Hidden History: Lost Civilizations, Secret Knowledge, and Ancient Mysteries (21 page)

Photograph by Alex lbh (GNU Free Documentation License).

Detail of the Great Pyramid.

The oldest and only survivor of the
Seven Wonders of the Ancient World,
the Great Pyramid at Giza has become
not only a symbol of ancient Egypt but
of the mysterious and unknown itself.
The pyramid stands on the west bank
of the Nile in the necropolis of Giza, a
complex of ancient monuments, which
in pharaonic times was part of the ancient city of Memphis. Today it is a part
of Greater Cairo. In its size and the
quality of its design and construction,
the Pyramid represents the high point
of pyramid building in Egypt.

Egyptologists generally agree that the
pyramid was built around 2650 B.c. as
a tomb for the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu
(Cheops). However, as no burial has
ever been found within the structure,
and no inscriptions located to identify
its function, some researchers have
proposed alternative theories for the
date and function of the Great Pyramid, which still continues to amaze
and confound thousands of years after
its construction.

The Great Pyramid is is the oldest
and largest of the three pyramids on the Giza Necropolis. Southwest lies
the slightly smaller Pyramid of Khafre
(Chephren), one of Khufu's sons, and
the supposed builder of the Great
Sphinx, which lies to the east of his
pyramid. Further to the southwest is
the much smaller Pyramid of
Menkaure, Khafre's son and successor.
The Great Pyramid measures 449.5
feet in height and 750 square feet,
though when it was originally constructed its height was 478 feet. It was
the tallest building on Earth until the
13th century, when the 524 foot tall
spire of Lincoln Cathedral in England
was completed. Missing from the original pyramid structure is the fine white
limestone casing and its gold plated
pyramidion, or capstone, which topped
the monument. The four sides of the
massive pyramid are carefully oriented to the four cardinal points, and
are accurate to within 3 minutes of an
arc. More than 2 million blocks of stone
were used in the construction of the
monument, each weighing more than
2 tons. It has been calculated that the
vast area covered by the Great Pyramid could contain St. Peter's in Rome,
the cathedrals of Florence and Milan,
Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul's in
London combined.

The entrance to the pyramid is on
its north face. Inside, the structure
contains three chambers, connected by
descending and ascending passageways. The lowest of these chambers is
known as the Unfinished Chamber.
This structure was roughly hewn into
the bedrock 98.5 feet below ground
level, and is believed by Egyptologists
to represent the proposed initial location of the burial chamber of King
Khufu, who apparently changed his

mind and had another chamber constructed higher up the pyramid. The
middle chamber is known as the
Queen's Chamber, a name given to the
room in error by the Arabs. The
Queen's Chamber lies exactly midway
between the north and south sides of
the pyramid, and is the smallest of the
three, measuring approximately 18.3
by 17.1 feet, with a pointed roof rising
to a height of about 20 feet. The rough
unfinished floor in the Queen's Chamber has suggested to many researchers that for some unknown reason
work on this room was abandoned before completion.

Located at the heart of the Pyramid is the King's Chamber. This structure is built entirely of granite and
measures 34.5 feet from east to west,
17 feet from north to south, and 19 feet
in height. Near the west wall of the
chamber lies the King's sarcophagus,
supposedly once containing the body
of Khufu, though there is no evidence
that anyone was ever buried in it. The
sarcophagus was hollowed out of a
single piece of Red Aswan granite and
is about 2.5 centimeters wider than
the entrance into the King's Chamber.
Consequently, the sarcophagus must
have been placed in position while the
chamber was being constructed.
Napolean allegedly spent a terrifying
night alone in the King's Chamber in
the late 1790s, a feat duplicated with
similar results by English occultist
Paul Brunton in the 1930s.

The other main feature of the interior of the Great Pyramid is the Grand
Gallery. This passageway was built as
a continuation of the Ascending Corridor and is 152.8 feet long and 27.8 feet
high. It is a stunning architectural achievement and possesses an ingenious corbelled vault, formed by the
gradual inward projection of its polished limestone walls. As yet unexplained and unique features of the
Great Pyramid are the mysterious
shafts, two of which slope upwards out
of both the King's and Queen's chambers. Thought once to be ventilation
shafts, it is now believed that these
narrow passageways had some religious significance. The shafts do appear to be astronomically aligned and
are probably connected with the ancient Egyptian belief that the stars
were inhabited by the gods and the
souls of the dead.

©John Griffiths.

The pyramids of Giza

Recent archaeological discoveries
on the Giza Plateau are shedding
much needed light on the people who
actually built the Great Pyramid. In
1990, investigations led by Secretary
General of Egyptian Antiquities Dr.
Zahi Hawass discovered the tombs of
the Pyramid Builders close to the Pyramids at Giza. These tombs included
the sarcophagus of a man identified by
hieroglyphics as Ny Swt Wsrt, thought

to be the overseer of the pyramid builders' village. A few years later, in an
area near this cemetery, the Giza Plateau Mapping Project, led by archaeologist Mark Lehner, discovered the
site of a vast community of as many as
20,000 people, who had lived in the
area around 2500 B.C. This has been
dubbed "the workers' village" and includes such features as a dormitory or
barracks for up to 2,000 temporary
workers, as well as evidence for copper-working and cooking facilities.

One of the greatest enigmas of the
Great Pyramid is how such a vast engineering project was organized and
accomplished. How were such huge
stone blocks, some weighing more than
40 tons, transported to the site, raised
up, and fitted so precisely into position? Additionally, some of these
stones were brought from Aswan,
620 miles south of Giza. How was this
managed? Egyptologists believe that
the Great Pyramid was constructed
over a period of less than 23 years
(the reign of King Khufu) finishing
around 2560 B.C. There are some clues to construction methods in Egyptian
reliefs from the tomb of the Fourth
Dynasty (c. 2489 B.c.-2345 B.C.) official
Ti in Saqqara, which show teams of
workmen using ropes and sleds to drag
giant obelisks and statues into place.
The question of transporting the
stones, however far, does not seem so
difficult when one considers that the
Nile could have been used to float the
blocks down to Giza. To raise the stones
into position, Egyptologists suggest
that ramps of mud, brick, and rubble
were built on inclined planes. Egyptologist Mark Lehner has hypotheisized
that a spiralling ramp, beginning in an
adjacent stone quarry to the southeast
and continuing around the outside of
the pyramid, could have been used. The
blocks would then have been dragged
up the ramps on sledges to the required
height. The remains of such ramps have
been discovered at the Sinki pyramid
at South Abydos and the Sekhemkhet
pyramid at Saqqara. However, building
a ramp large enough to support the
building of the Great Pyramid would
be almost as massive a task as the
construction of the pyramid itself.

An alternative theory has recently
been proposed by researchers Roumen
V. Mladjov and Ian S. R. Mladjov, and
also by Dick Parry, Professor of Civil
Engineering at Cambridge University.
Their idea originated from inscriptions carved into some of the huge
blocks used in the construction of the
Great Pyramid, which state "This side
up." They reason that this instruction
would be meaningless if the rectangular stone blocks were only meant
to be dragged up ramps. Their ingenious theory is that the stones were
literally rolled up the ramps onto the
pyramid, using purpose-made wooden

devices similar to solid wheels. Evidence for these prototype wheels has
been found in the form of a model of a
wooden rocker, which consists of a
pair of thick boards with curved bottom edges braced with round wooden
bars. This model was found by the English archaeologist Flinders Petrie at
the Mortuary Temple of Hatshepsut
at Deir el-Bahri, on the west bank of
the Nile, opposite Luxor. The purpose
of these devices is uknown, but the
Mladjovs, along with Dick Parry, believe that two semi-circular rockers
could have been attached to the stone
blocks to form, in effect, a solid wheelenabling them to be rolled up a ramp
fairly easily and thus greatly increasing the speed of construction. The one
problem with this theory is that the
blocks used to build the Great Pyramid differed significantly in size,
which would mean that these rocker
devices would only be useful for a limited range of block sizes. Nevertheless, this theory explains-better than
any other put forward so far-how
some of the difficulties of constructing the Great Pyramid could have
been overcome.

Throughout the interior of the
Great Pyramid the walls are completely bare of official inscriptions,
leading many researchers to propose
alternative theories to the accepted
explanation that the building was constructed as a tomb for King Khufu.
However, the presence of graffiti inside the monument does strengthen
the case for an orthodox explanation.
This graffiti has been found on stones
of all five relieving chambers above the
King's Chamber, an area so difficult to
access that the stones are unlikely to
have been inscribed after they had been put in position, as some have proposed.
One important piece of graffiti reads
"Year 17 of Khufu's reign." Another refers to "The friends of Khufu." Nevertheless, though these inscriptions do
provide evidence that Khufu did indeed have some connection with the
pyramid, it is certainly not indisputable
proof that the pyramid originated with
the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh.

There have been many speculative
theories put forward for the purpose
of the Great Pyramid, perhaps the best
known being that suggested by writer
Robert Bauval, who believes that the
three main pyramids at Giza represent
a map on the ground of the three stars
in the belt of the Orion constellation,
with the Nile representing the Milky
Way. Others have seen the Great Pyramid as an astronomical observatory,
an ancient power plant, a Temple of
Initiation (proposed by Theosophist
Madame Blavatsky and many others),
or the legacy of a super race of refugees from the lost continent of
Atlantis. This latter idea was proposed by 20th century psychic and
prophet Edgar Cayce; Cayce also predicted that a Hall of Records of the
Atlantean civilization would be discovered either underneath the Sphinx or
inside the Great Pyramid in 1998. The
idea of hidden chambers containing
vast riches on the scale of Tutankhamun's treasures, or perhaps a hoard
of papyrus rolls containing ancient secrets, has an irresistable allure. In 1993,
the southern shaft that runs up from
the Queen's Chamber was explored by
a small remote control robot equipped
with a video camera, built by German
robotics engineer Rudolph Ganten-
brink. The robot climbed up the shaft
for a distance of 213 feet before its way

was blocked by a small limestone door
with copper handles. The shaft was examined again in 2003, this time by the
Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities, who sent another robot inside and
discovered a further door only 10
inches beyond the first one. The robot
also examined the northern shaft of
the chamber and discovered the same
arrangement of two limestone doors.
What lies behind these mysterious
doors is a question that may possibly
be answered when a new robot, which
is being designed and built by the University of Singapore, examines the
shafts.