two equal portions: diagonals drawn through the pyramid, to the northwest and northeast, completely enclose the delta.
The Great Pyramid represents the earth’s northern hemisphere on a scale of 1:43,200:3
• its perimeter equals half a minute (1/43,200 of 360°) of latitude at the equator;
• the perimeter of the four corner sockets (shallow holes cut into the bedrock just outside the actual corners of the pyramid) equals half a minute of equatorial longitude (1/43,200 of the earth’s equatorial circumference);
• its height, including the platform on which it stands, equals 1/43,200 of the earth’s polar radius.
It is only since the carrying out of satellite surveys from space, beginning in the 1970s, that scientists have obtained measurements of the earth as accurate as those contained in the Great Pyramid. Its dimensions imply that, at the time of construction, the earth’s polar radius was 97.4 metres shorter than today, and its equatorial radius was 408 metres longer. This is consistent with the fact that the earth’s spin velocity is gradually slowing, thereby reducing the size of the equatorial bulge.
In addition to the royal or ‘profane’ cubit of about 20.62 inches, some researchers contend that the pyramid’s builders used a sacred cubit of 25.0265 inches, equal to one ten-millionth of the earth's polar radius. The sacred cubit is divided into 25 pyramid inches, which means that one pyramid inch is 1/25,000,000th of the polar radius. The core masonry of each base side of the pyramid is not a straight line but is set back about 36 inches (0.92 m) along its centre line. This ‘hollowing’ or concavity allows the length of the sides to be measured in different ways, giving values of 365.242, 365.256 and 365.259 sacred cubits4 – the exact length in days of the earth’s solar, sidereal and anomalistic years as computed by modern science.5
The hollowing of the sides means that if lines are drawn at right angles to the core masonry at the two corners of any side, they will meet at a point just over 7.4 miles from the pyramid’s centre, a distance equal to 1/25,000,000 of the diameter of the earth’s orbit; the pyramid’s value for the earth’s average distance from the sun is 92,992,270 miles, compared with 92,955,807 miles according to modern science.
Isaac Newton was the first person to suggest that, in addition to the royal cubit, a slightly larger sacred cubit was used as well. In the 19th century this idea was taken up by John Taylor and the Astronomer Royal of Scotland, Piazzi Smyth. They also founded the ‘biblical’ school of pyramidology; taking one pyramid inch to equal one solar year, they argued that the dimensions and arrangement of the pyramid’s passages and chambers embodied a historical and prophetic record of biblical events from Adam and Eve to the Second Coming! After conducting his meticulous survey at Giza in 1880, Petrie declared that there was no evidence for the use of a sacred cubit – but he seems to have fallen prey to bias since his figures support it.6
The biblical pyramidologists claim that the distance in pyramid inches along the descending passage to the start of the ascending passage corresponds to 1453 BCE, the alleged date of the exodus of the Israelites from Egypt, while the beginning of the Grand Gallery corresponds to 33 CE, the date of the supposed crucifixion of Christ, and the end of the gallery corresponds to 1914, the outbreak of the First World War. The distances are measured from two scored lines cut into the side walls of the descending passage (presumably by the builders), about 40 feet from the entrance. These lines are said to represent a start date of 2141 BCE, because the descending passage was then allegedly pointing to the polestar, Thuban (Alpha Draconis). However, if we calculate this alignment using the measured angle of the descending passage (as opposed to the theoretical, lower angle preferred by the pyramidologists), the passage was actually aligned with Thuban in 2175 BCE and 3415 BCE – which wrecks the entire chronology.
In the 1920s, D. Davidson and H. Aldersmith claimed that the pyramid contained the prophecy that the Second Coming would happen in 1953. In the 1950s Adam Rutherford claimed that it would happen in 1979. In the 1980s Peter Lemesurier calculated that Christ will return to earth in 2039, that the Millennium of spiritual perfection will commence in the summer of 2989, and that man will ‘advance into timeless dimensions of as-yet unrealised possibilities’ in 3989!7 These outlandish theories do not invalidate everything that has been written about the pyramid’s esoteric features.
The orthodox theory that the Great Pyramid was built to serve as a grandiose tomb for a megalomaniac pharaoh, King Khufu, who lived about 4600 years ago, is also outlandish. It is often claimed that the architects kept changing their minds. First, they were planning to bury Khufu in the Subterranean Chamber. But long before it was completed, they decided to build an upper burial chamber (the Queen’s Chamber). While work was in progress, they changed their minds again, leaving the floor of that chamber unfinished, yet they continued to build the ‘airshafts’ ascending from that chamber. They then decided to build an even higher burial chamber (the King’s Chamber) and the stunning Grand Gallery. But the floor of the King’s Chamber is also ‘unfinished’.
The tomb theory is little better than the theory that arose in the 4th century claiming that the pyramids were built as granaries by the biblical Joseph to store the pharaoh’s grain in years of plenty – a theory that was still being endorsed in the 15th century.8 Or Chris Dunn’s more recent proposal that the Great Pyramid was a large acoustical power plant, engineered to create a harmonic resonance that converted earth’s vibrational energy into microwave energy, using hydrogen produced in the Queen’s Chamber, and Helmholtz resonators housed in the Grand Gallery.9 He claims that the King’s Chamber shafts (measuring no more than 9 by 9 inches) must originally have been lined with metal, but this is not the case today, and he fails to explain how it could have been removed.
The alleged Giza power plant.
References
The average base length of the Great Pyramid is 230.4 metres (756 feet), its original height was 146.6 metres (481 feet), it has a volume of 2.6 million cubic metres, and it weighs about 6 million tonnes. The Encyclopaedia Britannica calls it ‘a masterpiece of technical skill and engineering ability’, ‘the most colossal single building ever erected on the planet’.1 It also admits that ‘The question of how the pyramids were built has not received a wholly satisfactory answer.’2
The Great Pyramid is said to consist mainly of nummulitic limestone, composed of the fossils of prehistoric shell creatures, quarried at Giza. The higher-quality limestone for the 115,000 casing stones is believed to have been transported over the Nile from the Tura quarries 6 miles southeast of the Giza Plateau, while granite was transported from Aswan, 425 miles to the south. The granite blocks used in the floor and walls of the King’s Chamber weigh an average of 30 tons, while 43 granite monoliths, weighing around 70 tons each, form the ceilings of the chamber and the ‘relieving chambers’ above it.
The mainstream belief is that the pyramid was built in 20 to 30 years by 20,000 to 40,000 labourers and skilled craftsmen. This would require laying one stone block every two or three minutes of daylight. It was supposedly built using simple tools such as copper chisels, saws and drills, wooden mallets, stone hammers, dolerite pounders, levers, sleds, rollers, ropes, and ramps. Such methods are certainly sufficient to build a pyramid. The question is whether such methods alone are sufficient to build the Great Pyramid (and several other giant Egyptian pyramids). As construction engineer Robert Bauval says, ‘today we would be hard-pressed to match this achievement without the use of mechanized cranes, special transport vehicles, and high-precision optical surveying instruments’.2
The builders allegedly had no pulleys, wheels, or iron tools. They supposedly didn’t even have bronze tools, though Petrie disagreed. In 1837 Col. Howard Vyse did in fact find a fragment of sheet iron (23.5 cm long) in the exterior masonry of the south air channel of the King’s Chamber; its surface bore traces of gold, indicating that it might have been gold-plated.4 Later tests revealed that the iron is not meteoric iron as the nickel content is too low, and that it was smelted at 1000 to 1100°C.5 The official consensus is that the iron possessed by the Egyptians in Old Kingdom times (2700-2200 BCE) was obtained from meteorites, rather than by smelting, and that the Egyptians did not develop hard bronze tools until at least 800 years after the Great Pyramid was supposedly built. Another suggestion is that ‘the Egyptians had mastered a process, now lost, of giving copper a very high temper’.6
Petrie suggests that the immaculate casing stones were dressed by ‘very fine picking or adzing’, and that ‘true planes smeared with ochre’ were used to test for straightness. He argues that the tools used for cutting granite included ‘bronze saws over eight feet long, set with jewels, tubular drills, similarly set with jewels, and circular saws’.7 No such tools have ever been found, but nor have any copper chisels ever been found at Giza. Petrie expressed surprise at the great pressure – 1 to 2 tons – that must have been applied to drill granite or diorite. He also saw clear evidence that some artifacts had been made with a lathe, refuting the claim that the Egyptians were too primitive to have invented the wheel.
Nowadays, it is generally believed that the Egyptians cut granite, basalt and diorite by using copper saws and drills in conjunction with abrasives such as quartz or emery, in powdered or slurry form. Chris Dunn objects that this method would be feasible only for removing a small amount of material, and it fails to explain the precision and geometry of various artifacts and the marks (including minor defects) left by the cutting tool.8 The evidence suggests that many statues and other artifacts were produced by a powered machine that guides the tool along a predetermined path. Today, computer numerical control (CNC) machining processes would be used.
Examination of a precision-machined granite block at Abu Rawash (or Roash) led Dunn to conclude that the cuts must have been made by a huge circular saw, 37 feet in diameter. He suggests that the deep trench at that pyramid site was dug to house this machine (such pits are usually labelled boat pits, because a boat was found in one of the seven pits on the Giza Plateau). The ancient Egyptians were clearly capable of feats of craftsmanship that cannot be achieved with the tools so far found in the archaeological record. Many artisans and engineers who have inspected the artifacts confirm this, but conventional Egyptologists are not interested.
Concave surface of a granite block at Abu Rawash.
Striations made by the device that cut the stone.9
Granite box at Memphis, made with crude stone pounders.
Chris
Dunn in a huge granite box in the Serapeum, Saqqara.
The inside surfaces are flat and square to within a fraction of a human hair.10
After being quarried, stone blocks are believed to have been hauled to the construction site either on sledges (possibly on tracks) or along the ground, using lubricants such as water, potatoes or Nile mud. Then they could have been dragged up ramps. If a single, straight, external ramp was used, it would need to be about a mile long to reach the top of the Great Pyramid, and contain at least as much material as the pyramid itself. A variety of zigzag and spiral ramps, or straight ramps (and counterramps) using the incomplete part of the structure have also been proposed.
Another theory is that the blocks were lifted with levers, either incrementally, by repeatedly raising alternating sides a few inches, and inserting wood or stone beneath them, or by using larger levering devices to raise a block a whole course in one go. The laying of the final core and casing blocks in the space occupied by the machine would, however, pose a problem. It has also been suggested that counterweights running on wooden frames were used to help lift the heaviest blocks, and that this is the purpose of the otherwise ‘pointless’ Grand Gallery. There are dozens of competing theories,11 but most problems have supposedly been solved – at least on paper.
Scale models have also been used to demonstrate how easy it is to build a pyramid.12
In 1991, a pyramid-building experiment was conducted for a NOVA TV documentary.13 The pyramid was 9 metres wide and 6 metres high, and was made of 186 stones weighing an average of 0.7 tons each. 12 men carved the stones, and the structure was erected by 44 men. The back of the pyramid was left unfinished. To speed things up, they used iron hammers, chisels and levers, rather than tools made of wood, stone and copper, together with a mechanical winch with an iron cable to haul the stones out of the quarry, and a forklift truck to help lift the blocks during construction – but the documentary failed to mention any of this. Only a couple of blocks weighing less than half a ton were manipulated by hand. Efforts to level a casing stone with copper chisels and stone tools failed. The casing stones had broken corners and the joints between them had gaps of 0.5 to 1 cm. The organizers felt that they could have emulated the workmanship seen in the Great Pyramid with a bit more practice!
How not to build a great pyramid – NOVA’s farcical attempt.
Gaps between the NOVA pyramid casing stones.
A joint in the Great Pyramid’s severely weathered casing.
It is important to understand that not every feature of the Great Pyramid displays the highest craftmanship. The core masonry is often roughly shaped, and gaps are filled with rubble and mortar, though the backing stones behind the casing were precisely cut and levelled. Petrie remarks that the Subterranean Chamber is ‘wholly unfinished’, due to a ‘change of plan’.14 He also says that the ‘rough and coarse workmanship’ in the antechamber to the King’s Chamber is ‘astonishing, in comparison with the exquisite masonry of the casing and entrance of the Pyramid’, and ‘shows how badly pyramid masons could work’.15 He overlooks the possibility that certain features were left rough and unfinished intentionally, for symbolic reasons (see sections 10 and 15 below).
In the Second Pyramid, which stands next to the Great Pyramid, there is a granite portcullis weighing nearly 2 tons in a narrow passageway. Petrie remarks: ‘The skill required to turn over and lift such a block, in such a confined space, is far more striking than the moving of much larger masses in the open air, where any number of men could work on them.’ He estimates that 40 to 60 men would be required to lift it, but the space available ‘would not allow of more than a tenth of that number working at it; and this proves that some very efficient method was used for wielding such masses, quite apart from mere abundance of manual force’.16
The weight of the blocks in the first 17 tiers of the Great Pyramid decreases from about 6 tonnes to 2 tonnes, except for the massive cornerstones. Beyond the 17th tier, blocks again weigh over 2 tonnes, even reaching 15 to 20 tons in places, showing that their dimensions do not diminish regularly as we go up the pyramid. The lifting of blocks weighing up to 70 tonnes in the Great Pyramid and up to 200 tonnes or more in neighbouring megalithic temples has led to speculation about the use of some form of levitation. There are certainly worldwide legends of levitation being used to move stone blocks, often involving the use of sound. There are also eyewitness reports of acoustic levitation being used by American inventor John Keely in the late 19th century, and by Tibetan monks and American Edward Leedskalnin in the early 20th century.17
It has been proposed that some of the limestone blocks are man-made stone – a type of concrete virtually indistinguishable from natural stone. This theory has been developed mainly by chemist Joseph Davidovits, founder of the French Geopolymer Institute.18 He argues that soft limestone was soaked in water to turn it into a slurry and then mixed with ingredients such as kaolin clay, natron salt and lime, which acted as a geopolymer binder. This mixture was then poured and compacted into moulds, where it hardened into synthetic stone blocks, 93-97% of whose weight consisted of natural limestone. This method cannot be used to make granite or basalt. Davidovits actually denies that the Egyptians had the tools to cut, carve and dress granite; they supposedly obtained smooth flat surfaces by skilfully splitting granite boulders (with fire), but he does not explain how they made curved surfaces.
Precision-machined granite cornice block next to ‘Khafre’s’ Valley Temple.
Neither Petrie nor Davidovits can explain this, but Dunn can.19
The presence of nummulite fossil shells in limestone blocks does not automatically mean that they are natural. When limestone is disaggregated, the shells remain intact. In natural limestone, however, fossil shells tend to lie flat, whereas in reaggregated limestone they are randomly oriented. Synthetic limestone blocks show varying densities, with the topmost layer being the least dense. They sometimes contain air bubbles and organic fibres as well. Samples of pyramid blocks examined under an optical microscope can look like natural rock; it is only under an electron microscope or during X-ray analysis that evidence of synthetic constituents may emerge.
The hieroglyph for ‘build’.
Officially described as ‘a man pounding in a mortar [= vessel]’.
Davidovits describes it as ‘a worker packing material in a mould’.
The Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century BCE, reported that the casing stones of the Great Pyramid bore an inscription indicating that 1600 talents of silver were spent on radishes, onions and garlic for the workmen.20 H.P. Blavatsky suggested that this statement had a symbolic meaning.21 According to Davidovits, the Famine Stela refers to the use of minerals with the odour of radish, onion and garlic, which could be used to produce a binder for making artificial stone.22 The stela relates to a famine followed by exceptional floods, around 200 BCE, but Davidovits says it could be called the ‘alchemical stela of Khnum’ (the divine potter and oldest creator god), since about a quarter of it describes rocks and minerals and their processing. Also of interest is a report of a visit to Cairo by a group of Maoris in 1915-16. Some of them were ‘greatly excited about the Pyramids, claiming that there were references to them in their sacred legends, and alleging that the blocks were weathered concrete, not quarried slabs’.23
The artificial stone theory is highly controversial. The former head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, dismissed the hypothesis as ‘plain stupid, idiotic and insulting’, but several independent studies support it. For example, a 2006 study by materials engineer Michel Barsoum and his team using electron microscopy found that samples of pyramid casing stones had mineral ratios that did not exist in any known limestone sources, and that portions of the samples showed a disorganized structure unlike that of natural limestone.24 Barsoum thinks that reconstituted limestone was used mainly for outer casing stones and backing stones, for lining internal passages and chambers, and for the highest courses of the pyramid, with the core masonry consisting mostly of carved natural stone. Two further studies indicating that some pyramid blocks at Giza and Dahshur are artificial have been published, using nuclear magnetic resonance and palaeomagnetic techniques.25
Other scientists deny that any pyramid stones have been convincingly shown to be artificial. Dipayan Jana examined a sample of a pyramid casing stone that Davidovits considered to be artificial (though Davidovits casts doubt on whether it was in fact the same sample)26 and found no major differences with samples of natural Tura limestone; he considered an anomaly in the pyramid sample to be better explained by external contamination. He also found that pyramid and natural limestone samples showed distinct differences from synthetic limestone produced by Davidovits. Casing stone samples present no evidence of an alkali or alumina-based binder, such as Davidovits himself uses, but the latter admits that he does not know the precise recipe used by the pyramid builders.27
Davidovits recognizes that monuments of the New Kingdom (18th to 20th dynasties) are built of carved stone, but argues that all early Egyptian pyramids were built with cast stone, and that this technique was also used in other ancient structures around the world, such as at Tiwanaku and Puma Punku in Bolivia.28 Ancient builders could, of course, have used a variety of techniques. Furthermore, Davidovits points out that, given the shape of the pyramid casing stones, they would have to be cast upside down or on their side.29 He links this to the fact that at the Red Pyramid of Dashur inscriptions are always found on the bottom of the casing blocks. So even if the casing stones were made at the level of the pyramid where they were needed, once the mould was removed they would still have had to be turned over and manoeuvred into position – without so much as a chip. In addition, wooden moulds could not be made to the accuracy displayed by Great Pyramid casing stones (see appendix 3).
References
The orthodox view of Egypt’s ‘pyramid age’ is highly speculative and raises more questions than it answers. In little more than a century, simple rectangular mud-brick tombs called mastabas supposedly evolved into stepped pyramids and finally into giant smooth-faced pyramids built of hewn limestone and granite blocks. As Robert Bauval says, this theory ‘is very unlikely if not impossible’.1
The pyramid age is supposed to have begun fairly abruptly with the construction of the Step Pyramid at Saqqara by King Djoser, the second pharaoh of the third dynasty, around 2630 BCE. This structure began as a stone mastaba, over which a four-tier step pyramid was built, which was later enlarged into a six-tier pyramid. Each block weighed only several dozen kilograms. Below the pyramid was a 5.7-km-long maze of shafts, tunnels, chambers, galleries and magazines. The pyramid was part of a town-sized complex of buildings and courtyards, within 10.5-metre-tall enclosure walls; its scale and splendour far surpassed anything that had gone before.
Step Pyramid at Saqqara. Base: 121 × 109 m.
For some unexplained reason, the pyramids attributed to later pharaohs of the third dynasty were inferior to Djoser’s and showed little sign of architectural advance. They include the Buried Pyramid at Saqqara, an unfinished step pyramid constructed around 2645 BCE for Sekhemkhet, the second pharaoh of the third dynasty, and the Layer Pyramid at Zawyet El Aryan, a ruined step pyramid possibly built for Khaba, 5 miles southwest of Giza.
The first smooth-faced pyramid is said to be that at Meidum, 45 miles south of Cairo. It was constructed in three stages: first a step pyramid was built, probably with seven steps; over this a second step pyramid was built, possibly with eight steps; finally, the whole structure was covered with a smooth mantle, turning it into a true pyramid. It is believed to have been completed by Sneferu, the first king of the fourth dynasty. Today it is heavily ruined, and either collapsed in ancient times or was destroyed by being used as a quarry. Sneferu is also thought to have built the two giant pyramids at Dahshur, 17 miles south of Giza: the Bent Pyramid and the Red Pyramid. The impressive Meidum and Dahshur pyramids all contain chambers with corbelled roofs above ground level, though not on the same scale as the Grand Gallery of the Great Pyramid.
Pyramid at Meidum. Base length: 144 m.
Corbel-vaulted chamber in the Red Pyramid.
The Great Pyramid of Giza is said to have been built by Khufu (Greek: Cheops), and completed around 2560 BCE. Khufu was the second king of the fourth dynasty, and is believed to be the son or stepson of Sneferu, and to have reigned for between 23 and 63 years. If Khufu’s architects and engineers had somehow mastered the art of constructing a building as awesome as the Great Pyramid, it is not clear why his son and successor, Djedefre, allegedly built a much less imposing one, nor why it was located at Abu Rawash, 5 miles northwest of Giza, rather than next to his father’s, since the other two large Giza pyramids had supposedly not yet been built. It was about the same size as the Third Pyramid at Giza, but today it lies in ruins, as it was apparently dismantled and used as a quarry.
Ruined pyramid on the high plateau of Abu Rawash. Base length: 106 m.
Corridor leading to the lower chamber at Abu Rawash.
Left to right: Third Pyramid, Second Pyramid and Great Pyramid. There are
also
six
small pyramids on the Giza Plateau, plus traces of two even tinier ones.
Djedefre’s successor Khafre (Greek: Chephren), another of Khufu’s sons, is believed to have built the slightly smaller Second Pyramid of Giza, the second largest stone building in the world, and his successor, Menkaure (Greek: Mycerinus), allegedly built the Third Pyramid, which is half the size of the Khafre’s. Although these two pyramids are impressive, they fail to match the craftsmanship of the Great Pyramid and lack its upper chambers.
Cross-section of the Second Pyramid. Base length: 215 m.
Cross-section of the Third Pyramid, looking west.
Base length: 103 m.
The upper descending passage was either the original entrance
or a passage that was started but then abandoned.
Menkaure was succeeded by Shepseskaf, the last king of the fourth
dynasty,
who did not build a pyramid, but a stone mastaba, 18 m tall, at Saqqara.
Menkaure might have been preceded by another king (whose name is uncertain), who planned the large unfinished Northern Pyramid at Zawyet El Aryan, which was discovered in 1900.2 Above ground, its base measures about 200 by 200 metres, but only a couple of courses were built, of massive limestone blocks, one of them measuring 2 m long by 3.6 m high. A long, sloping trench leads down to a huge rock-hewn pit, like that at Abu Rawash, and with similar dimensions: 11.7 × 25 m, and 21 m deep. An oval granite ‘sarcophagus’ was sunk into the immaculate floor, consisting of four courses of enormous limestone and granite slabs, up to 4.6 m long, with one block weighing 43 tonnes. It is far from certain that the structure as a whole is an unfinished pyramid. It may be a completed open pit surrounded by a low platform, possibly intended as a temple/observatory.3
Rock-cut substructure at Zawyet El Aryan.
The first image above is a scene from the 1955 movie Land of the Pharaohs.
Orthodox Egyptologists therefore claim that during the reigns of Sneferu, Khufu, Djedefre, Khafre, Menkaure and one other king – a period of about 100 years – nearly 25 million tons of stone were quarried, transported, smoothed, and piled up to form eight huge pyramids. This theory strains credibility. Petrie believed it was feasible for 100,000 men to build the Great Pyramid in 20 years, but he also observed that ‘no other kings worked at a half, or perhaps a tenth, of the rate that Khufu and Khafra worked, or with anything like the same fineness’.4 Far more stone was used in the Giza pyramids alone than in all the structures built during the New Kingdom, Late Period and Ptolemaic period combined – a span of 1500 years.5
The surface of the widely used limestone casing stones becomes harder and more polished with time, thereby helping to protect the structures against the elements (though they cannot withstand wind-driven sand in the present desert environment). Much of the Great Pyramid’s limestone casing was stripped off in the 14th century, following major earthquakes in 908 and 1301, and used to build mosques and other structures in Cairo. The bottom two courses of the Second Pyramid of Giza were cased with red granite, and the rest with limestone, which still remains on the upper part of the pyramid. The upper part of the Third Pyramid was also cased with limestone, while the lower 16 courses are still covered with ultra-hard red granite casing stones, which were left unfinished, except for an area around the entrance on the northern face and a corresponding area on the eastern face.
Granite casing on the Third Pyramid.
The pyramids of the fifth dynasty and succeeding dynasties were vastly inferior in terms of size, materials and workmanship, and display a marked decline in construction skills. Fifth- and sixth-dynasty pyramids do, however, contain chambers protected by enormous lintels weighing 30 to 40 tonnes, which Davidovits believes to be reaggregated limestone. The dozens of pyramids built by later dynasties were smaller and shoddier still. In the Middle Kingdom (11th to 13th dynasties) pyramids were built of mud bricks, despite the availability of hard bronze tools. Today, most of the 140 pyramids in Egypt are little more than heaps of debris.
All three Giza pyramids were allegedly built as tombs, yet none of them was found to contain the body of its presumed builder. According to one account, in 820 CE, Arab workmen, under the direction of caliph al-Ma’mun of Baghdad, tunnelled into the Great Pyramid (the entrance being concealed by a hinged stone), hacked their way around the granite plugs blocking access to the ascending passage, and finally reached the ‘King’s’ Chamber; it was completely bare except for a ‘sarcophagus’, which was lidless, uninscribed and empty. It is quite possible, however, that a tunnel already existed and that al-Ma’mun merely removed the debris and enlarged it.
The clearance between the granite plugs and the sides of the ascending passage is so minimal that it is questionable whether these blocks were slid all the way down the ascending passage from the Grand Gallery after Khufu’s alleged funeral procession, and some researchers believe they were built in from the start.6 This is supported by the fact that about two feet of the end of the top plug have been hacked away, but a bit of granite can still be seen cemented to the floor.7 The granite plugs could have served a symbolic function, if the pyramid was a temple of initiation (see section 10). The main official theory is that, after sealing the ascending passage, the workers dug the rough and winding ‘well shaft’ in order to get out – in other words, they closed off one access route to the upper chambers, and then created another! This makes zero sense, but it enables the tomb theorists to claim that Khufu’s body and all the objects ‘buried’ with him were removed by thieves before al-Ma’mun’s visit.
It is noteworthy, however, that no Egyptian pyramid has ever been found to contain the body of its presumed royal builder; only later intrusive burials have been discovered. Most pyramids don’t even have a sarcophagus. The sarcophagus in the Second Pyramid of Giza was found to contain the bones of a bull. In the Third Pyramid, parts of a wooden coffin were found, which bore Menkaure’s name but dated from the 26th dynasty (6th-7th centuries BCE), along with bones dated to the Christian period. In the step pyramid attributed to Djoser, mummy parts were discovered that were many centuries younger than Djoser, along with the hip-bone of an 18-year-old woman, and female remains dated to generations before Djoser. In the unfinished pyramid of Sekhemkhet (Djoser’s successor) the burial chamber had never been entered by tomb robbers and contained a sarcophagus that was sealed with mortar, but when forcibly opened it was absolutely empty. Mark Lehner admits that ‘the history of the pyramids is not always as straightforward as Egyptologists may think’.8
References
Although the Great Pyramid does not contain any official inscriptions or decorations saying
when or by whom it was built, it is not completely devoid of hieroglyphics. In 1765 a narrow crawlway
was discovered, leading from the top of the eastern wall of the Grand Gallery to a low, bat-infested
compartment directly above the ceiling of the King’s Chamber. In 1837 Col. Howard Vyse and his
assistants discovered four more ‘construction chambers’ above it, each two to four feet high.
The often-repeated theory that these five compartments were designed to relieve the pressure on the ceiling of the King’s Chamber is improbable, given what we know of their structure, and they most likely had a symbolic function (see appendix 3). G. de Purucker suggests that the Queen’s Chamber represents the moon, and the King’s Chamber the earth, while the five spaces above it represent Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury, and Venus.1 The entire King’s Chamber structure is roofed by a great gable, consisting of 12 limestone blocks set at an angle of 30°; this is what protects the chamber from the enormous weight of masonry above it. A similar gable is found above the Queen’s Chamber and the entrance to the descending passage (see section 14).
The four compartments above Davison’s Chamber had been sealed since the pyramid was built and gunpowder had to be used to gain access to them. On some of the walls and ceilings of these four chambers crude hieroglyphs were found, daubed in red paint, which are thought to have been added by work crews or the scribes attached to them. The markings are found only on limestone blocks, not on granite blocks, which came from different quarries.
‘Khufu’
‘Khnum-Khufu’
‘Hor-Medjedu’
The inscriptions (some unfinished) include two different cartouches (royal names enclosed in an oval) – ‘Khufu’ (which appears once) and ‘Khnum-Khufu’ (which appears 14 times) – and Egyptologists saw this as confirmation of the tradition that the pyramid was built for the fourth-dynasty pharaoh Khufu. ‘Khufu’ is an abbreviated form of ‘Khnum-Khufu’, which means ‘Khnum protects me’. A third royal name – ‘Hor-Medjedu’ – also appears (10 times), and is now understood to be the Horus name of Khufu. The full names of the work crews inscribed on the blocks are: ‘companions of Khufu’, ‘followers of the powerful white crown of Khnum-Khufu’ and ‘purifiers of Hor-Medjedu’.
All the inscriptions containing royal names include the hieroglyphic character aper, meaning work team. They are believed to be the names of the crews that would set the blocks in place. The inscriptions are sometimes oriented upside down or sideways, some are partly hidden by other blocks, and none extends over more than one block, indicating that they were scrawled on the blocks before being laid.2
Inscription on a roof block of Campbell’s Chamber. It reads: ‘The crew “Companions of Khufu” ’.
The authenticity of these masons’ markings was first challenged by Zecharia Sitchin,3 who believed that the three great pyramids of Giza had been built by the ‘Annunaki’ (aliens from a planet beyond Pluto) as guiding beacons for their starships. He argues that the inscriptions were forged by Vyse and his men in the hope of gaining fame and fortune. He claims that the hieroglyphs are ungrammatical and misspelt (with the sign for ‘ra’, the supreme god of Egypt, being written instead of ‘kh’), that the cursive script in which they were written (as opposed to being carved) dates from a later era, and that they were ‘copied’ (complete with ‘mistakes’) from standard contemporary works on hieroglyphics (which actually contain no cursive script!). The forgery theory has been promoted by several other researchers, including Graham Hancock (who later changed his mind, before partly changing it back again),4 Eric von Däniken, and Colin Wilson.
Martin Stower has shown that Sitchin’s account is a mish-mash of inaccuracies and misrepresentation; the claimed misspelling is simply untrue, and cursive script dates back to predynastic times.5 At the time the inscriptions were discovered, no one knew anything about Horus names or aper names, and Khnum-Khufu was believed to mean ‘brother of Khufu’. Additional claims by Sitchin and other writers6 that the forgery theory is supported by Vyse’s diaries and by the testimony of an alleged employee have also been debunked.7 Referring to Wellington’s chamber, Petrie wrote in 1883: ‘There is a large cartouche of Khnumu-Khufu, nearly all broken away by Vyse’s forced entrance ...’8 Moreover, Khnum-Khufu, Medjedu, and other crew names have also been found on exterior blocks, along with other red-ochre markings, such as levelling lines.9
References
Herodotus said he was told by Egyptian priests that the Great Pyramid was built by Khufu, whom he depicts as a hated tyrant, but that he
had not been buried in it.1 According to Herodotus, it took 100,000 men 20 years to build the pyramid, after labouring for 10 years to build the causeway for delivering the stones. He expressed his dislike of speaking publicly about sacred things, and H.P. Blavatsky states that he
did not tell all, although he knew that the real purpose of the pyramid was very different from that which he assigns to it. Were it not for his religious scruples, he might have added that, externally, it symbolized the creative principle of nature, and illustrated also the principles of geometry, mathematics, astrology, and astronomy. Internally, it was a majestic fane, in whose sombre recesses were performed the Mysteries ...2
In the 1st century BCE, another Greek historian, Diodorus Siculus, mentioned the tradition that the three Giza pyramids were made by Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure, but said that Khufu and Khafre were not buried in their pyramids because of the suffering they inflicted on their people. He claims that 360,000 slaves built the Great Pyramid in 20 years using ramps. He adds that the three pyramids have also been attributed to other kings.3 In the 1st century CE neither the Greek geographer Strabo nor the Roman writer Pliny the Elder named the king responsible for the Great Pyramid.4 According to a Coptic legend, the pyramid was built before the biblical flood by Surid bin Sahluk, often identified with Hermes, to preserve knowledge of the sacred sciences.5
What do the actual historical records from the time of Khufu have to say? Remarkably, virtually no such records exist. As one Egyptologist remarks: ‘It is astonishing that we know so little about King Khufu, the man who ordered the erection of the Great Pyramid ...’6 One of the few written references to Khufu is contained in the Inventory Stela, discovered at Giza in 1858. It commemorates the restoration by Khufu of a small temple at Giza, and indicates that the Sphinx, the Sphinx Temple and the Valley Temple already existed in Khufu’s day, and that Khufu carried out restoration work on the Sphinx.7 It has also been interpreted to mean that the Great Pyramid itself already existed.8 The stela is written in a later style of writing and some Egyptologists initially regarded it as a copy of a fourth-dynasty original but nowadays, due to its content, it tends to be dismissed as fiction.
The main surviving image of Khufu is an ivory figurine, three
inches
high,
discovered by Petrie in the temple of Abydos, 260 miles
south of Giza.
In 2013, papyrus logbooks written by an official named Merer were found in the Egyptian desert. They are believed to date to the 27th year of Khufu’s reign, and document the transportation of limestone blocks from the Tura quarries to Giza by barge. They mention ‘akhet Khufu’, the ‘horizon of Khufu’, i.e. the Khufu pyramid, several times. Egyptologists automatically assume that these were limestone casing stones for the Great Pyramid, which Khufu was then supposedly building, rather than for other construction work.
The presence of the Khufu and Khnum-Khufu cartouches inside the Great Pyramid and on some of the core masonry stones on the exterior does not prove that it was the fourth-dynasty pharaoh Khufu who built it; he may have been named after the pyramid, rather than the other way around. Khufu’s cartouche has been found on dozens of tombs and monuments in Egypt, some of them far later than the fourth dynasty. William Fix comments:
Egyptologists explain that Khufu’s name had become ‘a powerful charm’, and was put on monuments as a sign of sanctity and protection. In other words, it was used in later times as the sign of the cross has been used in Christian countries for nearly two thousand years. Of course, we do not assume that every representation of a person bearing the symbol of a cross is Jesus Christ, nor that every building with a cross was personally ordered to be built by Jesus. Neither do we assume that every person named Jesus is the original Jesus Christ.9
Fix cites evidence that the masons’ marks and cartouches that have been used to attribute pyramids to kings have been misinterpreted. Petrie, for example, found inscriptions linking Menkaure with two different pyramids. In the case of Sneferu, Khufu’s father or stepfather, inscriptions seem to attribute three giant pyramids to him: the Meidum pyramid, and the two pyramids at Dahshur. He is also supposed to have built a small pyramid at Seila, along with numerous temples throughout Egypt. This makes no sense whatsoever. Khufu’s successor, Djedefre, is thought to have built a smaller and inferior pyramid at Abu Rawash. To explain why he did not build it at Giza, Egyptologists assume that there must have been a family quarrel. Yet Djedefre’s name appears on the roofing stones of boat pits near the Great Pyramid.
Some of the cartouches of fourth-dynasty kings may originally have been sacred symbols identifying different schools of religious thought, rather than primarily the names of individual pharaohs. The historically known kings Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure may well have appropriated, and possibly repaired and restored, the three Giza pyramids as their own memorial monuments, and may have been responsible for some of the surrounding auxiliary structures – small subsidiary pyramids, temples, tombs (mastabas) and boat pits. But there is no conclusive evidence that these kings built the three major pyramids themselves. It is more likely that these pyramids were built by another civilization altogether, long before the ‘pyramid age’, and served as the prototypes which later pharaohs tried to emulate. Mastaba building reached its peak in the fourth dynasty, particularly in and around Giza, perhaps because the royals and dignitaries buried in them wanted to associate themselves with the magnificent pyramids constructed by their ancestors.
The Giza Plateau.
As already mentioned, ‘Khnum-Khufu’ means ‘Khnum protects me’. Khnum was the divine potter who carried out the works of creation planned by Thoth, and created humans from clay on a potter’s wheel. He was also the god of the Nile. Thoth was the god of wisdom, the directing intelligence of the universe, and was known in later times as Hermes, Mercury and Enoch. Thoth-Hermes was the inventor of the arts and sciences, the patron of the secret wisdom, and an initiator. The name was adopted by many initiated adepts, who were known as ‘serpents of wisdom’; the caduceus or staff of Hermes is entwined with either one or two serpents.10 Khnum later became known as Kneph or Chnuphis, who was represented as a huge serpent; he stood for divine creative wisdom, and was the patron of the initiates.11 These considerations are in keeping with the Arab legends that associate the pyramid with Hermes.
References
In the 1980s several ancient Egyptian monuments, including the Great Pyramid, were radiocarbon
dated.1 Radiocarbon dating cannot be applied to stone, but it can be used to date fragments of
organic material, such as wood and charcoal, which are sometimes found embedded in the mortar
between the stone blocks. The 15 samples from the Great Pyramid gave radiocarbon dates ranging from 2853 to 3809
BCE, the average date being 3029 BCE, which, if reliable, and if assumed to be the date of its
construction, would make the pyramid some 400 years older than is currently believed.
Further carbon-dating of the Great Pyramid and many other Egyptian sites was carried out in the mid-1990s, producing average dates that were 200-300 years older than expected. The dates for the Great Pyramid varied by 1210 years. After a reanalysis using computer modelling and ‘robust calibrations’, which involved ‘focusing on the lower end of [the] age ranges’, results were obtained that showed ‘much closer agreement with conventional chronological records’.2
Even if the radiocarbon dates for the samples from the Great Pyramid are assumed to be reasonably accurate, there is still no certainty that they tell us its age. All of them came from the exterior of the pyramid, from between the core masonry blocks or between the core masonry and the former casing stones, and they may therefore date from later repair work. The radiocarbon dates of 2085 BCE and 2746 BCE for the Sphinx Temple certainly do not indicate the date of its construction, since its huge limestone blocks show severe weathering similar to that of the Sphinx, which geologists have determined to be at least 10,000 years old (see section 11).
In 2020 a piece of cedar wood around 13 cm long, found in one of the Queen’s Chamber shafts, was carbon-dated to 3341-3094 BCE. Unlike the King’s Chamber shafts, those in the Queen’s Chamber do not extend all the way to the pyramid’s exterior, nor were they originally cut through to the interior of the chamber, but stopped 5 inches short. They were first opened from the inside in 1872, when the cedar wood and a dolerite ball (7 cm in diameter) were discovered in the north shaft, and a small copper (or bronze) hook was recovered from the south shaft. The cedar was initially in one piece, but exposure to air has caused it to disintegrate. It was part of a much larger wooden object, the remainder of which was discovered during exploration of the shafts using a robotic camera in 1993.3
`
Radiocarbon dating is subject to several potential sources of error.4 In particular, the concentration of radiocarbon in the atmosphere is not constant, and samples can be contaminated with old or young carbon from their environment. Adjustments are made to try and account for this. But there are numerous instances where radiocarbon dating has yielded false ages. For instance, there are living snails in artesian springs in southern Nevada which have such low radiocarbon contents in their shells that they have theoretically been dead for 27,000 years. A bone from beds at Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, which, on the basis of other radiocarbon dates and geological considerations, are thought to be over 29,000 years old, yielded a radiocarbon age of only 3340 years. Tektites (glass-like bits of rock) which were dated at about 700,000 years on the basis of potassium-argon dating and stratigraphic studies, were found to be only 4830 to 5700 years old according to radiocarbon dating of accompanying charcoal.
References
Another way of trying to date ancient monuments is archeoastronomy – the investigation of
possible astronomical alignments in the past. The coordinates of the stars as viewed from earth gradually
change over the course of time. One of the main causes is the precession of the equinoxes, a cycle
lasting an average of 25,920 years, which results from the fact that the earth’s axis slowly sweeps an
approximate circle around the poles of the ecliptic (the places in the heavens to which the ends of
the axis would point if it was perfectly upright instead of being tilted). That the ancient Egyptians were aware of the precessional cycle is shown by the fact that the cult of the twin gods Shu and Tefnut was followed by that of the Apis and Mentu bull gods, and then by that of the ram god Amon, coinciding with the periods during which the sun traversed Gemini (the Twins), Taurus (the Bull), and Aries (the Ram) respectively.
If precession were the only factor involved, stars would appear to rise and set at exactly the same time of the year every 25,920 years. But there are two further factors to take into account. Firstly, all stars, including our own sun (together with its family of planets), are undergoing their own ‘proper motion’ through space. Secondly, the tilt of the earth’s axis varies. At present the tilt is 23.4°, and scientists have established that it is steadily decreasing by about a hundredth of a degree (47 arcseconds) per century. They theorize that the tilt oscillates between about 21.5° and 24.5° over a period of some 41,000 years.
According to theosophy, on the other hand, the axis gradually inverts through a full 360°, at an average rate of 4° every precessional cycle (56 arcseconds per century), and therefore traces not a circle but a spiral around the poles of the ecliptic. In addition, sudden axial disturbances occur from time to time, resulting in major cataclysms.1 Mainstream scientists would dismiss this as impossible because they do not know of any force that could produce such an effect. Then again, they cannot explain what causes the earth to rotate on its axis – but it keeps on turning just the same.
In the late 19th century astronomer Richard Proctor argued that the Great Pyramid could have been built around 3350 BCE or 2170 BCE because the descending passage would then have been aligned with the polestar, Thuban (Alpha Draconis), at its lower culmination.2 An alternative, more elaborate theory has been developed by Robert Bauval.3 He argues that seven pyramids normally attributed to third- or fourth-dynasty kings are a reflection on the ground of certain important stars. The three main Giza pyramids represent the three stars in Orion’s Belt, the pyramids of Abu Rawash and Zawyet El Aryan represent Bellatrix and Saiph respectively, located in Orion’s left leg and right shoulder, the large northern and southern pyramids at Dahshur correspond to Aldebaran (Alpha Tauri) and Ain (Epsilon Tauri) respectively, and the river Nile represents the Milky Way. The three stars in Orion’s Belt were also the three magi or wise men of Christian mythology.4
Legron’s diagram of Giza’s geometric ground plan, with measurements
in royal cubits (1 RC = 20.620 inches = 0.524 m).5
The correlation in 10,500 BCE between the three Giza pyramids and the corresponding stars
of Orion’s Belt (right to left: Alnitak, Alnilam, Mintaka), as proposed by Robert Bauval.6
Bauval shows that the match between the relative positions of the three main Giza pyramids and those of the three stars of Orion’s Belt would have been most precise around 10,500 BCE, when Orion last reached its lowest point in the sky as part of its periodic ascent and descent resulting from precession. He argues that the Giza site was laid out and the Sphinx carved at this time (the Age of Leo). But he contends that the Great Pyramid was not built until around 2500 BCE, because at about that time the northern shafts in the King’s and Queen’s Chambers pointed to Thuban (in Draco) and Kochab (in Ursa Minor) respectively, while the southern shafts pointed to Alnitak (in Orion’s Belt) and Sirius (in Canis Major). In Egyptian mythology, Orion and Sirius stand for Osiris (the divine father) and Isis (the divine mother) respectively.
Shaft alignments proposed by Bauval.
Orion’s slow precessional slide up the meridian between 10,500 BCE and 2000 CE.7
If we use the accepted scientific formulae to calculate these alignments, and take into account both the stars’ proper motion across the sky and their motion towards or away from our own solar system,8 we find that the King’s Chamber’s southern shaft was aligned with Alnitak in 2465 BCE and its northern shaft was aligned with Thuban in 2425 BCE, while the Queen’s Chamber’s northern shaft was aligned with Kochab in 2375 BCE and its southern shaft was aligned with Sirius in 2365 BCE. All these dates are younger than the commonly cited dates for Khufu’s reign (c. 2589-2566 BCE),9 and it is illogical for the alignments of the King’s Chamber shafts to predate those of the Queen’s Chamber shafts since the latter must have been built first (note, however, that the angle of each shaft varies, and the average value is uncertain).
References
In the ancient Egyptian religion, the king was seen as an incarnation of the god Horus – the son of Osiris and Isis, his virgin mother. After death, and the mummification rituals, the king became identified with Osiris (‘Osirified’), and enjoyed a continued existence in the afterlife (duat). Bauval argues that the Great Pyramid was used during the fourth dynasty for religious ceremonies connected with the stellar rebirth cult for kings: the four shafts served a fertility or phallic role, and
assisted the soul of the dead king to ascend to the celestial kingdom of Osiris-Orion or of the northern circumpolar stars (which the Egyptians called ‘the imperishable ones’, as they never set), where he became a star soul. Bauval finds support for this in the Pyramid Texts, inscribed in several pyramids of the fifth and sixth dynasties.
Originally, only the pharaoh, and perhaps members of the royal family, were entitled to an afterlife. But from the end of the Old Kingdom, the rebirth cult was extended to notables and other wealthy people, and by the time of the New Kingdom it included anyone who could afford the elaborate mummification and funerary rituals. By this time, the simple mummification practices of the Old Kingdom had become incredibly intricate, and the priesthood had become a distinct, hereditary class who often abused their position for personal gain.
Mummy of Ramses I (died c. 1290 BCE), Luxor Museum.
Interpreted literally, the rebirth cult is purely exoteric. It is absurd to believe that a deceased person’s ka (‘life force’), ba (‘soul’) and akh (‘spirit’) cannot survive death unless the physical corpse is preserved by mummification. From a theosophical perspective, mummification is an unsavoury and inadvisable practice. The best way of disposing of the physical body is by cremating it, because this breaks the hold of the material world on the inner elements of our being more quickly than burial. After death, the astral model-body and lower human soul (kama-rupa) slowly disintegrate in the astral realms, while our divine self flashes home to its ‘parent star’, our spiritual soul journeys through the inner planetary and solar spheres, and our reincarnating soul enjoys a dreamlike period of rest until the time for the next incarnation arrives, often after thousands of years.1 Initiated Egyptian priests would have been familiar with these teachings.
Orthodox Egyptologists are convinced that the religion of ancient Egypt consists entirely of exoteric, dead-letter, largely nonsensical beliefs, behind which there is no deeper, esoteric meaning or secret teaching. ‘Rogue’ Egyptologist John Anthony West disagreed:
Though direct evidence is scarce, inscriptions in the tombs of high temple officials and repeated reference to ‘secret knowledge’ strongly suggest the existence of an esoteric, initiatic tradition – what Schwaller de Lubicz calls ‘The Temple.’2
Christian Church Father Origen stated in the 3rd century CE that the Egyptian philosopher-priests had a secret wisdom concerning divine matters, which was disclosed to the masses only under the guise of allegory and symbolism.3
G. de Purucker says that the religion of the ancient Egyptians was of two kinds:
sacramental and ceremonial worship which they believed in and governed their outer or exoteric lives by, and the religion of the sanctuary, which was the religion of the heart and intuition, including the higher intellect, for it was the religion of the initiation chamber. ... Egypt gained the reputation of being religious partly because of her high white magic taught in the sanctuary and partly because of her sorcery.4
He describes the ancient Egyptians in general as devout and mystical, but not highly spiritual, being of mixed Atlantean and Aryan (Indo-European) descent.5
West suggests that mummification was a misguided attempt to delay reincarnation and prolong the period spent in the afterlife. He acknowledges that Egyptian texts do not explicitly refer to reincarnation, but says that ‘this may well be due to the fact that scholars have not looked at them in that light’. He adds: ‘There are innumerable references to new life and a new birth in the texts. Interpreted in terms of reincarnation these make at least as much sense as they do when interpreted as life in the “underworld” or the “afterlife.”’6
Herodotus spent a long period among the Egyptians, conversing with priests and ordinary people, and described their belief that the soul is immortal, and that when the physical body dies, the soul passes into other creatures of the land, sea or air, before finally taking on human form again after a period of about 3000 years. The theosophical teaching is that the reincarnating soul does not incarnate in animals in the interval between lives. Rather, the physical and astral life-atoms that formed its lower bodies pass through mineral, plant and animal forms, and eventually come together again to form the new lower bodies of the same reincarnating soul. Mummification is intended to prevent the most material atoms from undergoing these experiences.7
G. de Purucker says that the practice of mummifying or embalming the dead originated in late Atlantean times when reincarnations occurred in rapid succession because of the degeneration and lack of spirituality of many of the earth’s inhabitants. If the mummified corpse were still intact when the soul next incarnated, it would sometimes be burned so that the physical and lowest astral life-atoms could become part of the new body, without having changed much since the previous body died. This reflects an undue attachment to the physical body and material life. The Egyptians, Peruvians and other peoples continued this custom long after its meaning had been forgotten.8
‘Rebirth’ can also mean a spiritual rebirth on earth during our present life, through the awakening of our higher, solar self. In Egypt, initiates who were reborn into spiritual self-consciousness were called ‘sons of the sun’. To put it another way, an aspirant who succeeds in blending their personal self (kama-manas) with their higher self (atman-buddhi-manas) is ‘Osirified’.9 Osiris, a solar deity, represents among other things the higher ego, higher manas, or inner christos.10 He was killed and dismembered by his brother Seth (corresponding to Typhon in Greek mythology), who represents Osiris’s adversary, lower self, or ‘dark side’,11 but was then reconstituted by his sister-wife Isis, and resurrected. As H.P. Blavatsky says: ‘Typhon is the terrestrial and material envelope of Osiris, who is the indwelling spirit thereof.’12
References
According to the theosophic tradition, the Great Pyramid was originally used as a
temple of initiation. H.P. Blavatsky says that it ‘was built ages before [Khufu] and he only
desecrated it
by giving it another use. In his day no more initiations took place in it and he consecrated it to Tet, or
Seth-Typhon [the opposite pole to Osiris/Thoth].’1 However, the Egyptian Mysteries continued, in one form or another, into later times, and the few foreigners who were permitted to receive the Egyptian initiation included Orpheus, Solon, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Iamblichus, Plutarch, and Proclus.
Marsham Adams showed that there are allusions to the pyramid’s unique system of passages and chambers in the Egyptian Book of the Dead – a collection of sacred writings dealing not only with the soul’s journey after death but also with the stages of initiation.2 Adams says it should really be called the Book of the Master of the Hidden Places (or Secret House), while nowadays its title is translated as Book of Coming Forth by Day. In its present form it dates from New Kingdom times, but incorporates some of the earlier Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts. Adams received support for his views from prominent Egyptologist Gaston Maspero, who wrote that ‘The Pyramids and the Book of the Dead reproduce the same original, the one in words, the other in stone’. Maspero stated that there was a tradition among the priests of Memphis supporting his contention that the ‘Secret House’, i.e. Great Pyramid, ‘was the scene where the neophyte was initiated into the mysteries of Egypt’.3
Some of the correspondences are:4 | |
Descent |
Descending Passage |
Chamber of Ordeal |
Subterranean Chamber |
Well of Life |
Well shaft |
Hall of Truth in Darkness |
Ascending Passage |
Hall of Truth in Light, Chamber of the Orbit |
Grand Gallery |
Double Hall of Truth |
Ascending Passage and Grand Gallery |
Chamber of the Moon / New Birth |
Queen’s Chamber |
Place of Preparation | Antechamber |
Chamber of the Resurrection / Open Tomb |
King’s Chamber |
Secret places of the hidden God |
Construction chambers |
As G. de Purucker explains,5 the candidate for initiation first walked through the corridors and chambers of the Great Pyramid, in order to symbolically stamp on his mind what the soul would experience in the inner worlds when the actual initiation began. Accompanied by his guide, he first walks down the descending passage, in a crouching position since it is only 3.9 feet (1.2 m) high. At the end he enters alone the dark subterranean chamber, the ‘Ordeal of Matter’. This chamber is ‘rough and unfinished to symbolize the rough and unshapely character of matter’.
The subterranean chamber.
Next the initiant must climb the Well of Life, the ‘Ladder of the Soul’, which is ‘rough and difficult of ascent’; the far easier but longer route through the ascending passage is not available to would-be initiates who want to force the pace of evolution. Emerging at the lower end of the Grand Gallery, he then follows the passage leading to the Chamber of the Moon, where appropriate ceremonies take place.
The Queen’s Chamber is reported to have contained a coffer at one time.
Next he ascends the majestic Grand Gallery. At the top he must climb a great step, nearly three feet high, then stoop very low (symbolizing humility) to enter the antechamber of the King’s Chamber. If the portcullis is up, he passes through and, stooping again very low, enters the Chamber of Resurrection, the ‘Home of the Hidden God’, where he lies down in the coffer of Osiris. Once freed from the entranced body, the soul passes into the inner spheres and the ordeals of initiation begin. The initiant must cast off his earthly shackles, strengthen the bond of unity with his spiritual self, and triumph over all the challenges he encounters. Finally, the soul is reunited with the body. The successful initiate leaves the pyramid more enlightened than before, in every sense of the word.
Entrance to the King’s Chamber.
Blavatsky mentions that one of the books of Hermes describes certain of the pyramids as standing on the seashore, ‘the waves of which dashed in powerless fury against its base’, implying that the pyramids in question were built before the upheaval of the Sahara desert.6 She links the Great Pyramid with the Temple of Dendera, some 270 miles south of Giza, and states that since the two zodiacs depicted on the ceilings of the temple show – among other things – the passage of three precessional cycles, or about 78,000 years, the possibility that the pyramid is of a similar age deserves serious consideration.7 Whether any significant astronomical alignments existed at this time is examined in section 13.
The neoplatonic philosopher Proclus stated that the Great Pyramid had been used as an observatory before its completion. Richard Proctor argued that, as well as serving religious and funerary purposes, it would have made an excellent observatory at the time it had reached the summit of the Grand Gallery, which could have been used for viewing the transit of stars; it is perfectly aligned with the meridian, and its roofing stones are designed to be independently removable.8 Proctor believed that the 27 or 28 slots in each of the side ramps of the gallery were used to secure benches for observers. The Grand Gallery emerges at the 50th course of masonry, where the square platform is exactly half the area of the base of the pyramid.
The spectacular Grand Gallery.
It is 8.6 m high, 46.7 m long, 2.1 m wide at the base and 1.0 m
wide at the top, as the walls are corbelled inwards in seven steps.
In the following passage, the gallery that Blavatsky mentions could refer either to the descending passage or to the Grand Gallery. If the latter, it would imply that the pyramid was still truncated at the time the initiation ceremonies she speaks of took place.
The initiated adept, who had successfully passed through all the trials, was attached, not nailed, but simply tied on a couch in the form of a tau Τ ... [and] plunged in a deep sleep ... He was allowed to remain in this state for three days and three nights, during which time his Spiritual Ego was said to confabulate with the ‘gods,’ descend into Hades, Amenti, or Patala (according to the country), and do works of charity to the invisible beings, whether souls of men or Elemental Spirits; his body remaining all the time in a temple crypt or subterranean cave. In Egypt it was placed in the Sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber of the Pyramid of Cheops, and carried during the night of the approaching third day to the entrance of a gallery, where at a certain hour the beams of the rising Sun struck full on the face of the entranced candidate, who awoke to be initiated by Osiris, and Thoth the God of Wisdom.9
The 3-ton coffer in the King’s Chamber is wider than the lower end of the
ascending passage and must have been built into the chamber during construction.
When struck, the coffer resounds like a bell, emitting the note of A above middle C (438 Hz), which corresponds to higher manas, or spiritual intelligence. The chamber as a whole produces an F-sharp chord – a semitone higher than F, which represents ordinary human intelligence (lower manas) and is also considered to be the keynote of nature.10 The five layers of massive granite beams forming the ceiling of the chamber and the four spaces above it are all dressed on the underside but completely unworked on the upper surface. Some have holes gouged in the upper surface, possibly to tune them to emit the right frequency, just as a bell can be tuned by altering its mass.11
The coffer was never the tomb of a dead body, but the symbolic tomb of the human personality,12 and the open tomb of the successful candidate for initiation, who underwent a spiritual rebirth after ‘slaying’, or rather purifying, his lower self. The airshafts signify that the chamber is not a chamber of the dead, but of the living, the place where Osiris reawakens to new life.
This scene from the Temple of Kom Ombo shows the king being purified by the hawk-headed Osiris (or Horus), representing the sun, and the ibis-headed Thoth, representing Mercury. It can also be interpreted as the two gods pouring the water of life and new birth on a successful initiant.13
References
Closely connected with the mysteries of the Great Pyramid is the Great Sphinx, the most
spectacular sculpture on earth. Carved out of the natural rock of the Giza Plateau, the Sphinx is 240
feet (73 m) long, 66.3 feet (20.2 m) high, and 62 feet (19 m) wide at its rear haunches. Orthodox Egyptologists believe that it was
carved during the reign of Khafre, around 2550 BCE,
even though not a single ancient inscription connects the Sphinx with Khafre. It is supposedly a portrait of him, though many
travellers and researchers have described it as having a female appearance with African and Negroid features.
Mark Lehner claims to have proven that the Sphinx is Khafre by means of computer imaging, but he admits that he used a picture of Khafre as a model – which merely shows that computers do what they are told to do. Detective Frank Domingo, senior forensic artist with the New York Police Department, concluded on the basis of his own analysis that the Sphinx’s head does not depict Khafre, but someone with a black African facial structure.1
The Sphinx was carved out of the solid limestone bedrock, leaving a hollow or ditch all around it which has repeatedly filled up with sand over the last 4500 years, burying the Sphinx up to its neck, and on each occasion it has taken several hundred men several years to clear the sand from the base. This suggests that the Sahara was not a desert when the Sphinx was first carved. The Sahara was covered with grass, trees and lakes during the African humid period, from around 14,500 to 5500 years ago, after which the climate became increasingly arid.2 In prehistoric times, when the Sahara was a lush savannah, it was inhabited by a black African people, who migrated into the Nile Valley when the Sahara became superarid.
There is strong geological evidence that the Sphinx predates the reign of Khafre by many millennia. It was philosopher and orientalist R.A. Schwaller de Lubicz who first drew attention to the likelihood that the Sphinx had been weathered by water rather than by sand and wind, as hitherto assumed. This idea was taken up by John West, who involved Robert Schoch, a geology professor at Boston University. Following a detailed examination of the extreme weathering and erosion seen on the body of the Sphinx and the walls of the surrounding ditch, partly using seismic techniques, Schoch concluded that the undulating erosion profile and deep vertical fissures are primarily the result of rain and water runoff.3
The nature and degree of erosion cannot be explained by sporadic heavy rains and flash floods since Khafre’s time, or by groundwater seeping upwards into the body of the Sphinx during that period. Mud-brick mastabas at Saqqara that are supposedly several hundred years older than the Sphinx, and Old Kingdom tombs at Giza cut from the same sequence of limestones as the body of the Sphinx show a high level of wind erosion, but no sign of the significant precipitation-induced erosion displayed by the Sphinx. Wind erosion can be seen on the Sphinx’s head, which is carved from a harder limestone and projects above the level of the plateau, and also on top of its back.
Schoch currently argues that the Sphinx must be at least 10,000 years old. It was repaired with limestone blocks in Old Kingdom and New Kingdom times, and further repairs have been made up to the present day. Since we do not know exactly how much rainfall there has been in the distant past, or how many times the Sphinx has been restored or reworked, it could be of untold antiquity. According to the Dream Stela, erected between the Sphinx’s paws in the 18th dynasty, the Sphinx has existed since ‘the first time’ (zep tepi) – a remote mythical golden age when the gods ruled Egypt.4 Orthodox Egyptologists reject any redating of the Sphinx, but have to resort to contorted arguments to maintain their beliefs.
Erosion and repair work on the side of the Sphinx.
Erosion of the southern wall of the Sphinx enclosure.
The enclosure walls show up to two metres of erosion.
West highlights the sudden emergence of Egyptian civilization:
The sciences, artistic and architectural techniques and the hieroglyphic system show virtually no signs of a period of ‘development’; indeed, many of the achievements of the earliest dynasties were never surpassed, or even equalled later on. This astonishing fact is readily admitted by orthodox Egyptologists, but the magnitude of the mystery it poses is skilfully understated, while its many implications go unmentioned.5
He argues that Egyptian civilization was not a new development but a legacy – a carry-over from an earlier, lost civilization. He describes the history of dynastic Egypt as ‘a succession of periods of alternate decadence and renewal, with each peak less high than the preceding one’.6
Further evidence of a predynastic civilization is provided by the Sphinx Temple, ‘Khafre’s’ Mortuary and Valley Temples, and ‘Menkaure’s’ Mortuary Temple. They are partly built from huge limestone blocks, weighing an average of 50 tons, with a few weighing around 100 tons and at least one weighing about 200 tons. The blocks are said to have been removed during the carving of the Sphinx, and have suffered similar erosional damage. Nothing else in Egypt shows the same type or degree of weathering (the pyramids were formerly protected by their high-quality casing stones). At some point, granite facing blocks weighing between 3 and 15 tons were added to these temples, though much of this granite cladding has since been stripped off. Sometimes the back of these blocks was cut to fit against the wavy surface of the eroded limestone blocks, and sometimes the weathered surface was first cut back to make it a little straighter (as seen in the photo below).
Limestone blocks in ‘Khafre’s’ Valley Temple.
Granite blocks still in place.
Another piece of evidence is the subterranean Osireion, built of cyclopean masonry, which was excavated at the turn of the 20th century from the silt and sand behind the Seti I Temple at Abydos. The floor of the Osireion is over 50 feet below that of the temple, which dates from around 1300 BCE. Like the megalithic Giza temples, the Osireion is characterized by stark simplicity, and is devoid of sculptures and decoration, with the exception of a few inscriptions and decorations left by Seti I, which were found in chambers outside the megalithic core of the building. This king may well have restored and perhaps added to the original structure, but given its atypical style, the orthodox view that it was built by this king is implausible. H.P. Blavatsky says that ‘Not only the Egyptian but every nation of the earth began with temples devoid of idols and even of symbols’, and that this feature is evidence of ‘enormous antiquity’.7
The Osireion.
Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock, too, believe that the Sphinx was carved around 10,500 BCE, during the last Age of Leo, and that this is the ‘first time’ referred to in Egyptian texts. West doubts this, because the earth was then in the midst of intense upheavals associated with the end of the last ice age, whereas everything on the Giza Plateau testifies to an advanced, secure, long-settled civilization. He suggests that the Sphinx may have been built not in the last Age of Leo, but a whole precessional cycle earlier, around 36,000 BCE, a date more in keeping with the history of Egypt as chronicled by certain Egyptian king lists. West also relates the following anecdote: When he and Robert Schoch finally got official permission in 1991 to enter the Sphinx enclosure with a camera crew and a group of their sponsors, Schoch looked at the rocks and exclaimed: ‘Wow! These rocks look like they’re hundreds of thousands of years old!’ Then, realizing he had a considerable audience on hand, he quickly added: ‘But don’t quote me on that.’8
The various chronological records of Egypt place its foundation up to 50,000 years before the beginning of the Early Dynastic Period, which conventional Egyptology dates to around 3150 BCE. Plato said that the Egyptians had observed the stars ‘for ten thousand years or, so to speak, for an infinite time’. Roman geographer Pomponius Mela (1st century) said that according to the Egyptians’ written records, since the commencement of their race ‘the stars have completed four revolutions, and the sun had twice set where he now rises’,9 which could be interpreted to mean four precessional cycles – a period of over 100,000 years. Simplicius (6th century) stated that he had heard that the Egyptians possessed written observations of the stars embracing no less than 630,000 years.10
Since geological evidence indicates that the Sphinx is many thousands of years older than generally believed, other structures must be buried somewhere, probably deeper than anyone has yet looked or in places not yet explored, such as along the banks of the ancient Nile, which was miles from the present Nile, or at the bottom of the Mediterranean, some coastal areas of which were above water during the last ice age. Two-thirds of Egypt remain covered in sand and completely unexcavated.
Commenting on the lack of evidence of Egypt’s ‘earlier and far more remote glory’, an Indo-Tibetan adept wrote in the 1880s:
owing ever to the yearly increase, amounting but to a few inches in a century – of alluvium brought down by the Nile, ... the traces of the oldest Egyptian civilization, one that was as superior to the latest or the one with which the Egyptologists claim acquaintance ... as your own [English civilization] is now superior to that of Tibet – is hidden for ever from the knowledge of your sub-races. How many millenniums have rolled over pyramids surpassing the present ones, each millennium throwing its 50 or 60 inches of earth over entombed ruined cities, still older Sphinxes and palaces, it is for you – the latest conquerors of Egypt – to calculate. Dig deeper and deeper into the sand and slime of the ages, and perchance you may find; and then cast and sum up your figures.11
According to theosophy, when the Atlantean landmass occupying what is now the Atlantic Ocean slowly broke up and sank, leaving behind large and small islands, various waves of migration took place. Some emigrants travelled to new lands rising out of the waters of the Far East, others to new land forming in what is now Africa, starting with the Ethiopian (Abyssinian) highlands, then new land forming further north, and finally the Nile Delta, which was created by enormous accumulations of sediment carried from the African interior.12 A major wave of settlers arrived in Egypt 400,000 years ago.13
About 430,000 years ago, the tilt of the earth’s axis was 90°, and the earth was lying on its side with its poles in the plane of its orbit (the ecliptic). At that time, there would have been a period of continuous daylight and tropical heat in summer and a period of continuous darkness and intense cold in winter, and the least inhospitable latitudes would be those closest to the equator. At the foundation of Egypt, therefore, the earth was beginning to reawaken from the last ‘age of horror’, as S.A. Mackey called it.14 According to tradition, the first settlers arrived in Egypt from the south, from the heart of Africa.
References
It is to a period following the initial migration into Egypt 400,000 years ago, but long before the building of the great pyramids, that the following passage by Blavatsky refers:
there are records which show Egyptian priests – Initiates – journeying in a North-Westerly direction, by land, viâ what became later the Straits of Gibraltar; turning North and travelling through the future Phoenician settlements of Southern Gaul; then still further North, until reaching Carnac (Morbihan) they turned to the West again and arrived, still travelling by land, on the North-Western promontory of the New Continent. [Or on what are now the British Islands, which were not yet detached from the main continent in those days.] ... The archaic records show the Initiates of the Second Sub-race of the Aryan family moving from one land to the other for the purpose of supervising the building of menhirs and dolmens,* of colossal Zodiacs in stone, and places of sepulchre to serve as receptacles for the ashes of generations to come.1
*Menhirs are single standing stones. Dolmens are multi-stone arrangements supporting horizontal slabs.
Our present Aryan or Indo-European humanity is said to have evolved into a distinct root-race in Central Asia approximately one million years ago. If we divide its history into a series of subraces, each lasting 210,000 years,2 then the third subrace began some 370,000 years ago. Since the first of these subraces was still distinctly ‘Atlanto-Aryan’, the third subrace can also be called the ‘second subrace of the Aryan family’.
Menhir de Champ-Dolent, Brittany.
This granite menhir rises 9.5 m above the ground and weighs about 100 tonnes.
There are hundreds of stone circles and other stone monuments in Africa, the Middle East, Europe, Scandinavia, and other parts of the world, some of which are known to have been modified over the course of time. Carnac in Brittany and the Stonehenge stone circle in Wiltshire, England, are among the monuments whose original structures are said to date from the period that Blavatsky refers to.3 The modern name ‘Carnac’ clearly resembles ‘Karnak’, the site of the largest and grandest surviving Egyptian temple. The name of Thoth, the Egyptian god of wisdom, survives in hundreds of Toot or Tot hills all over England. The word ‘henge’ may be a permutation of the Egyptian word ankh, meaning ‘living’ or ‘life’. The system of measures embodied in the great pyramids of Egypt, a system based on the dimensions of the earth, is reflected in ancient monuments in many different parts of the world. For example, the sarsen ring of trilithons at Stonehenge is the same size as the Egyptian ‘year circle’.4
Stones at Avebury, Wiltshire.
Virtual Avebury, showing how the site may have looked around 2300 BCE.
A variety of partly conflicting theories concerning the use of Stonehenge as a solar and lunar observatory have been put forward, all based on the assumption that it can be no more than a few thousand years old. The midsummer sun does not rise over the heel stone today but just to the north of it, and this discrepancy would have been greater 5200 years ago, when the first phase of the main construction work is thought to have begun.5 The official dates for Stonehenge are largely based on radiocarbon dating of fragments of organic material found in the ground nearby, but there is no guarantee that this material is as old as the original structure.
At Stonehenge, the sarsen stones in the outer circle are 13 feet (4.0 m)
high
and
weigh around 25 tons. The five trilithons within this circle, arranged
in a
horseshoe, are up to 24 feet (7.3 m) tall and weigh up to 50 tons.
Lintels are held in place by both mortise-and-tenon and
tongue-and-groove joints and levelled with extreme precision.
Frederick J. Dick offers a more radical interpretation.6 He points out that approximately 150,000 years ago the axis of Stonehenge would have been directed to the rising of Aldebaran, the Eye of Taurus (the Bull) – the star from which the Egyptians commenced their calculations of the new cycle.7 (About 350,000 years ago Aldebaran was probably the brightest star in the night sky.) He suggests that the altar stone, the heel stone, and perhaps the bluestones date from that period.
The temple of Stonehenge was called in days of old the Giants’ Dance. According to legend, the colossal stones were brought to Ireland by African giants, and then to England by Merlin the Magician. Blavatsky says that megalithic monuments the world over are the surviving handiwork of ancestors of a physical size far greater than our own. The Atlanteans in their heyday, several million years ago, are said to have been of gigantic stature, but humans were reduced from 15 to 10 or 12 feet in height from the third subrace of the Aryan stock.8 Many remains of humans up to 12 feet tall have been found in recent times,9 and 150,000 years ago people 8 or more feet tall may not have been uncommon.
References
The great pyramids of Egypt were built following a second Atlantean migration to Egypt, some 80 to 100 thousand years ago, by people of mixed Atlantean and Aryan descent
from Poseidonis, a remaining landmass in the Atlantic Ocean. The last major wave of immigrants arrived 12 to 20 thousand years ago, from southern India
and from Sri Lanka, which was once the northern headland of a now sunken landmass.1
Blavatsky quotes an ancient Commentary which states that the great pyramids were built at the beginning of a precessional cycle, ‘when Dhruva (the then Pole-star) was at his lowest culmination, and the Krittika (Pleiades) looked over his head (were on the same meridian but above) to watch the work of the giants’, and she identifies the polestar in question as Polaris (Alpha Ursae Minoris).2
Frederick Dick interpreted this obscure statement to mean that the first pyramids were built when Polaris, the polestar at the time the Commentary was written, was furthest from the actual pole, and was on the same meridian both with the latter and Alcyone (the chief star of the Pleiades), the latter being higher above the horizon than the pole.3 He calculated that the last time such an event occurred was 86,960 years before the year 2000, during the Age of Cancer (the Crab) – a constellation that is displayed very prominently in the two Dendera zodiacs.4 This is in agreement with Blavatsky’s statement that ‘the Egyptians have on their Zodiacs irrefutable proofs of records having embraced more than three-and-a-half sidereal years [precessional cycles] – or about 87,000 years.’5
In theosophical terms, this date marked the beginning of the present (Caucasian) family race. Since a family race is divided into seven national races, each of them lasting for one precessional cycle (25,920 years), the present European nations comprise the fourth national race, which began about 9200 years ago and has another 16,000 years to live, before a series of cataclysms cause the submergence of many parts of Europe and usher in the next cycle of civilization.6
We have no information on exactly when the various great pyramids were built; the implication is that this took place during the precessional cycle that began 87,000 years ago (the third prior to the present one). Nevertheless, it is possible to identify a number of potentially significant dates, based on zodiacal and astronomical considerations, which may or may not tell us when the pyramids were built (a monument may reference a particular date without having been built at that time). It is also possible to perform calculations to look for potentially intentional (or otherwise coincidental) stellar alignments corresponding to these dates. The highly speculative scenario presented below suggests that a master plan existed from the very beginning, because in the case of pyramids that may have been built in several stages, the features that indicate the completion dates belong to an earlier phase of construction. (For further information on the calculations and results, see appendix 1 and appendix 2.)
The great pyramids include the two huge pyramids at Dahshur, which are usually attributed to Khufu’s father Sneferu (‘Sen-nefer’ means ‘the two energies’7). As already mentioned, just as the position of the three Giza pyramids mirrors that of the three stars of Orion’s Belt, so the Red (northern) and Bent (southern) Pyramids of Dahshur correspond to Aldebaran and Ain respectively, with the Nile representing the Milky Way.
Orion and Taurus, in relation to the ecliptic (orange), and the galactic equator (red) and Milky Way.
The Bent Pyramid is so called because its upper part has a less steep slope than its lower part. Egyptologists often claim that this is because the builders were afraid the pyramid would collapse, but Peter Hodges, a master builder, dismisses this as he sees no evidence of inferior construction work.8 The pyramid’s shape symbolizes duality, as do the two entrances (one in the northern face and one in the western face), which lead to two separate sets of chambers.9 Furthermore, both entrance passages change their angle of descent part-way. The lower part of the pyramid may have been built 86,500 years ago, when the vernal (spring) equinox passed from Cancer into Gemini (the Twins), and the lower part of the northern descending passage was aligned with Thiba, the then polestar, in the constellation Boötes (the Herdsman).
Bent Pyramid. Base length: 189.4 m.
Interior of the Bent Pyramid.10
The ‘Second’ Pyramid of Giza is unique in having two northern entrances. Again, this is a sign of duality, and there may be a link with Gemini. The bottom few courses of this pyramid, up to a height of about 30 feet, are built of gigantic blocks, similar to the core masonry blocks used in the megalithic Giza temples, which are believed to have been quarried from around the Sphinx (some parts of the lowest tiers of this pyramid are actually carved out of the limestone bedrock). Since the temple alongside the Second Pyramid is linked to a temple near the Sphinx by a causeway, the lower part of the pyramid may have been built at the same time as the Sphinx was carved.
Several researchers, including the astronomer Norman Lockyer, have suggested that the Sphinx is half lion, half virgin, and symbolizes the junction of the constellations Leo and Virgo (it also symbolizes the supremacy of the spiritual self over the animal self). Significantly, at the same time as the summer solstice passes from Virgo into Leo, the spring equinox passes from Gemini into Taurus. The last time this event occurred was around 6580 years ago, but if we go back a further three precessional cycles, we arrive at an epoch 84,340 years ago. At this time the lower descending passage of the Second Pyramid would have been aligned with Xuange (in Boötes).
The circled star below Alkaid is 24 Canum Venaticorum (Canes Venatici means ‘hunting dogs’).
Saiph, the star represented by the pyramid at Abu Rawash, coincided with the vernal equinox 83,975 years ago (i.e. its ecliptic longitude was 0°), when its descending passage was pointing to Alcor (in Ursa Major). Alnitak, the star represented by the Great Pyramid, coincided with the vernal equinox 83,850 years ago, when the pyramid’s descending passage was aligned with the then brightest polestar, Alkaid (in Ursa Major). The lower part of the pyramid may date from this time, including the subterranean chamber and the descending passage (or at least the part cut out of the bedrock).
The Second Pyramid may have been completed around 83,765 years ago, when Alnilam, the star that it represents, coincided with the vernal equinox, and its upper descending passage was aligned with Alkaid, the brightest polestar. Bellatrix, the star represented by the ‘unfinished pyramid’ at Zawyet El Aryan, coincided with the equinox 83,735 years ago, when its descending corridor/stairway was aligned with Alkaid. 83,675 years ago, Mintaka, the star represented by the Third Pyramid, coincided with the equinox and the descending passage pointed at 24 Canum Venaticorum, the polestar.
According to an ancient Arab inscription, when the Great Pyramid and Second Pyramid were built, the Lyre (or Vulture) was in Cancer.11 At the dates mentioned above for these two pyramids, the celestial meridian of Vega, the brightest star in Lyra, intersected the ecliptic in Cancer and Capricorn. The causeways leading to the Great Pyramid and Second Pyramid point 14° to the north and south of due east respectively, and at this epoch, this was exactly one-third of the angle between due east and the sunrise points at the summer and winter solstices respectively. (Bauval rightly states that in 10,500 BCE the causeway angle was one half of the angle between due east and the solstice sunrise points.)
Red Pyramid. Base length: 220 m.
The construction of the Red Pyramid of Dahshur may have begun around 82,710 years ago, when Aldebaran (the star it represents) coincided with the vernal equinox, and the descending passage was aligned with the polestar, Mizar (in Ursa Major). The upper part of the Bent Pyramid may have been built 200 years later, when Ain (the star it represents) coincided with the vernal equinox and the upper part of the northern descending passage was aligned with the polestar, Alioth (in Ursa Major). The combined angle of the lower and upper parts of the unique western descending passage of this pyramid equals the number of degrees that the equinox would have moved (westward) through the zodiac during the long period between the two phases of the pyramid’s construction.
The bulk of the Great Pyramid may have been built towards the end of the precessional cycle that began 86,960 years ago. What is now called the Grand Gallery was in ancient times known as the Hall of the Orbit, and Fred Dick suggested that, given the extraordinary astronomical knowledge of the pyramid’s builders, it was probably built to lie in the exact plane of the earth’s orbit at that time (at midnight on the summer solstice or at noon on the winter solstice).12 The ascending passage to the Hall of the Orbit is inclined at about 26°6', and the Hall of the Orbit at about 26°20', corresponding to a tilt of the earth’s axis of 33°54' and 33°40' respectively. The former tilt occurred about 67,930 years ago, and the latter about 66,375 years ago.
67,930 years ago the northern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber was directed at Albireo (in Cygnus, the Swan) and at Aladfar (in Lyra), while the southern shaft would have been directed at Aldebaran some 825 years later, halfway between these two dates. 66,375 years ago the southern shaft of the King’s Chamber pointed to Alcyone, while the northern shaft pointed to Sulafat (the brightest polestar), in Lyra. After being built up to the top of the Grand Gallery, the pyramid may have been left truncated prior to the final phase of construction, and used partly for initiations and partly as an observatory. By the time of the pyramid’s completion, the three stars of Orion’s Belt would have been close to their lowest point in the southern sky (as viewed from Giza), and would have provided a close match with the layout of the three Giza pyramids on the ground. Fast-forwarding two precessional cycles brings us to around 12,500 BP, when Bauval found another close match between the pyramids and Orion’s Belt.
Khnum.
67,930 years ago the summer solstice occurred in Capricorn, the Goat. One of the oldest gods of Egypt is Khnum, who is depicted with what is often said to be a ram’s head (with horizontal, twisted horns), of the extinct species Ovis longipes palaeoaegyptiacus. However, this sheep had very different horns,13 and Khnum is sometimes described as having a goat’s head, and as being associated with Capricorn.14 A goat (or ram) also appears in the hieroglyphs reading ‘Khnum-Khufu’ (‘Khnum protects me’), sometimes abbreviated to ‘Khufu’, which appear on some of the stone blocks used in the Great Pyramid.
The Temple of Dendera.
Capricorn is found at the head of the rectangular zodiac in the Temple of Dendera (a word meaning ‘place of the orbit’). The present temple dates from the 1st century BCE, but it is built on the site of a succession of earlier temples, and the original design is attributed to Khufu.15 The main temple is dedicated to the goddess Hathor and the smaller one to Isis, both representing the world-mother. The Inventory Stela associates Hathor and Isis with the Great Pyramid. The temple is oriented about 18.5° east of north, and according to an ancient inscription, when the temple was laid out, the king directed his gaze to Ursa Major.16 The temple’s latitude is slightly greater than the angle of the ascending passage in the Great Pyramid, and in terms of the earth’s orbital plane it would represent a date 67,650 years ago. At that time, the declination of Dubhe, the brightest star in Ursa Major, was about 18°, and the average declination of all the seven stars that make up the Big Dipper asterism in Ursa Major was about 19°.
Hypostyle hall, Temple of Hathor.
67,930 years ago the earth’s north pole pointed to the neck of Cygnus (situated next to Lyra); the polestar was Eta Cygni, lying 1.5° from the celestial pole. Dick suggests that the pyramid was built at this time because the earth’s axis was then pointing to the solar apex – that point in space towards which the sun (and the entire solar system) appears to be moving, relative to local stars. Astronomers currently estimate that the solar apex is located in Hercules, near the border with Lyra, at approximately 18h right ascension, +30° declination. According to modern astronomy, the solar system is moving towards Hercules at 17 to 20 km/s, while the group of stars to which the sun belongs orbit the centre of the Milky Way at about 240 km/s.17
According to theosophy, as our solar system orbits the centre of the galaxy, it also revolves around a ‘central sun’ or ‘raja-sun’ (just as the moon orbits the earth while both of them orbit our own sun), and the central sun is located under the thigh of Hercules.18 If Dick’s suggestion is correct, then our solar system orbits the central sun in a clockwise (east-to-west) direction (viewed from galactic north), just as it orbits the galactic centre in a clockwise direction, whereas all the planets of our solar system orbit our own sun in an anticlockwise (west-to-east) direction.
Eta Cygni is the circled star in Cygnus.
References
In 1986 a French team conducted a microgravimetric survey of the Great Pyramid. After finding evidence of cavities on the western side of the Queen’s Chamber corridor, they drilled three tiny holes, which passed through compact limestone, limestone debris and mortar, then very fine quartz sand (possibly from southern Sinai, several hundred miles away), then more limestone debris. One drill hole failed to reach the end of the sand, prompting speculation about a hidden chamber, though the layers could simply be the packing between the limestone walls of the passage and the core masonry.
In 1987 a Japanese team, using ground-penetrating radar, confirmed this cavity, which they thought might be a concealed passageway running parallel to the corridor. They also found evidence of a cavity about 1.5 m beneath the corridor, which they believed might be 3 m deep and filled with sand, and a possible 1 m by 1.5 m cavity 3 m behind the north wall of the Queen’s Chamber. These discoveries have not been further investigated. South of the Great Pyramid, a cavity or tunnel was detected at a depth of 3 to 5 m, which may extend beneath the pyramid.1
The Giza Plateau consists mostly of limestone, interlaced with layers of sand and gravel. The sediments were laid down under the sea millions of years ago, in the Eocene. In addition to numerous faultlines, the plateau is honeycombed by underground water courses, which dissolve the limestone and create many natural cavities – in addition to any man-made tunnels and chambers that may exist.
Numerous deep ‘tomb shafts’ have been cut into the Giza Plateau, one of the best known being the ‘Osiris shaft’, discovered in 1934. The entrance to this triple-shaft complex is located in a tunnel beneath the causeway connecting the Second Pyramid and the Sphinx. The first shaft leads to a chamber, where a second shaft then descends to a large chamber surrounded by seven niches, containing two 40-ton coffers (one made of basalt, and the other of dacite, a rock only found in tiny quantities in Africa), together with pottery and bones said to date to 500 BCE. One of the niches contains a third shaft (the ‘water shaft’) leading to a large, submerged chamber, sometimes called the ‘symbolic tomb of Osiris’, over 30 m below ground. In the clear water can be seen the remains of four pillars with a large granite coffer at the centre. Artefacts found at this level have been dated to 1500 BCE.2
Basalt coffer in the Osiris shaft.
There are several known shafts or tunnels within or below the Sphinx, but they seem to lead nowhere.3 A remote-sensing survey of the Sphinx by SRI International in 1977-78 detected various anomalies, but drilling found no significant cavities other than those that occur naturally in limestone. The 1987 Japanese survey found evidence of a north-south tunnel beneath the Sphinx, a subsurface water pocket near the south hind paw, and another cavity near the north hind paw. An Egyptian survey in 1992 using shallow seismic refraction found no evidence of cavities near the Sphinx.4
By contrast, a 1991 survey of the Sphinx enclosure by Robert Schoch and Thomas Dobecki using seismic methods found three low-velocity anomalies, which could be cavities, either natural or man-made.5 The most prominent one is a possibly collapsed cavity or chamber, measuring 12 m by 9 m, under the left paw. Another extends from the southwest corner of this anomaly to the southwest end of the Sphinx, and may be a partially collapsed tunnel. The other void or cavity is located near the left rump of the Sphinx, and may correspond to a known cavity in this region. The Egyptian authorities did not allow further investigation.
The survey also revealed that just to the east of the Sphinx Temple, located in front of the Sphinx, the limestone bedrock lies one or two metres below the surface of the sand, but then suddenly drops 8 or 9 metres, before continuing to fall to over 18 metres below the current ground level. Most of the sand filling this area is now saturated with water, because it lies below the modern water table. In ancient times the bedrock would have formed a cliff-like structure, and Schoch speculates that it might contain an entrance to a chamber beneath the Sphinx.
These findings have fuelled speculation about the ‘Hall of Records’ that American clairvoyant Edgar Cayce described while in trance. He said that it lay between the Sphinx and the Nile, and the entrance was located near the Sphinx’s right paw, and he predicted that it would be discovered before the end of the 20th century. He claimed that it contained records of the lost civilization of Atlantis, brought to Egypt by its survivors, led by a priest named Ra-Ta, who was supposedly a previous incarnation of himself. These Atlanteans allegedly built the Great Pyramid between 10,490 and 10,390 BCE, as a temple of initiation.6 Theosophy agrees that the island of Poseidonis in the mid-Atlantic sank suddenly about 11,500 years ago, but not that the pyramid was built by these Atlantean migrants.
In 1992 a team used nondestructive methods to survey the area around the Subterranean Chamber in the Great Pyramid. The research was based on Herodotus’ statement that Khufu was buried on a subterranean island surrounded by the waters of the Nile, and on archaeological evidence for the existence of such a canal outside the plateau. They detected a couple of anomalies, and in 1995 they obtained permission to drill into the bedrock floor but failed to find a cavity.7
In 1993 Rudolf Gantenbrink explored the Queen’s Chamber shafts (measuring 9 inches wide and 8 inches high) with a crawler robot he designed, called Upuaut 2. After a climb of 64 metres, the southern shaft was found to be blocked by a limestone slab or ‘door’, with two eroded copper fittings or ‘handles’ protruding from it; a fragment of copper lay on the floor of the shaft just in front of it. In 2002, another robot, the Pyramid Rover, drilled a small hole in the slab and discovered another blocking stone 19 cm behind it. The first blocking stone and the final U-block (forming the sides and roof of the shaft) were discovered to be of higher-quality limestone and superior craftsmanship than the rest of the shaft blocks. The northern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber was found to be blocked by a similar slab. In 2009 and 2011 the Djedi robot team explored the southern shaft, and discovered three red-ochre glyphs on the floor of the space between the two blocking stones, possibly reading 1, 20, and 100 or 200, along with a red mason’s line.8
The first blocking stone in the southern shaft of the Queen’s Chamber.
In 2016, using muography techniques (similar to an X-ray, but using cosmic-ray muons from space), the ScanPyramids project detected a cavity behind the gable over the entrance to the descending passage in the pyramid’s northern face. Exploration with an endoscopic camera in February 2023 revealed a horizontal tunnel 9 m long, and about 2 m wide and 2 m high. Its ceiling is formed by large chevrons, like those above the entrance.9 In 2017, the ScanPyramids project discovered a very large void 10-15 m above the Grand Gallery. It is at least 40 m long, and is either horizontal or slopes upward like the gallery beneath.10 It is inaccessible at present, and its nature and purpose are unknown.
Gable over the entrance to the descending passage (top left),
robbers’ tunnel / tourist entrance (middle right).
Endoscopic image of the ScanPyramids North Face Corridor.
ScanPyramids Big Void above the Grand Gallery.
References
‘Be as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves.’ (Matthew 10:16)
Far from being an ‘idle and silly display of royal wealth’,1 as Pliny called it, or ‘a dead end in massive stone construction’,2 as the Encyclopaedia Britannica calls it, the Great Pyramid was a majestic temple of initiation and ‘a stupendous living monument of esoteric records’.3 It stands as an enduring testament to the wisdom of the adepts who designed it and supervised its construction.
The pyramid is packed with symbolism, one of the main themes being the transformation of gross matter back into spirit. According to the ageless wisdom, matter and spirit are in essence one. Spirit-matter can exist in endlessly varying degrees of materiality and ethereality, and each grand cycle of evolution comprises a descending arc of progressive materialization, followed by an ascending arc of etherealization and respiritualization.4
The sacred number 7 is composed of 3 (representing spirit) and 4 (representing matter). The number 3 also stands for a triangle or pyramid, while 4 stands for a square or cube. The triangle or pyramid is the ‘figure of fire’; the word ‘pyramid’ is derived from the Greek pyr or pur, meaning ‘fire’. According to Plato, ‘in the formation of the visible and tangible world fire and earth were first formed ... the particles of earth being cubical, those of fire pyramidical’.5
The pyramid shape also symbolizes the emanation of matter from spirit, and of more material worlds from more spiritual worlds. The apex ‘typifies the primordial point lost in the unseen universe from whence started the first race of the spiritual prototypes of man’; it ‘conveys the idea that all things had their origin in spirit – evolution having originally begun from above and proceeded downward, instead of the reverse, as taught in the Darwinian theory’.6
The Egyptian word for pyramid was mr, meaning place of ascent.7
‘The pyramid is a simulacrum of both the mound of primaeval earth and the
weightless rays of sunlight, a union of heaven and earth ...’ (Mark Lehner)8
Just as fire can stand for spirit (or aether), so water can stand for matter. The ‘waters of space’ represent matter in a primordial, highly ethereal state, the cosmic womb or mother, which must be fertilized and quickened by spirit, the cosmic father, at the start of an evolutionary cycle, thereby giving birth to the manifested world, the cosmic son.9 Spirit is also symbolized by granite, an igneous rock (i.e. a rock that was once so hot that it was liquid), while matter can be symbolized by limestone, a sedimentary rock that is deposited under water, consisting mainly of calcium carbonate (a salt), which is either derived from the remains of marine animals or chemically precipitated from the sea.
It is interesting to note that the walls of the Queen’s Chamber used to be heavily encrusted with a white, crystalline deposit of common salt until it was removed in recent times. Similar salt-leaching limestone blocks have been found only in the Queen’s Chamber passage, here and there in the Grand Gallery and ascending passage, and in the great gable over the topmost construction chamber. Peter Lemesurier comments: ‘Somehow those limestone blocks have been saturated – whether deliberately or not – with salt water’, and he wonders whether this has some symbolic meaning.10
Salt crystals are generally cubic, but Blavatsky says that when a salt solution crystallizes, the first shape the molecules assume is that of triangles, pyramids and cones.11 The transformations that take place during the formation of limestone, and during any subsequent leaching (requiring wet conditions), are laden with symbolic significance. Salt itself can represent many things, including ‘the earth element, spiritual purity, and the transmutation of consciousness to a higher level’.12 Natron salt was considered sacred in ancient Egypt, and was used not only as a flux in metallurgy and as an ingredient in the binder for making artificial stone, but also in mummification, purification and deification rites.13
As noted in section 5, the five spaces above the King’s Chamber can be interpreted as standing for five of the sacred planets. The additional four layers of granite beams above the chamber’s ceiling are also reminiscent of the Egyptian djed pillar, usually depicted with four crossbars near the top. It is said to symbolize stability and the spine of Osiris. When standing for the human spinal column (and the three subtle energy channels located along it, known in Hinduism as ida, pingala and sushumna), the four crossbars can represent the four higher chakras – the heart chakra, throat chakra, brow chakra (associated with the pituitary body), and crown chakra (associated with the pineal gland).
The creative energy known as kundalini, the highest form of prana or chi/qi, normally lies dormant at the base of the spine, but rises through the sushumna to the top of the head when higher states of consciousness are achieved. The Egyptian ritual of ‘raising the djed pillar’ symbolizes the activation of kundalini, which is the natural result of self-purification, and not something that should be forced. In Egyptian mythology, Osiris, the god of the afterlife, is said to ascend to heaven over the spinal column of his mother, the goddess Nut, using the vertebrae as the rungs of a ladder. Here, ‘afterlife’ and ‘heaven’ refer to the attainment of a state of enlightenment on earth.
At death, the ‘soul’ is said to leave the body through the top of the skull,14 and an analogical process takes place during the pyramid initiation. Once released from the body, the candidate’s soul ascends through the ‘planetary’ spaces above the King’s Chamber and, if freed of all lower attributes, it may pass beyond the ‘ring-pass-not’ – the giant triangle (arch) that caps them – before winging its way towards the summit of the pyramid, and beyond.15
Padiamon papyrus: djed pillar at the top, and ‘revivification’ of the dead king underneath.16
Compare this with the design and purpose of the King’s Chamber, or rather the Chamber of the Resurrection.
At this stage of our evolution, humans often resemble the ‘living dead’, or even mummified corpses, because their higher nature is obscured and paralyzed by the thick veils of matter and the lure of selfish and materialistic pursuits. The goal of human evolution is to rediscover and reconnect with our nobler, solar selves and achieve a spiritual regeneration. The aim of initiation is to accelerate this process.
Pyramids were generally crowned with a limestone, granite or basalt capstone, sometimes gilded to represent the sun. It was known as the benben stone. Benben was the name of the sacred mound that emerged from the primordial waters (personified as Nu, ‘watery one’, or Nun, ‘inert one’) on which the creator deity Atum (‘finisher’) settled. The bennu bird, which – like the phoenix – symbolizes rebirth and immortality, alighted on the benben and uttered a primordial cry, which set the world in motion.
The capstone of the Great Pyramid is missing. It was probably never added, because in the 1st century BCE Diodorus Siculus reported that the pyramid was in perfect condition but had no capstone, and it is hard to see how it could have been removed without damaging some of the steep, smooth casing stones. The Great Pyramid was therefore never entirely completed. Furthermore, the fact that there are four foundation sockets cut into the bedrock a little outside the actual corners of the pyramid shows that it was built slightly smaller than the full design. The diminished and unfinished pyramid can be regarded as a symbol of our unfinished evolution in the realms of matter.
Similar symbolism can be found on the reverse side of the US seal, which shows a pyramid without the capstone, with a blazing eye in a triangle above it; the inscription at the top means ‘he has looked with favour on the beginnings’, and the one at the bottom means ‘a new order of ages’. This design, which has appeared on the dollar bill since 1935, reflects the desire of the founders of the United States – several of whom were freemasons – to establish a new order in the West.17
The four corners of each side of the truncated pyramid can be interpreted as symbolizing the lower quaternary, the four lower aspects of the sevenfold human constitution – physical body, astral model-body, life-energy, and lower thoughts and desires – which constitute the limited, personal self. The eye in the triangle above it is the eye of Horus, standing for the invisible, spiritual sun, the source of our higher nature, and for the ‘third eye’, the faculty of inner vision which, when awakened, allows direct perception of nature’s truths. The triangle itself stands for the upper triad, the three aspects of our spiritual self – the higher mind, intuitive wisdom (buddhi), and inner divinity (atman). The aim of human evolution is to ‘so purify the lower quaternary that it shall vibrate in unison with the upper triad’,18 that is, to refine our lower nature so that it can manifest the nobler qualities of our higher self, our inner buddha or christ.
The same message can be found in the Bible, where we read: ‘The stone which the builders rejected has become the chief cornerstone’, the ‘chief cornerstone’ being identified with Jesus himself – i.e. the christ-element within us.19 Our journey through the human kingdom is far from complete, but by following our deep-seated aspirations to higher things, life after life, we shall gradually bring to expression our spiritual nature – the ‘capstone’ of our constitution – and the wisdom embodied in the Great Pyramid will then become the inheritance of all mankind.
References
To describe the position and motion of celestial bodies, astronomers picture the earth as being at the centre of an enormous sphere – the celestial sphere – with each star, galaxy, etc. being represented by a point of light on the sphere’s inner surface. Each celestial object can then be assigned two coordinates, analogous to latitude and longitude on earth.
The two main coordinate systems used for this purpose are the celestial or equatorial system, and the ecliptic system. The reference plane for the equatorial system is the plane of the celestial equator (the projection of the earth’s equator into space), and the reference plane for the ecliptic system is the plane of the ecliptic (the plane of the earth’s orbit around the sun).
The earth’s equator is currently tilted by 23.4° in relation to the ecliptic plane, which means that the north celestial pole is 23.4° from the north ecliptic pole. The tilt, or obliquity, of the earth’s axis is continuously changing, but extremely slowly.
In the equatorial system, the terms right ascension (RA or α) and declination (δ) are used instead of longitude and latitude. Right ascension is measured eastward along the celestial equator from the vernal equinoctial point, one of the two points where the ecliptic intersects the celestial equator. The vernal equinoctial point is also the zero point for ecliptic longitude (λ), which is measured eastward along the ecliptic. A star’s declination or ecliptic latitude (β) is positive if it lies north of the celestial equator or ecliptic, and negative if it lies to the south.
The equatorial coordinate system.
The ecliptic coordinate system.
The stars visible from any particular latitude on earth change due to the rotation of the earth on its axis (night and day) and the revolution of the earth around the sun. For an observer at a latitude of 30°N, the north celestial pole lies 30° above the northern horizon, and therefore all stars within 30° of the north celestial pole are circumpolar. This means that they appear to circle the celestial pole once every 24 hours, and are visible all night, every night of the year, unless obscured by clouds.
All other stars are seasonal: the stars that are visible from any particular location change according to the position the earth has reached in its orbit around the sun. Such stars appear to rise in the east and set in the west, reaching their highest point in the sky when they cross the meridian (line of longitude) of the observer. The apparent daily movement of both circumpolar and seasonal stars is due to the earth’s rotation – from west to east (anticlockwise, as viewed from above the north pole).
This is how the celestial sphere looks to a stargazer at latitude (φ) 35°N. The
north
celestial
pole (NCP) is 35° above the northern horizon. Northern stars with a
declination
of 55° (= 90° – 35°) or higher are circumpolar.
All other stars
rise and set,
except
those whose declination is such that they are always below the observer’s horizon.
The coordinates of the stars change very slowly due to the precession of the equinoxes, the varying tilt of the earth’s axis, and stars’ own motion through space (relative to our solar system) – both transverse (left or right, up or down) and radial (towards us or away from us). The precession of the equinoxes means that the vernal equinoctial point moves slowly through the 12 constellations of the zodiac. This alters which stars are visible at any particular location at any particular time of the year.
To put it another way, from one spring equinox to the next, the sun, as viewed from earth, appears to shift slowly westward through the zodiacal constellations (it is currently in Pisces and approaching Aquarius) – in the opposite direction to its apparent eastward movement through the zodiac in the course of the earth’s annual orbit around the sun. The average rate of precession is 50" per year, 1° every 72 years, and therefore 25,920 years for a full circuit of the zodiac. During each precessional cycle the earth’s axis traces an approximate circle (actually a spiral) around the north and south ecliptic poles, and as a result the earth does not need to move a full 360° from one equinox or solstice to the next, but about 50" less (see Poleshifts).
If we were standing at the earth’s north pole (latitude 90°N), the north celestial pole would be directly above our heads; its altitude (angle above the horizon) would be 90°. Viewed from the equator (latitude 0°), the north celestial pole would lie on the northern horizon, at an altitude of 0°. Viewed from the latitude of the Great Pyramid (29.98°N), the north celestial pole would be 29.98° above the northern horizon.
If the descending passage in the Great Pyramid’s northern face were inclined at an angle of 29.98° to the ground, it would point directly at the north celestial pole. But it is actually inclined at 26.48°, and is therefore directed towards a point 29.98° – 26.48° = 3.5° below the north celestial pole. The descending passage will therefore align with any northern star with a declination of 90° – 3.5° = 86.5°. Such a star will be circumpolar, and will cross the pyramid’s meridian twice a day – once below the pole (lower culmination) and once above it (upper culmination). It will only align with the descending passage at lower culmination. The star in question will be the polestar if it is the brightest star closest to the north celestial pole. It is very rare for a star to exactly coincide with either of the celestial poles.
The northern shaft of the King’s Chamber is inclined at an angle of 32.08° and is therefore directed towards a point 2.1° above the north celestial pole (32.08° = 29.98° + 2.1°). It will therefore align with any northern star with a declination of 90° – 2.1° = 87.9°, but only when the star crosses the pyramid’s meridian directly above the celestial pole – i.e. at upper culmination.
The southern shaft of the King’s Chamber has an angle of 45.11°. At any location on earth, a stargazer’s field of vision of the night sky extends 90° in all directions; the other half of the celestial sphere is hidden by the earth. Since the Great Pyramid stands at 29.98°N, a stargazer at that location can see stars with a southern declination of up to 60.02° (= 90° – 29.98°). The southern shaft will therefore align with any star with a southern declination of 60.02° – 45.11° = 14.91°, when it crosses the pyramid’s meridian.
Note that, due to stars’ proper motion and the changing inclination of the earth’s axis, the same stellar alignments do not recur at exact intervals of one precessional cycle.
There are many good astronomy software programs, such as CyberSky and Stellarium, which can show the positions of the stars at different times in the past (or future). However, they are only reasonably accurate for a period of a couple of thousand years, due to the varying rate of precession and the changes in the earth’s axis.
The calculations performed for this article are based on the assumption that, over the span of several precessional cycles, an average length of the precessional cycle of 25,920 years and an average change in the axial tilt of 4° per precessional cycle are sufficiently accurate to yield meaningful results. There are of course major uncertainties, the main ones being the variation in the rate of precession and change in the axial tilt over time, inaccuracies in data for current stellar proper motion, distance and radial velocity, the variation in proper motion and radial velocity over time, and the exact angle of the various passages and shafts.
To determine the positions of stars at a particular time (T) in the past, programs were written to perform the following computations:
The astronomical formulae and methodology for steps 1, 2 and 5 can be found in:
The calculations use the latest star data from the Simbad database.
The measured angles of the pyramids’ passages and shafts vary. The values used in the calculations are given below. The pyramids’ latitudes are taken from Google Earth.
Great Pyramid (29°58'45"N) | ||
Descending passage | 26°29'06" | Average: Petrie, 7:36; Smyth, p. 439 |
Ascending passage | 26º05'56" | Average: Petrie, 7:39; Smyth, pp. 222, 439 |
Grand Gallery | 26º20'19.15" | Average: Petrie (in Kingsland, p. 49); Smyth, p. 439 |
Queen’s chamber shaft N Queen’s chamber shaft S |
39º06' 39º36' |
Gantenbrink (the-horizon-of-khufu) |
King’s chamber shaft N King’s chamber shaft S |
32º04'30" 45º06'50" |
Average: Petrie, 7:56; Gantenbrink (the-horizon-of-khufu) |
Second Pyramid (29°58'33"N) | ||
Lower descending passage | 21°40' | Vyse, vol. 2, p. 118; Edwards, p. 135 |
Upper descending passage | 25°55' | Vyse, vol. 2, p. 117; Edwards, p. 134 |
Third Pyramid (29°58'20"N) | ||
Descending passage |
26°02' | Vyse, vol. 2, p. 121; Fakhry, p. 147 |
Upper passage | 27°34' | Vyse, vol. 2, p. 124 |
Abu Rawash Pyramid (30°01'55"N) | ||
Descending corridor | 22°35' | Vyse, vol. 3, p. 8; Edwards, p. 144 |
Northern ‘Pyramid’ at Zawyet El Aryan (29°56'24.44"N) | ||
Descending corridor | 25°19'16" | Hamilton, p. 24 |
Bent Pyramid (29°47'25"N) | ||
Northern descending passage upper part lower part |
28°30' 26°15' |
Average: Vyse, vol. 3, p. 67; Edwards, p. 81 |
Western descending passage upper part lower part |
25°26'30" 30°09' |
Average: Vyse, vol. 3, p. 68; Fakhry, p. 93 Fakhry, p. 93; Edwards, p. 82 |
Red Pyramid (29°48'30"N) | ||
Descending passage | 27°56' | Vyse, vol. 3, p. 64; Fakhry, p. 97 |
Sources
I.E.S. Edwards, The Pyramids of Egypt, Penguin, 1993
Ahmed Fakhry, The Pyramids, University of Chicago Press, 2nd ed., 1969
Keith Hamilton, The Great Pit of Zawiyet el-Aryan, November 2017, academia.edu
Col. Howard Vyse, Operations Carried on at the Pyramids of Gizeh in 1837, vol. 2, London, 1841; vol. 3: Appendix by J.S. Perring, London, 1842
William Kingsland, The Great Pyramid in Fact and in Theory, part 1: Descriptive, Rider & Co, 1932
W.M. Flinders Petrie, The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, Field and Tuer, 1883
Piazzi Smyth, The Great Pyramid: Its secrets and mysteries revealed, Gramercy Books, 1978
For zodiacal calculations an ‘artificial’ zodiac is used where each of the 12 constellations is 30° wide and the Age of Aquarius began in 1900, as proposed by H.P. Blavatsky. For further information, see Poleshifts, appendix 1, ‘The zodiac and precession’.
Dates in years before 2000
86,960 |
Beginning of precessional cycle (and Caucasian family race) |
86,500
|
Bent Pyramid (Dahshur S), phase 1 |
84,340
|
Vernal equinox shifts from Gemini to Taurus; summer solstice shifts from Virgo to Leo |
83,975 | Abu Rawash Pyramid |
83,850
|
Great Pyramid, phase 1 |
83,765
|
Second Pyramid, phase 2 |
83,735 | Northern ‘Pyramid’ at Zawyet El Aryan |
83,690
|
Third Pyramid |
82,710
|
Red Pyramid (Dahshur N) |
82,510
|
Bent Pyramid (Dahshur S), phase 2 |
67,930
|
Great Pyramid, phase 2 |
67,650
|
Temple of Dendera |
66,375 |
Great Pyramid, phase 3 |
Giza-Orion correlation
X | |||||||||||||||||||
Y | A | ||||||||||||||||||
Z | C | B |
In the above diagram, X = the Great Pyramid or the star Alnitak, Y = the Second Pyramid or Alnilam, Z = the Third Pyramid or Mintaka.
AB and XA represent the difference in degrees between the declinations of the three stars, or the distances between the three pyramids (using Legon’s measurements; see section 8).
ZC and CB represent the difference in degrees between the right ascensions of the three stars, or the distances between the three pyramids.
The mutual positions of the three pyramids and of the three Orion’s Belt stars are defined by the latitude ratio AB:XA and the longitude ratio ZC:CB. The table below shows the two ratios for the Giza pyramids and how they compare with those of the belt stars at three different epochs.
Latitude ratio (AB:XA) | Longitude ratio (ZC:CB) | |
Giza pyramids | 1 : 1.09 |
1 : 0.72 |
Orion’s Belt stars in 2500 BCE | 1 : 1.73 | 1 : 0.97 |
Orion’s Belt stars in 10,500 BCE | 1 : 1.20 | 1 : 0.88 |
Orion’s Belt stars in 66,375 BP | 1 : 1.06 | 1 : 0.77 |
This appendix contains extracts from correspondence on several aspects of pyramid construction, written in 1997 by Derek B. Pratt, a civil engineer specializing in the design of reinforced concrete beams for bridges and buildings.
Derek Pratt writes:
Davidovits’ theory on the possible use by the Egyptians of man-made stone is very interesting. ‘Reconstructed’ stone is made today using crushed stone, carefully graded, and cement and water. With good vibration used to compact the mix, it is possible to produce a durable ‘stone’ but, like all concrete, it shrinks a small amount as it cures and is prone to fine surface ‘crazing’ [cracks]. Very good imitation marble is now produced using marble aggregate and resin binder. I don’t know of granite being man-made to be virtually indistinguishable from natural stone. It would need a very exotic binder to match the real thing.
I wouldn’t like to try and produce casing stones by precast methods to the accuracy evident in the Great Pyramid. Western moulds could not produce stones to such tolerances. Even machined steel moulds would be hard-pressed to meet the accuracy. It is possible to obtain very close-fitting surfaces by casting ‘stones’ in contact with their neighbour using a coating on the face to prevent adhesion. This is known as ‘counter-casting’. If such fine tolerances also exist on the horizontal ‘bed’ faces of the casing stones, this would also require very demanding methods. I think it would be easier today to cast such blocks oversize, and then cut and polish them using diamond saws and diamond polishers!
The turning over, lifting and placing of the casing stones would be very hard to emulate using modern methods. The only method of lifting I know of which leaves no trace is one using vacuum pads – made of metal with rubber seals around the edge and a vacuum pump to create the suction force. Pads of this type are used to handle and place large sheets of plate glass, and have also been used on smooth concrete-faced units.
In today’s world, tower cranes would be used to lift and place the facing stones, but as for cementing the joints – I don’t see how mortar could be applied to such thin joints. Consideration could perhaps be given to forming a pattern of matching grooves in the mating faces, leading to the top edge of the stone, so that fluid cement grout could be poured or forced in, until it came to the face where it would be rubbed off.
Cranes could be sited at the top of the pyramid during placing of facing stones but the last few courses would present a problem after the crane had to be brought down! Regarding tower cranes – for the Great Pyramid it would have to be about 500 feet high and work at a radius of about 200 feet. I don’t know whether such cranes exist – I doubt it.
King’s Chamber, looking west.
Hatching = limestone. Crosshatching = granite.
Derek Pratt makes the following comments on the claim that the compartments above the King’s Chamber were designed to protect it:
I can see no structural purpose for the chambers above the King’s Chamber. Note that both the King’s and the Queen’s Chambers have a crude ‘arch’ structure above them, as shown below.
This construction could also have been used directly over the King’s Chamber although it would need to be turned to span east-west to avoid heavy load coming onto the Antechamber and the Grand Gallery.
As shown in the following sketch, the ‘arch’ stones transmit the load from rock masonry above onto the bearing stones at ‘A’ and to the masonry fill at ‘B’. The loads at ‘A’ are transmitted down through the horizontal slabs and their bearing blocks to walls at ‘C’. You can see that no useful purpose is served by the horizontal slabs which only carry their own weight across the span between bearing blocks and, at the bottom, between walls. The structural ‘spanning’ of the chamber is carried out by the ‘arch’ stones at the top.
Assuming that the body of the pyramid is constructed of horizontal courses of stone blocks, the load carried by the arch stones will be as follows:
I can only conclude that the five chambers above the King’s Chamber have been constructed for some reason other than structural.
As explained in the previous diagram, it is incorrect to think that the roof of the King’s Chamber has to support hundreds of thousands of tons of overlying masonry. Those who believe that the upper compartments relieve the stress on the walls of the chamber seem to assume that each successive level from top to bottom transmits some of the weight from above horizontally into the core masonry, so that each layer carries progressively less weight. Derek Pratt comments: ‘This is not so unless each layer is built into the core masonry.’
If the beams do not extend into the core masonry, the upper compartments actually increase rather than decrease the weight on the chamber’s walls, because the walls have to carry not only the weight of the ceiling beams and the weight transmitted vertically by the gable but also the weight of the four layers of beams in between. Derek Pratt considered it unlikely that the beams extend into the core ‘since all other evidence points towards an independent structure with a chamber in the core masonry capped by the simple “arch”’.
King’s Chamber, looking north.
Hatching = limestone. Crosshatching = granite.
We know for certain that the granite beams do not extend into the core masonry at the east and west ends of the upper compartments. Instead, there are two immense limestone walls belonging to the core masonry which are independent of the beams on these two sides. This may also be the case at the north and south ends of the granite beams and their support blocks, but this cannot be verified because the ends of these beams and blocks are inaccessible. Analysis of the acoustic qualities of the granite complex supports the view that it is freestanding, with a gap between the granite and the limestone core masonry (Dunn, The Giza Power Plant, pp. 158-9).
The pyramid has suffered at least two major earthquakes in the past 2000 years and the King’s Chamber has suffered the worst damage. It has been shaken out of truth, and some of the vertical joints in the walls have opened up to some degree. The granite floor is very uneven and irregular, but this is only partly the result of subsidence, as it was apparently never perfectly levelled.
The nine granite beams forming the ceiling of the chamber are all fractured right across near the south wall. As Flinders Petrie said, the whole ceiling, weighing some 400 tons altogether, is held up solely by the sticking and thrusting at the fractured points. He stated that the downfall of the King’s Chamber is merely a question of time and earthquakes, and that what has saved it so far is the fact that it is not bonded to the main structure and can therefore yield freely to settlement (The Pyramids and Temples of Gizeh, 1990, pp. 27-31).
Derek Pratt comments that the fractured ceiling beams could be caused by uneven settlement, given that their ends are ‘fixed’ due to their being trapped by the loading from above. If the first row of ceiling beams are in fact built into the core (as several of the diagrams assume), this would increase the risk of their becoming cracked at one end due to uneven settlement.
Lemesurier’s diagram of horizontal and vertical movements, exaggerated 10-fold.
(The Great Pyramid Decoded, p. 111)
In the lowest compartment some of the beams in the southeast corner are fractured, and the whole south wall appears to have fallen outwards to some extent. The second compartment also shows some cracks in the southeast beams, but in the higher compartments the beams appear to be intact, though there are indications in the fourth chamber that the great core masonry walls between which the compartments stand have sunk about 3 inches. In the three lower spaces the granite beams rest on granite blocks 2 to 3 feet high, while in the upper two spaces these blocks are of limestone, which is considerably crushed and flaked.
The sloping limestone beams which form the culminating roof have parted at the apex by 1 to 1½ inches. Derek Pratt comments: ‘This is to be expected due to “bedding” into the core masonry. The arch would flatten slightly and this would open up the ridge joint at the visible underside. It is likely that some crushing has occurred at the top point of the joint.’
Regarding the King’s Chamber as a whole, he states:
I find it hard to understand how such knowledgeable minds could have evolved such a poor structural method. Could it be that the structural expert was overruled by superiors with less knowhow in building but experts in their own field? It happens to this day!
He points out that the Queen’s Chamber is ‘subject to the same forces from core masonry above’, but ‘is still intact and is a much more simple construction’. He then presents a very simple design for a chamber that would be subject to zero load from overlying masonry and would have been far more enduring. This involves creating a cavity within the core masonry, with a gable roof, and then building a freestanding chamber within it.
The most logical conclusion is that the spaces above the King’s Chamber, together with the varying use of limestone and granite, and of rough or smooth surfaces, serve a symbolic function. The architects of the Great Pyramid were clearly not seeking to build a chamber that would last for ever. One of the key teachings of the ageless wisdom is, after all, the impermanence of material worlds and beings, which are subject to repeated cycles of formation and dissolution, of birth, death and rebirth, of descent into matter and resurrection into spirit.
India and the cradle of civilization