The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids (3 page)

Lepre’s account of the discovery of this phenomenon is not quite accurate since, during the equinox of March 21, 1934, French Egyptologist André Pochan had photographed the south side of the Great Pyramid, where he observed that the western side (triangle) of the pyramid’s southern face was lighter than the opposite eastern triangle. Pochan believed that there was a clear purpose for this phenomenon, regarding it as a marker for the equinoxes. Pochan’s discovery was published in a communication to the Institute of Egypt in September 1935. Some five years later the famous aerial photograph of this phenomenon was taken by Groves.

Certainly before 1940 there were very few (if any) aerial photographs of the Great Pyramid that allowed this peculiar feature of the structure to be observed. Nevertheless, contrary to what Lepre
has stated in his book, this feature of the Great Pyramid can indeed
be observed from the ground under favorable lighting conditions, as
Pochan’s photos have shown and as I could now observe for myself.
There it was—the southern face of the Great Pyramid seemingly
split into two halves due to the different shades of light cast from
the sun rising due east, sideways onto the ever-so-slightly indented
(southern) slope of the pyramid. And though it is often difficult to
observe this peculiar phenomenon of the pyramid throughout the
year, the slightly inward-leaning concave faces of the pyramid that
bring about this astronomical event are physical features that are most
certainly measurable, as noted by pioneering Egyptologist Sir William
Matthew Flinders Petrie, whom many regard as the father of modern
Egyptology. He writes, “I continually observed that the courses of the
core had dips of as much as ½° to 1°.”
²

Also contrary to what Lepre writes, there is in fact one other
pyramid—the Pyramid of Menkaure (G3) at Giza—that also clearly
exhibits this peculiar eight-sided feature. However, of the 138 or so
known pyramids in Egypt today, these are the only two pyramids
(figure 1.2) that clearly demonstrate these peculiar concave faces,
and, suffice it to say, it is a feature of these pyramids that conventional
Egyptology struggles to reasonably explain. What could this feature
mean, and why do we find it only in the largest and smallest
of the main pyramids at Giza? Why not also in the middle pyramid
of Khafre (G2) or in the other giant pyramids at Abu Roash, Saqqara,
Meidum, or Dahshur?

Figure 1.2. The concave slopes of G1 (right) and G3

The precision with which these indented slopes were executed on the four faces of these two pyramids demonstrates that they were clearly intended from the outset in the design of the pyramids, and the considerable additional effort required to construct them implies that they were integral to the pyramid’s design right from the outset and were clearly designed to serve some very specific purpose.

Certainly designing the Great Pyramid with these slightly inward-sloping elevations means that it can function as an effective equinoctial marker (as Pochan suggested), essentially marking when day and night are of equal length, when the days will become longer and the nights shorter, and, of course, vice versa on the autumnal equinox. And it stands to reason that for the pyramid to successfully function as an equinoctial “clock,” it would be imperative for the builders to ensure that the structure was perfectly aligned to the cardinal directions, otherwise this phenomenon would not appear exactly on the equinox. In this regard it is no surprise to find that the Great Pyramid is one of the most accurately aligned structures in the world, being only three-sixtieths of one degree from being perfectly aligned to the cardinal directions, an alignment error that is smaller than that of the Greenwich Observatory.

But there is a problem with this idea of marking the equinoxes. If this was indeed the intent of the builders, then to do such requires only
one
structure with these concave faces. So why did the builders opt to make their construction issues doubly difficult by building
two
pyramids at Giza with these concave faces when, as stated, one such structure would have sufficed? Or is it perhaps the case that some other underlying rationale is involved here to explain the decision to build
two
eight-sided pyramids? It was the answer to this particular question that would ultimately lead me to a breakthrough in the understanding of these peculiar features built into these two pyramids, and it was an answer that has the potential to change everything we think we know about the builders of these ancient monuments and, indeed, why they built them.

There also are hints from antiquity that the eight-sided nature of these two pyramids at Giza was known then and that there was some significance attached to them. Curiously, if we imagine this eight-sided pyramid flattened onto the ground, it presents to us the form of a Templar Cross, an ancient symbol of which the eminent 32nd-Degree Freemason Frank C. Higgins tells us:

The characteristic crosses of the Knights Templar, which are faithfully reproduced by the modern Masonic fraternity, are not Calvary crosses, or the type signifying the supreme drama of Christian faith, but four-fold triangles joined at the apexes, the same being identical with a form highly symbolic throughout the ancient East from a period as remote as several thousand years before Christ. They are shown in company with representations of the sun, moon and stars and various zodiacal signs suspended from the necks of the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian monarchs. They are in fact, flattened pyramids and possess the same significance.
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It seems then that the Templar Cross (figure 1.3) depicting the eight-sided pyramid suggests that knowledge of the concavities of the Great Pyramid had been observed long ago and also that some significance was known to have been attributed to these curious features. Why else would Higgins tell us “they [Templar Crosses] are in fact, flattened pyramids and possess the same significance”?

But what significance?

It was a question I would revisit time and time again, seeking an answer. What was abundantly clear to me was that the designers and builders must have placed these peculiar features into these two pyramids for a very specific reason for, in so doing, they were going out of their way to make the construction of these two pyramids so much more difficult for themselves. Why build a complex eight-sided structure when a four-sided pyramid would have been so much simpler? These were clearly no accidents of design. There
had
to be a reason for them.

Figure 1.3. The Templar Cross

As the sun rose ever higher above and around the eastern horizon, casting more light uniformly onto the southern slope of the Great Pyramid, the two different triangular shadows gradually merged into one, removing the split-face effect from its southern elevation and returning the structure to the conventional four-sided pyramid we are familiar with. But I had witnessed this strange phenomenon with my own eyes and was thrilled at having done so. Having read so much about this effect in numerous books and having puzzled over its purpose for so long, this curious effect was now
real
to me and not merely some abstract concept that bland words on a page struggled to properly convey. The phenomenon really did exist, and, as far as I was concerned, these subtle and inexplicable features on the four sides of these two pyramids at Giza presented a clue to something of great import, a clue that I believed might hold the key to uncovering the location of the legendary hidden chamber of Osiris, a secret vault that a number of ancient texts (Egyptian, Greek, and Roman) suggested had been buried in remote antiquity and that legend further tells us holds within it the “wisdom of Osiris.”

WHISPERS OF THE CHAMBER

The idea that there is a hidden chamber preserving some form of high wisdom passed down from remote antiquity is as old as Egypt itself, and countless numbers of individuals and groups have sought to discover and prove the existence of such a chamber for almost as long—even into modern times. Understandably, most of the searching for hidden chambers that has taken place—especially in recent times—has focused on the Giza pyramid complex and the area around the Sphinx, much of it driven by the “readings” of the so-called Sleeping Prophet, Edgar Cayce, who in 1932 during one of his readings prophesied, “With the storehouse, or record house (where the records are still to be uncovered), there is a chamber or passage from the right forepaw [of the Sphinx] to this entrance of the record chamber, or record tomb. This may not be entered without an understanding.”
⁴

Of course, had Cayce’s writings been the only source suggesting the existence of a hidden chamber containing ancient records, then the very idea that such might actually be real would seem to exist more in the realm of fantasy than in any actual possibility, and for anyone to embark on a quest to find such a hidden chamber on such a premise would, naturally, be considered something of a romantic, crazy, and somewhat forlorn dream. However, placing Cayce’s unproven “prophecies” aside, we can turn to a number of ancient sources that present us with tantalizing hints as to the presence of a hidden vault somewhere at Giza (or close by), and furthermore, some of these ancient sources also hint as to why it was deemed necessary to create such a secret chamber. As author and researcher Joseph Robert Jochmans explains:

In the Corpus Hermeticum, a body of treatises compiled from older materials toward the beginning of the Christian era, we find in one of these works, the
Virgin of the World,
the following:

“The sacred symbols of the cosmic elements, the secrets of Osiris, were hidden carefully. Hermes (the Greek equivalent to the ancient Egyptian god, Thoth), before his return to Heaven, invoked a spell on them, and said, O holy books which have been made by my immortal hands, by incorruption’s magic spell remain free from decay throughout eternity and incorrupt by time. Become unseeable, unfindable, from everyone whose foot shall tread the plains of this land, until old Heaven shall bring instruments for you, whom the Creator shall call His souls. Thus spake he, and laying the spells on them by means of his works, he shut them safe away in their rooms. And long has been the time since they were hid away.”

The Roman Marcellinus, in the 4th century, stated: “There are certain subterranean galleries and passages full of windings beneath the pyramids which, it is said, the adepts in the ancient rites (knowing that the flood was coming, and fearing that the memory of the sacred ceremonies would be obliterated), constructed vaults in various places, mining them out of the ground with great labor. . . .”

In similar fashion, the tenth century Coptic chronicler Al Masudi observed from earlier accounts that in the area of the Sphinx were subterranean doorways to the Giza monuments: “One entered the pyramid through a vaulted underground passage 100 cubits or more long; each pyramid had such a door and entry.”

In later centuries, the medieval Arab chronicler Firouzabadi noted that the chambers of the Sphinx were constructed at the same time as the Great Pyramid: “The Pyramid was erected by Esdris (Hermes or Thoth), to preserve there the sciences, to prevent their destruction. And also, the first priests, by observations of the stars, preserved records of medicine, magic and talismans elsewhere.” Likewise, Ibn Abd Alhokim, who told the story of the antediluvian king Salhouk’s dream of the Flood and his building of the Pyramid to save wisdom, also recounted that Salhouk dug a vault nearby the Pyramid, filling it with all manners of works on mathematics, astronomy and physics: “And they built gates (entrances) of it forty cubits underground, with foundations of massive stones from the Ethiopians, and fastened them together with lead and iron. When Salhouk was finished, he covered it with colored marble from top to bottom and he appointed a solemn festival, at which were present all the inhabitants of the kingdom.”

The Jewish historian Josephus recorded further that Enoch built an underground temple of nine vaults, one beneath the other, placing within tablets of gold. His son, Methuselah, also worked on the project, putting in the brick walls of the vaults according to his father’s plan. As Manly P. Hall noted, the Freemasons predict that someday a man will locate this buried vault.
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The early Arab chronicles further tell us
why
the ancient Egyptians deemed it necessary to build their monumental pyramids.

There was a king named Surid, the son of Sahaloe, 300 years before the Deluge, who dreamed one night that he saw the earth overturned with its inhabitants, the men cast down on their faces, the stars falling out of the heavens, and striking one against the other, and making horrid and dreadful cries as they fell. He thereupon awoke much troubled. A year after he dreamed again that he saw the fixed stars come down to the earth in the form of white birds, which carried men away, and cast them between two great mountains, which almost joined together and covered them; and then the bright, shining stars became dark and were eclipsed. Next morning he ordered all the princes of the priests, and magicians of all the provinces of Egypt, to meet together; which they did to the number of 130 priests and soothsayers, with whom he went and related to them his dream.

Among others, the priest Aclimon, who was the greatest of all, and resided chiefly in the king’s Court, said thus to him:—I myself had a dream about a year ago which frightened me very much, and which I have not revealed to anyone. I dreamed, said the priest, that I was with your Majesty on the top of the mountain of fire, which is in the midst of Emosos, and that I saw the heaven sink down below its ordinary situation, so that it was near the crown of our heads, covering and surrounding us, like a great basin turned upside down; that the stars were intermingled among men in diverse figures; that the people implored your Majesty’s succor, and ran to you in multitudes as their refuge; that you lifted up your hands above your head, and endeavored to thrust back the heaven, and keep it from coming down so low; and that I, seeing what your Majesty did, did also the same. While we were in that posture, extremely affrighted, I thought we saw a certain part of heaven opening, and a bright light coming out of it; that afterwards the sun rose out of the same place, and we began to implore his assistance; whereupon he said thus to us: “The heaven will return to its ordinary situation when I shall have performed three hundred courses.” I thereupon awaked extremely affrighted.

The priest having thus spoken, the king commanded them to take the height of the stars, and to consider what accident they portended. Whereupon they declared that they promised first the Deluge, and after that fire. Then he commanded pyramids should be built, that they might remove and secure in them what was of most esteem in their treasuries, with the bodies of the kings, and their wealth, and the aromatic roots which served them, and that they should write their wisdom upon them, that the violence of the water might not destroy it.
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In a similar vein, world-renowned Egyptologist Mark Lehner, Ph.D., writes:

A Coptic legend tells of King Surid who lived three centuries before the flood. His dreams foretold future chaos and only those who joined the Lord of the Boat would escape. . . . Surid may be a corruption of Suphis, a late form of Khufu, his city, Amsus, is Memphis and the Lord of the Boat is an amalgam of Noah’s Ark and the barque of the sun god.

Another popular Arab legend maintained that the Great Pyramid was the tomb of Hermes—the Greek counterpart of the Egyptian Thoth—who, like Surid, built pyramids to hide literature and science from the uninitiated and preserve them through the flood. . . .

Embellishments of the Arab legends abounded, including of the Surid story. The 15th century historian al-Maqrizi reported that the king decorated the walls and the ceilings of his pyramid chambers with representations of the stars and planets and all the sciences, and placed treasures within such. . . . Maqrizi also says that, according to the Copts, Surid was buried in the pyramid surrounded by all his possessions. If Surid is a memory of Khufu, this may not be so far from the truth.
⁷

While parts of these Arab legends are presented in the form of a dream, it is important to note that the king (Surid) related this dream to his advisors and, having so done, he then ordered that they “take the height of the stars.” Upon doing this it is clear that the astronomer-priests found something unusual and troublesome in the heavens as they advise the king that three hundred years hence the land will be devastated by a great deluge and fire (drought). This activity of the priests in measuring the height of the stars was not a part of the king’s dream; the king ordered this to be done
afterward
. And it was only upon hearing this deeply troublesome news of deluge and drought from his astronomer-priests that the king then ordered the construction of the pyramids to safeguard in them that which was of most esteem in the kingdom. Again, the deluge and fire and the subsequent order to construct the pyramids were not part of the king’s original dream.

But why should parts of this Arab legend be relayed in the form of the “king’s dream”? To people of the ancient world dreams were very motivational; the king certainly took them seriously as it was believed that dreams were in fact “messages from the gods.” As such dreams (or messages from the gods) given to the king acted in a sense to confer the “power of the gods” on the king himself. For this reason this story of Surid’s dream may have come down to us in this form; the vehicle of relating the story via the “king’s dream” demonstrates the power of the king, that the king himself was a god and possessed the power of the gods, that through his dreams he received their “messages.” In short, through these “dreams” the king possessed the power of the gods. We are reminded here, of course, of the Bible story of Joseph interpreting the pharaoh’s dream, and upon hearing Joseph’s interpretation of his dream, the Pharaoh then ordered the construction of large granaries—all on the basis of a dream, a “message from the gods.”

In a similar vein, researcher and author Gary Osborn writes:

The Roman historian Ammianus Marcellinus (born circa 330 AD) speculated that the pyramids were vaults containing ancient wisdom.

Then there’s the journals of a Moroccan named Ibn Battuta. Between 1325 and 1355 Battuta trekked back-and-forth through the lands of Islam. Apparently he claims to have travelled more than 75,000 miles by foot and on camel. He learned of many things from the wise men and mystics he met while travelling, and wrote everything down in his journal. He especially wrote of a man named Hermes Trismegistus whose wisdom made him equatable with the god Thoth, and whom Battuta learned was also the Hebrew Enoch.

This man, he writes, who “having ascertained from the appearance of the stars that the deluge would take place, built the pyramids to contain books of science and knowledge, and other matters worth preserving from oblivion and ruin.”

Then there’s Sir John Mandeville. His book “The Travels” (c. 1366) included descriptions of the pyramids, which the author suggests were the “granaries of Joseph”:

“And now also I shall speak of another thing that is beyond Babylon, above the flood of the Nile, toward the desert between Africa and Egypt; that is to say, of the garners [granaries] of Joseph, that he let make for to keep the grains for the peril of the dear years. And they be made of stone, full well made of masons’ craft; of which two be marvelously great and high, and the other ne be not so great. And every garner hath a gate for to enter within, a little high from the earth; for the land is wasted and fallen since the garners were made. And within they be all full of serpents. And above the garners without be many scriptures of diverse languages. And some men say, that they be sepulchers of great lords, that were sometime, but that is not true, for all the common rumor and speech is of all the people there, both far and near, that they be the garners of Joseph; and so find they in their scriptures, and in their chronicles. On the other part, if they were sepulchers, they should not be void within, ne they should have no gates for to enter within; for ye may well know, that tombs and sepulchers be not made of such greatness, nor of such highness; wherefore it is not to believe, that they be tombs or sepulchers.”

George Sandys, (1578–1644) who had entered Oxford in 1589, was the youngest of the seven sons of Edwin Sandys, the former Bishop of London and Archbishop of York. The Sandys lineage has a colorful past—many of them maintaining high-standing positions in both state religion and politics.

Nothing more is known of George Sandys until 1610, when seeking adventure, he left England on a grand tour of the east, spending a year in Turkey, Palestine and Egypt. Sandys was one of the first educated Europeans to enter the Great Pyramid, remarking that, “contrary to popular opinion, the pyramids are the tombs of kings.”

It seems that this [issue] was being argued even then and that popular opinion at the time was that the pyramids were NOT tombs.
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Of this anticipated deluge, the ancient Egyptians themselves tell us this:

Then Thoth, being the tongue of the Great God declares that, acting for the Lord Tem, he is going to make a Flood. He says: “I am going to blot out everything that I have made. This Earth shall enter into (i.e., be absorbed in) the watery abyss of Nu (or Nunu) by means of a raging flood, and will become even as it was in primeval time. I myself shall remain together with Osiris, but I shall transform myself into a small serpent, which can be neither comprehended nor seen.” Budge explains “. . . one day the Nile will rise and cover all Egypt with water, and drown the whole country; then, as in the beginning, there will be nothing to be seen except water.”
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