Paranormal Studies 313: The Great Pyramid of Giza

“This will be our last class of the year,” Professor Grimes announced. “Our next lecture will be in January. I hope all of you have a very blessed New Year’s Eve.”

“Like that’s going to happen,” Lora grumbled. “New Year’s Eve falls on a Saturday this year. A Saturday! We never have classes on Saturday. What fun is having a holiday on a day that we already have off? It’s a total waste!”

Professor Grimes sighed. “Holidays were not created to provide you with an excuse for skipping class. They are days that are set aside so we can celebrate something that is worth celebrating. For example, Christmas is a day to celebrate the birth of Christ. Easter is a day to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. New Year’s is a day to celebrate the start of a new year that is full of possibilities and hope.”

“Does that mean you’re going to let us out early today?” Dan asked hopefully.

“Absolutely not!” Grimes replied. “Why would I do that? After all, you are paying $15,000 a semester to attend this university. You are taking four classes, which means this class is costing you $3750. Each of our semesters has 15 weeks and this class meets twice a week, so there will only be 30 classes. That means each class is costing you $125. If I let you go home now, without teaching you anything, I would essentially be taking your money and providing you nothing in return. That hardly seems fair.”

“It’s not my money,” Lola commented. “My parents are paying for all this.”

“And I am sure that they appreciate your regular attendance to these classes,” the professor remarked. “What truly disturbs me are the 56 people who decided to not attend today. It makes very little sense to pay so much money for a course and then not bother to show up.”

Dan spoke up. “It makes a whole lot of sense to me. Not attending class is way easier than getting out of bed and everything. I mean, really, we just want our degrees. A passing grade is just as good as an A in my book.”

“Are your peers really that delusional? Do they not realize that if they regularly skip classes they will fail the course, and that in turn will damage their efforts to graduate? But I am getting off topic. In this session, as you will know if you did your assigned reading, we are going to discuss the Great Pyramid of Giza.”

Ashley spoke up. “I thought we were discussing crop circles today!”

“Crop circles? Good heavens, no! That lecture is weeks away. Today is the pyramid.”

“What’s so special about it?” Max asked. “It’s a big piles of stones out in the middle of nowhere. Who cares?”

“It is not in the middle of nowhere. The Great Pyramid is actually on the edge of Cairo. The pictures you’ve seen on TV have been carefully cropped to hide the fact that the pyramid is on the outskirts of a very large city. If you actually go there in person you’ll see what I mean. Most pictures of the Great Pyramid are not very honest. Photographers have used all kinds of tricks to hide the buildings, roads, cars, and bustle that surrounds it. They want you think that it’s a pristine monument out in the middle of an empty desert, but it’s really not.

“More importantly, however, the Great Pyramid is not simply a big pile of stones. It is a remarkable feat of engineering. In fact, it is so remarkable that we would be hard-pressed to reproduce it today, even with space-age technology at our disposal. I would even venture to say that if the Great Pyramid had been destroyed long ago and only existed in legends, archaeologists would reject it out-of-hand as being a ridiculous fairy tale. No one would believe that an ancient race could have built such a staggering structure. The only reason people believe it today is because it’s too big to hide. You can’t just sweep one of the largest buildings ever built under a rug – especially when it’s part of the skyline of a large city.”

“But what’s paranormal about it?” Max asked. “Is it haunted with ghosts or something?”

“That is what you’re going to find out,” Professor Grimes said cheerfully. He turned to his desk, picked up a notepad, and began flipping through its pages. “Let’s start out by going over a few basic facts. The pyramid was built about four thousand years ago. No one really knows when it was built, but people have estimated all kinds of dates. Some say it was built around 2560 BC, while others put it in the 22nd century BC. According to my own calculations, the Great Flood occurred in approximately 2348 BC. Since I do not believe any structure could have survived the Flood, I think the 22nd century BC date is much more likely.”

Max called out from the back of the room. “What makes you think that’s when the Flood happened?”

The professor looked up from his notes. “That is an excellent question, but unfortunately the answer is outside the scope of this lecture. I do discuss that in my Biblical History class, however, so if you are truly interested I would suggest signing up for that course.

“As I was saying, the Great Pyramid was built about four thousand years ago by the ancient Egyptians. It is important to emphasize that there is plenty of evidence that the ancient Egyptians really did build it. If that fact was not so well-established it would be quite natural to assume that aliens were responsible. The structure really is that impressive.”

“But there are lots of pyramids in Egypt,” Lora commented. “It’s not like they only built one!”

“That is not quite true. There are indeed other pyramids, but none of the others are anything like the Great Pyramid of Giza. It would be more accurate to say that this was the first pyramid that was built and the others were all crude copies. The Great Pyramid was built of stone; all other pyramids were built of brick. The Great Pyramid has passages inside; all other pyramids are solid. Most importantly, the other pyramids were build as tombs – or, to be precise, as tombstones, as the actual tomb part was located beneath the pyramid. The Great Pyramid, however, was not a tomb.”

“Wait just a minute!” Max called out. “I thought it was built by Khufu to serve as his tomb.”

The professor shook his head. “That is incorrect. Not only was it not a tomb, but the pyramid was probably not built by Khufu at all. The only reason it was attributed to him is because in the 19th century Colonel Howard Vyse discovered a hieroglyph inside the Great Pyramid that bore Khufu’s name. However, it has been shown that the hieroglyph is almost certainly a forgery, put there by Colonel Vyse himself as a ploy to secure funding. In other words, the one hieroglyph in the entire pyramid is probably a hoax – and although archaeologists hate to admit it, the Khufu story is a hoax as well.

“That issue aside, the pyramid itself bears no indication that it was ever intended to be a tomb. Royal Egyptian tombs are filled with frescoes, hieroglyphs, and artifacts. This pyramid, despite the astonishing energy and precision that was poured into its design, is devoid of all of these things. Moreover, when the pyramid was entered for the first time in 820 AD the diggers discovered that the pyramid’s original entrance was sealed. No one had ever entered the pyramid before them, and yet it was found empty. So we are not dealing with a pyramid that was looted. This pyramid was found intact, but contained no artifacts, body, or writing. There is also the point that what is commonly called the ‘granite sarcophagus’ is actually far too small to house an embalmed, decorated Egyptian corpse.”

“So why is it there?” Ashley asked.

Lora spoke up. “I heard it was the same size as the Ark of the Covenant.”

Professor Grimes shook his head. “I have heard that as well, but that information is incorrect. According to the Bible the Ark of the Covenant measured 45” long by 27” wide by 27” tall. The granite sarcophagus, when measured from the inside, is 78” long by 27” wide by 34” high. Not only are they different sizes, but they are different shapes as well.”

“Oh,” Lora replied. “But what about their volumes? Are they the same?”

“They’re not even close, I’m afraid. The Ark was 32,805 cubic inches. The sarcophagus is 71,604 cubic inches. There is no actual similarity between the two. The Ark would technically fit inside the sarcophagus, but there would be a great deal of space left over.”

“So if it’s not a tomb then what was it?” Ashley asked.

“That is an excellent question, and it has puzzled scholars for centuries. The ancient Jewish historian Josephus, who lived about two thousand years ago, stated that it was built to record the knowledge of the heavens. We’ll get to that a little later, however.

“As I was saying, the Great Pyramid is a remarkable building. Before its exterior casing stones were stolen (which is a topic for another lecture) the pyramid was 480.6 feet high. It contains approximately 2.3 million blocks of stone, which vary in weight from 2.5 metric tonnes to more than 70 metric tonnes. The pyramid held the record for being the tallest building in the world until 1311 AD, when the Lincoln Cathedral in England surpassed it by 45 feet. The mass of the pyramid is estimated to be 5.9 million metric tonnes, and its volume is a little over 88 million cubic feet. By way of comparison, the Empire State Building weighs only 331,000 metric tonnes and has a volume of just 37 million cubic feet.”

“So it’s big,” Max commented. “I get that.”

“It is a great deal more than just big. Let’s stop and think about its construction for a minute. Modern historians claim that the pyramid was built over the course of 20 years by laborers who worked on it during the three months of the year when the Nile was flooding. Three months a year for twenty years comes out to a mere 60 months. If we estimate using 30-day months, that means the pyramid was built in 1800 days. In order to lay 2.3 million blocks of stone in 1800 days you would have to lay 1,278 block per day. If they worked during the daylight hours that would give then 10 hours a day to work, which means they would have to lay 128 blocks per hour, or roughly 2 per minute. Even using modern technology it would be enormously difficult to move a new multi-tonne stone into position every 30 seconds – to say nothing of doing it with the ancient Egyptian’s incredible precision and accuracy.

“And the ancient Egyptians knew a great deal about precision. The multi-tonne casing stones that once covered the pyramid were joined together with seams that were less than 1/50th of an inch, and the stones themselves were within one one-hundredth of an inch of being perfectly straight. Those are incredibly fine tolerances! The 13-acre base of the pyramid is less than one inch away from being perfectly level. The Great Pyramid has been called the most accurately constructed building in the world. I think that is an understatement. It is not just an accurately-constructed building, nor is it simply an impossibly massive building. It is a building that shows tremendous insight into the world at large.

“The faces of the pyramid line up to the points of the compass (pointing to truth north, not magnetic north), with an incredibly small error of three minutes of a degree. It’s possible that even that error is due to the land itself shifting. The pyramid sits on the center of the earth’s land mass, meaning whoever built it had to have an accurate map of the entire globe. If you multiply the mass of the pyramid by 1000 trillion you get the mass of the Earth, which is estimated to be 6.0 x 1024 kilograms.”

“How did they figure that out?” Ashley asked.

“Simple Newtonian physics,” the professor explained. “The equation isn’t that difficult. If you know the gravitational constant and the radius of the Earth you can just plug in the numbers and solve.”

“But how did the Egyptians know about Newtonian physics?”

“That is an excellent question! Apparently whoever built the pyramid was aware of the radius of the Earth, had an accurate map of the planet, knew the gravitational constant, and had a good grasp of Newtonian physics. It also appears they knew a great deal more than that. If you take the circumference of the pyramid and divide that by twice its height, you get 3.14159 – a value of pi that is accurate to six places. That’s quite remarkable when you stop and realize that that level of accuracy was not surpassed until the 15th century. Even the Greeks were only able to arrive at a value of 3.1416.”

“That’s pretty close,” Ashley said.

“Yes it is – but it took nearly 1300 years to get a more accurate number than that. Yet the ancient Egyptians had a more precise approximation of pi long before the Greek civilization even existed.”

Max spoke up. “So let me get this straight. You’re saying that the ancient Egyptians were more advanced than the ancient Greeks?”

“I think that is a fair statement. The Greeks were quite brilliant but they never produced anything nearly as massive or impressive as the Great Pyramid. When you add in the fact that the ancient Egyptians built something that lasted for four millennia, it becomes even more impressive.”

“I still don’t see what this has to do with the paranormal, though.”

Professor Grimes put his notes back on his desk. “Let’s lay aside for the moment all of the evidence that demonstrates that the ancient Egyptians were not actually primitive at all. We’ll set aside their amazing knowledge of physics, topography, mathematics, and so forth, and concentrate on just one thing: the mind-boggling feat of stacking 2.3 million really large blocks in a very short amount of time. That is something we would be hard-pressed to do today, even using space-age technology! How did these people manage to position one new stone every thirty seconds? If you assume that the pyramid was built in just 3 to 5 years instead of 20 then the problems become much worse. Even if the pyramid showed absolutely zero knowledge of pi, physics, or anything else, you are still faced with the question of how they managed to build it in the first place.”

Ashley spoke up. “I still don’t get why it was built. If it’s not a tomb then why did they bother?”

“Quite so! But, as I was saying, the question of how the pyramid was constructed has been a very difficult one to solve. The standard answer is that they just used a lot of slave labor – which is really not an answer at all. You simply cannot move a 100,000 pound block of stone by hand, and even if you could you certainly can’t move them into place at a rate of two per minute. That is so silly that it’s laughable. The modern idea that the Great Pyramid was built by a bunch of slaves who pushed giant stones the size of houses up ramps is impractical, bogus, and entirely wrong.

“From there the theories get even more bizarre. Some people have suggested that sound waves were used to magically levitate the stones into place. Others have said that perhaps aliens were involved.”

Max spoke up. “Is this where the paranormal stuff comes in?”

Professor Grimes smiled. “For many people, yes. They claim that the Great Pyramid must have a paranormal explanation, for there is simply no other way to explain its construction. I am here to tell you that this is not the case. The secret behind the pyramid’s construction is actually quite simple: the stones were poured.”

“They were what?” Ashley asked.

“They were poured, like concrete. The stones are artificial, just like the sidewalks outside. Oh, they weren’t all poured. Some of them really were quarried. But quite a lot of them aren’t real. This fact came to light when Jospeh Davidovits used x-ray diffraction to analyze the stones and found air bubbles in them. Real stones – stones taken from the same quarry the ancient Egyptians used – don’t have air bubbles. The Egyptians didn’t carve stones, float them down river for miles, and then drag them up the side of the pyramid. They just poured them.

“Interestingly, history records that ancient Egypt did have the technology to do this. Pliny the Elder reported that they used this ability to make artificial stone vases.”

Lora spoke up. “Seriously? That’s not nearly as impressive. I mean, c’mon, we could do that. How is that paranormal?”

“It’s not paranormal at all. As I said in our very first session, this class is an investigation into paranormal claims. Some claims will be found true, while others will be found false. As interesting as it would be for the pyramids to have been built by space aliens, I am afraid that’s simply not how it was done. The reality is that the secret to their construction is rather mundane. Now, I do not want put down the ancient Egyptians in any way. What they did was brilliant, and the Great Pyramid is still a magnificent achievement. But it is not a paranormal one.

“Does that mean we’re done?” Dan asked.

“No, not quite. There is one other paranormal aspect to the Great Pyramid that I’d like to investigate. We’ve explored how the pyramid was built and demonstrated that, while its construction is impressive, it was not done using magic. Now it’s time to turn to another subject: why was the pyramid built? As I said earlier, despite what people may try to tell you, it was definitely not a tomb.

“If you think about it, it’s rather amazing that we have to ask this question at all! Here we have one of the most massive buildings on Earth, and yet we don’t know why it was built. You would think this would be an easy question to answer, but it’s not. I’ve heard many theories over the years, but all of them have problems. For example, it’s quite possible that Josephus was right, and the Great Pyramid was simply Egypt’s way of demonstrating that they were a world power. They may have built the pyramid to show off their advanced technology, and perhaps they encoded within it their extensive knowledge of physics, geography, and mathematics just to show off. This may be all the pyramid was meant to be. It’s worth noting that before the finishing stones were stolen from it the pyramid could be seen from a great many miles away – it was that good at reflecting the sun. If they wanted to build something that said ‘Look how amazing we are!’ then the Great Pyramid does a pretty spectacular job.

“The problem I have with that theory is that it doesn’t explain the interior of the pyramid. If the Great Pyramid was just a vanity project then there’s no need to even have an interior. All of the other pyramids in Egypt are solid; there’s no reason why this one couldn’t have been solid as well. Yet it is not solid, and there are chambers inside it. Besides, if the Egyptians just wanted to brag about their knowledge they could have covered its interior with hieroglyphics, just as they did in tombs – but they didn’t. They could have buried someone inside it, or stored amazing artifacts of antiquity and wonder – but they chose not to. Nor are there any signs that the pyramid was left half-finished or was somehow interrupted before it was completed. The exterior of the pyramid was designed with incredible precision and accuracy, which makes it extremely likely that the pyramid’s interior was shown that same level of care. It must have meant something. Take the so-called ‘sarcophagus’, for example – it’s too large to fit through any of the corridors, so it must have been placed there while the pyramid was still being built. Someone wanted it to be there and planned accordingly. But why? What purpose does it serve?”

“Is this where the paranormal stuff comes in?” Ashley asked.

Professor Grimes smiled. “For some people, yes. Since there is no natural explanation – or, at least, not one that anyone has discovered – some begin to look for supernatural explanations. There is one theory in particular that seems to be spreading rapidly, and I’d like to take a moment to address it.

“There is only one way to enter the Great Pyramid, and that is through a passageway on the north-facing side. On one day in history that passageway lined up with the north star. That happened in 2141 BC, and it will not happen again for another 26,000 years. The reason people care about this is because they’ve discovered that if they take the dimensions of the interior of the pyramid and convert them into Pyramid Inches (which are said to be 1/25th of a cubit, or 1.00106 British inches), then they find something interesting.”

“Hold on,” Max said. “Where does the Pyramid Inch come from?”

“It was actually derived from the pyramid itself,” Professor Grimes explained. “Someone discovered that if you analyze the pyramid’s dimensions using that particular unit then all the numbers become round numbers. They therefore speculate that that was the unit that was used to build the pyramid. As far as I’ve been able to determine, no past civilization has ever actually used that unit of measurement.

“Anyway, the theory is that pyramid inches inside the pyramid correspond to years. For example, if you walk into the pyramid and keep going down until you reach the ascending passage, you will have traveled 688 pyramid inches. 688 years after 2141 BC is 1453 BC, which is the approximate date of the Exodus. If you take the ascending passage and keep going up until you reach the grand galley, you will have traveled another 1485 inches. 1485 years after 1453 BC is 33 AD, which is the approximate date of the Crucifixion. If you then keep on going through the galley until you reach its end, you will have traveled another 1881 inches. 1881 years after 33 AD is 1914 AD, the start of World War I.”

“That’s amazing!” Ashley said.

“Yes, it certainly is. If you stop there then it would appear that we have our answer. The exterior of the pyramid was built to demonstrate the Egyptian’s knowledge of the Earth, and the interior showed their mastery over time. They knew all about the great moments of history long before they ever happened, and they encoded this knowledge within the pyramid.”

Max spoke up. “That’s preposterous!”

“But the math works,” Lora protested.

“I don’t care. It’s still crazy! There’s no way they could have known all those things.”

Professor Grimes nodded. “You’re quite right – it is preposterous. It’s true that if you stop there the theory looks pretty convincing. However, if you keep on going then the theory falls apart. The interior of the pyramid does not stop at the end of the grand galley. You can keep going up and down the passages, but the rest of the dates appear to be random. For example, if you go down the passageway instead of going up to the grand galley, you will eventually reach a lower level. That date corresponds to 1521. Martin Luther was excommunicated by the Pope that year, but that’s about it. Some have claimed that that’s when Luther wrote his 95 theses, but that’s incorrect. He actually nailed them to the door of the Castle Church of Whittenberg on October 31, 1517.

“If you don’t enter the grand galley and instead walk off to the Queen’s Chamber, its entrance corresponds to 1979. Nothing of any great historical significance happened that year – certainly nothing on par with the start of World War I. The end of the Queen’s Chamber corresponds to 2979, making the room 1000 years wide. Needless to say, the millennial reign of Christ did not begin in 1979.”

“This theory is sounding pretty busted,” Max commented.

“You are absolutely right, and there’s an important lesson here. When examining a case it is very important to not stop too soon. If we had only looked at the initial results of the date hypothesis it would have been easy to conclude that it was correct. However, by testing it further we demonstrated that it had very serious problems. It is vital to press on in your analysis until every last piece of ground has been covered. Stopping too soon could leave critical facts hidden – facts that might change your outlook on a story.

“What this means is that we simply don’t know why the Great Pyramid was built. Sadly, it is entirely possible that we will never know. History has a way of obscuring the truth, and after enough time has passed even well-known facts can be entirely lost. It is possible to regain scientific knowledge, but once historical facts are gone they are usually gone for good.”

“Unless someone builds a time machine,” Lora commented.

Professor Grimes smiled. “That is a possibility that we may explore in a future class. For now it looks like our time is up, so I will let you go. I hope you have a great weekend and a very blessed New Year!”