Pyramid Quest (2 page)

The Giza Plateau, which sits on the west bank of the Nile River at the very edge of the Sahara outside modern-day Cairo, consists of a small city of sacred buildings and ancillary structures. In addition to the Great Sphinx, Giza boasts three major pyramids and six minor pyramids, plus dozens upon dozens of tombs, shrines, temples, walls, pits, causeways, and other remains from thousands of years of human occupation. In pushing back the date of the Great Sphinx, my thesis had called into question the accepted history not only of that one immense and stunning statue but also of every other structure and artifact at Giza. This realization led me to study the scholarship and science surrounding Giza and see how the redating of the Sphinx changed the conventional storyline of ancient Egypt.

In simplest outline, the orthodox point of view goes like this: what we conceive of as civilization—complex cities, elaborate social and political organization, and written language—began in approximately 3500 B.C. in Sumeria, which lay along the Euphrates River in what is now Iraq. Sumeria eventually collapsed under the weight of outside attack, but the ideas and techniques that informed its civilization followed the trade routes west, where the Egyptians proved eager learners.

The pyramids of the Giza Plateau in the late nineteenth century, with the Great Pyramid in the front (east and north faces showing; viewer is looking toward the southwest), the Second (Khafre) Pyramid in the middle, and the Third (Menkaure) Pyramid in the back to the left. In the front the remains of the three small satellite or Queen’s Pyramids that sit to the east of the Great Pyramid can also be seen. In the foreground is the plain below the Giza Plateau. Late-nineteenth-century photograph by Antonio Beato, 1825-1903. (
See D’Hooghe, and Bruwier, 2000, p. 32, for information on Beato; from Barber, 1900, facing p. 28.
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In the fourth millennium B.C., as Sumerian ideas were making their way into northeastern Africa, Egypt was organized into small districts called nomes, which were strung out along the Nile like beads on a rosary. Each nome had its own chief and gods and, in the manner of much of human history, made war on the other nomes. A succession of alliances united the nomes into two kingdoms: Upper Egypt, which occupied the southern end of the Nile’s long course, and Lower Egypt, which included the northern reach of the river and its delta, opening onto the Mediterranean Sea. Then, in about 3000 B.C., the legendary king Menes—whose name means “unifier” and is sometimes thought to be the same as the early ruler Narmer (although Narmer may have preceded Menes) and/or the ruler known as Scorpion—conquered both kingdoms, joined them as the Two Lands under his rule, named himself pharaoh, and established the First Dynasty. This triumph of central authority in the iron fist of a single male ruler was key to the progression of events that led, over the next five centuries, to Giza.

Aerial photograph looking straight down on the pyramids of the Giza Plateau, early to mid-twentieth century. North is toward the lower right-hand corner. From top to bottom, the three largest pyramids are the Third (Menkaure) Pyramid, the Second (Khafre) Pyramid, and the Great Pyramid. Photograph by the British Royal Air Force. (
From Grinsell, 1947, frontispiece.
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Before Menes, prominent Egyptians were buried first in pits marked by simple mounds of sand and gravel, later in neat boxes of mud brick sunk into the earth and divided into rooms and chambers. With the arrival of the pharaohs, the funeral pattern became more complex. Large pillars (stelae), mounds, and an imitation royal palace were built to house the spirit of the departed king and mark the place of his burial. During the Third Dynasty (2649-2575 B.C.), the last line of pharaohs during the Early Dynastic Period, these home-sized tombs made the leap into the monumental realm, as the first stepped pyramids were constructed. The Fourth Dynasty (2575-2465 B.C.), which ushered in the Old Kingdom (some authorities include the Third Dynasty as part of the Old Kingdom), made the building of pyramids the central activity of political, social, and religious life along the Nile.

Khufu (Cheops in Greek; reigned c. 2551-2528 B.C.), the second pharaoh of the Fourth Dynasty, abandoned the previous pyramid-building sites of Saqqara, Meidum, and Dahshur to focus on Giza. There he had his Great Pyramid and its associated temples erected, laying the groundwork for what would become ancient Egypt’s most impressive ritual site. Although Khufu’s successor Djedefre (also known as Rededef, 2528-2520 B.C.) built only a much smaller pyramid at Abu Roash, the next pharaoh, Khafre (2520-2494 B.C.) returned to Giza to construct the second largest pyramid there. Repeating the pattern in which activity at Giza skipped generations, Khafre’s probable successor, Nebka (also known as Nabka or Bikka), started a large pyramid at Zawiyet el-Aryan, south of Giza, but never finished it, probably because his rule lasted a mere four years (2494-2490 B.C.). After Nebka came Menkaure (Mycerinus in Greek; 2490-2472 B.C.), who built the last and smallest principal pyramid at Giza.

Just as there is no dance without the dancer, many believe that there is no pyramid without a pharaoh. In the orthodox view, every pyramid was erected to aid a pharaoh in his metamorphosis from mortal to god. The pyramid gave the pharaoh the wherewithal to achieve the divinity that was the ultimate prerogative of his office. The pyramids express the intersection of political philosophy and religion, where the man who rules the land in life becomes in death the god he was born to be. In this way, pyramids are monuments to royal ego, and the bigger the pyramid, the more expansive the ego behind it.

If this straightforward connection of size and ego holds, then Khufu must have been the greatest, or at least the most self-aggrandizing, of all the pharaohs who ever strode across the Two Lands. At approximately 756 feet on each of its four sides, an original height of 481 feet, and a volume of somewhere around 3 million cubic yards, the Great Pyramid is the largest stone building ever erected. It is also the largest religious structure yet built. Although the Great Pyramid is about the same height as the dome of Saint Peter’s in the Vatican, it covers 13 acres, compared to Saint Peter’s mere 4. Were the Great Pyramid hollow, it could easily enclose Saint Peter’s, with enough space left over that a rearranged Westminster Abbey would fit inside as well.

Once the Great Pyramid was even more striking than it is today. When it was finished, the pyramid was reputedly sheathed in white limestone that gave the structure a smooth, gleaming surface. The limestone was also said to have been inscribed with hieroglyphics and symbols. Perhaps this was religious ornamentation, in the same way that biblical inscriptions decorate some Christian churches, but the “inscriptions” may simply have been graffiti from a period following the pyramid’s construction. Unfortunately, the limestone sheathing didn’t survive into modern times, as locals more interested in mosques, fortifications, and present comfort than past wonder carried the shining white blocks away to build the city of Cairo.

Despite this vandalism, the Great Pyramid still offers a unique beauty that transcends its phenomenal size and mass. Some scholars are convinced that the artistry of the structure incorporates the mathematical constants of pi (π) and the Golden Section (phi, Φ), qualities that give it the same kind of inexplicable, lasting allure evinced by the Mona Lisa’s smile or the Taj Mahal’s perfect acoustics (see further discussion in chapter 9 and the appendices). And there is the matter of the Great Pyramid’s peculiar internal structure.

Like the tombstones they are purported to be, the early pyramids were constructed over a room or rooms situated at, near, or under ground level and apparently intended to serve as a burial chamber. Often, a tunnel extended down through the body of the pyramid, presumably—so the traditional story goes—as a pathway for ritually conveying the pharaoh’s remains to their final earthly resting place. In the Great Pyramid, this basic architecture becomes highly and unexpectedly elaborate. The structure incorporates a variety of passages, chambers, and shafts, as well as the Grand Gallery, constructed at different heights in the body of the pyramid, many also displaying exceptional and unusual attention to both grandeur and detail. No other pyramid, neither earlier nor later, contains so complicated or sophisticated an internal architecture.

There is another important question: Why is the Great Pyramid so big? Why, if the pharaohs were simply egotists par excellence who lived their kingly lives to outdo one another, did Khufu’s successors settle for smaller mausoleums and surrender the ritual high ground to him? Why does the structure incorporate that variety of internal structures, when a basic tunnel and a stone room would serve more than adequately to preserve the pharaoh’s mummy? Why, indeed, if the Great Pyramid was intended as a tomb, was no mummy ever found inside?
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These largely unanswered questions have led various writers, thinkers, and visionaries—and their many thousands of readers and fellow enthusiasts—to reject the Egyptological convention of the Great-Pyramid-as-great-tombstone and see something else in its size, complication, artistic accomplishment, and architecture. The list of something-elses, developed by writers often grouped as pyramidologists (as opposed to academic Egyptologists), is stunning in its length and variety. At one time or another, the Great Pyramid has been depicted as an ancient power plant, water pump, gargantuan resonance chamber, Bible in stone, architectural prophecy, eternal standard of weights and measures, landing beacon for colonizing extraterrestrials, hall of records for the sunken civilization of Atlantis, astronomical observatory, key component of a map of the constellation Orion, and monument to the prehistoric discovery of the speed of light.

If nothing else, pyramidology testifies to just how far imagination can carry us away from the mundane, grounding facts of empirical reality. Yet it also says much more. In the modern era, the so-called pyramidologists have studied the Great Pyramid in extraordinary detail, making exact measurements of virtually every chamber, passage, nook, and cranny of this magnificent structure. Arguably, no other single building has been studied in such detail by so many researchers, or had as many books devoted to it. It is beyond doubt—as the founder of modern Egyptology, Sir William Flinders Petrie, demonstrated in the 1880s—that the Great Pyramid demonstrates extraordinary precision and exactness in its alignment (for instance, relative to true north) as well as the measurements of its internal chambers and passages. It would appear to be a finely tuned machine or measuring device on a gargantuan scale. Studying the Great Pyramid firsthand, I have heard the call that many pyramid researchers ultimately come to hear. The exacting details of the Great Pyramid, far from being random or simply the extravagances of a people following a primitive religion, must have a purpose, a meaning, a significance. Hence, the Egyptological convention, which holds that Khufu built the Great Pyramid solely to mark his grave and assure his divinity, fails to convince.

Then there is the problem of context. The evidence attributing the Great Pyramid to the pharaoh Khufu is far from definitive—much less so than most of the standard textbooks would lead one to believe. My research has demonstrated that the Great Sphinx was carved, recarved, and reworked many times and that its origins extend back thousands of years before Khufu and dynastic Egyptians. Could something similar be the case with the Great Pyramid? As we will see, compelling theories that align the pyramid with ancient cosmic events, and other evidence, suggest as much. Then there is the enduring question of how the Great Pyramid could have been constructed with the primitive technology generally attributed to the Old Kingdom Egyptians. Clearly, something we don’t yet understand was going on at Giza. The task of this book is to explore what it was.

In studying to become a scientist, I learned how to look at data, sift it for reliability, and develop the best theoretical explanation for what we know. When I used this approach to look objectively at the Great Sphinx of Giza, I found something much different from what I had been led to expect. In this book, my coauthor, Robert Aquinas McNally, and I will do the same for the Great Pyramid—sift through the facts and ideas attached to this singular monument to distinguish sense from nonsense and assemble the result into a picture as accurate as present knowledge can make it.