Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010)

Influential Explorations to the Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt (Pyramid of Cheops/Khufu); Bonaparte, Newton, Alexander. NICKLAS B. FAILLA (2010) FRCC

ABSTRACT: The Great Pyramid at Giza is a remarkably predominating figure on an international landscape. Mathematicians, Geophysicist, Egyptologists and other experts have historically embarked on a series of explorations in hopes of unravelling the mysteries of the massive Pyramid structures at the Giza complex. Legendary figures such as Sir Isaac Newton, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great, and others notable figures personally traveled to Egypt in order to further investigate these wonders. From the massive 70 ton bricks used in construction, to secretly hidden cartouches, this paper gives a review on influential figures and notable features regarding the Great Pyramid of Giza.

GIZA COMPLEX The Giza complex near Cairo in Egypt consists of six pyramids, three of these pyramids are phenomenally larger than the others. In fact, these six pyramids contain enough stone blocks to build an elaborate wall around the entire country of France, three meters high and one meter thick. Impressively, the three Giza pyramids contain more stone than all of the cathedrals, churches and chapels in England built within the last two-thousand years (Tompkins, 1971 pp11

Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) 49). Although similar looking to the naked eye, through research and analysis it is clear that these pyramids are all very different, little about them is actually the same. One of the three pyramids of particular interest is the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

CHEOPS A landmass of nearly eight city blocks is consumed by the Pyramid of Cheops and this massive structure contains approximately 2.5 million massive stone bricks, each of these bricks weighs between about 2.3 to 70 tons (Spielvogel, The Great Pyramid of Cheops/Giza/Khufu

2006). The base of this single structure

covers an area the equivalent of approximately eight city blocks, the entire building weighs over six million tons (Loxton, 2006), and the sides cover an area of nearly twenty-two acres. This colossal monument is the single largest building in existence today (Tompkins, 1971 p4). The Descending Passage in the Great Pyramid of Cheops is 3.5 feet wide by 3’11” high and slopes at an angle of 26 degrees. This passage leads downward to a room known as the “pit” containing a well and another passage that continues down 50 feet into what appears to be an unfinished room and nothing more. It was only when an explorer named Al Mamun brought a crewto ascended the passage in ca 820 A.D. that they noticed granite plugs from the ceiling, which differed from the stones around them. Al Mamun’s crew excavated around the granite stones for about 16 feet, revealing another passage approximately 4 feet wide, this passage is known today as the Ascending Passage. Sloping upward at a 26 degree angle, the Ascending

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) Passage continued 150 feet before leveling out and revealing several more pathways. These included a well in the floor, a level passageway straight ahead, and an inclined gallery that sloped upward (Tompkins, 1971 pp8-12). The level passageway led to a room crowned with a gabled roof made of limestone and walls encrusted with salt up to ½ inch thick. At the time of excavation, it was customary for Arab women to have tombs with gabled roofs, so the Arab excavation party named this area the Queen’s Chamber. The Queen’s Chamber was about 18 feet long and was nearly square, other than a niche in the wall, the chamber was originally 3’5” deep. Although the Arabs and many other research parties have tunneled several yards into this niche, nothing else of note was found here (Tompkins, 1971 pp8-12). Over time, both nature and humans have caused the weathering of the Great Pyramid of Cheops. The legend claiming that a smooth covering of polished limestone once enclosed the pyramid still lives today, thanks to Herodotus, a classical author who wrote of this account ca. 44 BCE. A 13th century Historian, named Abd-al-Latif, also described the Great Pyramids display of inscriptions, with so many unintelligible characters that they would have filled volumes of pages. Unfortunately, some twenty-two acres of one-hundred inch thick purelimestone covering was removed from the Great Pyramid. Multiple bridges were built, specifically to drag the stones from the Pyramid to Cairo, for construction on mosques and palaces. D’Anglure, a 14th century French Baron, recounts seeing the “great casing stones which covered these granaries (pyramids)…tumbled into the valley” (Tompkins, 1971 pp2-18). Al Mamun, famous for his exploration of the Great Pyramid, is also responsible for creating a second entrance into the pyramid about 49 feet above the base of the pyramid and below the original passage that was secretly concealed and hard to locate. Using fire and cold

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) vinegar, Al Mamun cracked the stones and used battering rams to tunnel over 100 feet into the side of the Pyramid. This created what is now known as Al Mamun’s Entrance, which connects to the Descending Passage (Tompkins, 1971 pp8-10). Back out of the Queen’s Chamber and just above the level passageway, another 26degree incline opens into the 157’ Grand Gallery. Rising vertically in seven courses of polished limestone, the walls of the Grand Gallery reach 28 feet high and taper 3 inches per course, narrowing the gallery from 62 inches at its base, to 41 inches at the top. The ramps on either side of the Grand Gallery are 2 feet high, 18 inches wide and lined with a series of notches. A well lies at its base, between the Queen‘s Chamber and the Ascending Passage in the west wall of the Grand Gallery. The well drops about 60 feet deep until it opens up into a larger chamber, or cavern, which eventually leads back down to the Descending Passage (Tompkins, 1971 pp1327). It was not until the eighteenth century that explorer Nathaniel Davison discovered another small passage in the Grand Gallery. With his torch, Davison located a small 2-foot wide passage at the apex of the gallery walls. Using a series of ladders, he was able to enter the batdung filled passage that led to a extremely shallow and empty area, just above the King’s Chamber, it is here that Davison inscribed his name, declaring it Davison’s Chamber (Tompkins, 1971 p35). Explorer Howard Vice would later excavate above Davison’s Chamber and reveal a series of four more similar compartments, each one just above another. Vice’s excavations eventually led to a most remarkable discovery (Tompkins, 1971 pp57-68); on the inner walls of the chambers above Davison‘s Chamber, a series of hieroglyphics and cartouches were found, upside down and daubed in red paint. By using the Rosetta Stone, Egyptologists now believe that one of the cartouches belonged to a Pharaoh of the Forth Dynasty known as Khufu, also known

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) by the Greeks as Cheops. This evidence is the Cheops Pyramid derives its alternative name as the Great Pyramid of Khufu (Tompkins, 1971 pp64-66). The validity of this hieroglyph has been in question however, and the validity of the red painted cartouche requires further investigation. At the top of the Grand Gallery looms a solid stone, raised 3 feet high and 6 feet wide, creating the entrance to another tunnel only 41 inches high. With a relatively brief crawl through and beyond this tunnel, the Antechamber (‘room before’) awaits. Beyond the Antechamber, more red-granite finely Interior view of the Great Pyramid.

jointed blocks form a square room, the Kings

Chamber. The Arabs had long built flat ceilings for the tombs of men and not women, which is where they derived the name of The King’s Chamber upon its discovery (Tompkins, 1971 pp1315). Although this room contained nothing more than an empty sarcophagus and a flat ceiling, Colonel Howard-Vyse of England would later “consider [that] the workmanship displayed in the King‘s Chamber, in the pavement and the casing stones, is perfectly unrivaled” (Tompkins, 1971 pp67-68). The large and highly polished sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber measures 2’3” wide, 3’ deep and 6’6” long and is made of fine dark-chocolate colored granite, whose granules of mica, quartz and feldspar are much harder than even the chamber walls. The Arab explorers were astonished when they found the sarcophagus completely empty, with no trace of any corpse. Remarkably, little evidence except minor ridges near the top edge of the sarcophagus are the only indications that any lid may have ever sat atop this masterpiece (Tompkins, 1971 p17).

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) EXPEDITIONS These initial excavations sparked what would become a series of explorations by experts from all walks of life, coming to discover the mysteries of the Pyramids. Most predominate were mathematicians, geophysicist, technicians, astronomers, newly found Egyptologists, and even many legendary people such as Sir Isaac Newton and Napoleon Bonaparte, as well as Alexander the Great, all came to investigate these ancient ruins (Tompkins, 1971 p49). Mathematician Piazzi Smyth confirmed Taylor’s theory that the height of the Pyramid was designed in relation to the perimeter of its base, as the radius of a circle relates to its circumference. By equating certain measurements of the proportional rise of the Pyramid’s exterior and converting the result into British miles, Smyth also calculated the astonishing result of 91,840 miles, just about equivalent to the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Smyth received a gold medal from the Royal Society of Edinburgh for his precise measurements of the Pyramid; his works were published in a 3-volume opus. Summing up his work, Smyth exclaimed that the Pyramid builders “revealed a most surprisingly accurate knowledge of high astronomical and geographical physics…nearly 1500 years earlier than the extremely infantine beginning of such things among ancient Greeks” (Tompkins, 1971 pp92-94). Sir Isaac Newton used the measurements of the Great Pyramid to calculate the circumference of the Earth. This information from the Great Pyramid allowed Newton to complete his “Theory of Gravity” which is explained in his book entitled “A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews and the Cubits of Several Nations: in which, from the Dimensions of the Greatest Pyramid, as taken by Mr. John Greaves, the ancient Cubit of Memphis is Determined (Tompkins, 1971 pp30-32).” The International Geophysical Year 1957-58 confirmed Newton’s “sacred cubit” of 25.02614284 British Inches by using orbiting vehicles to

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) obtain the radius of the Earth. It was this sacred cubit, which Newton also believed was used in the construction of the Arch of the Covenant as well as in the construction of Solomon’s Temple (Tompkins, 1971 pp72-75). When Napoleon Bonaparte explored the Pyramids of Egypt, he was so intrigued with the discoveries that he oversaw a series of publications entitled, “Description of Egypt, or the collection of observations and research which was made in Egypt during the expedition of the French Army”. This series, a compilation of scientific

Napoleon Bonaparte standing aside the empty sarcophagi in the Kings Chamber.

descriptions and discoveries during

Bonaparte’s expedition in Egypt, included information on the history, architecture, geography, antiquity and more, in a set of over nine volumes that included thousands of pages of text and illustrations. The volumes were so comprehensive that it was the largest publication in the world at that time (Tompkins, 1971 p51). Inspired by accounts of the Pyramids and their mysteries, explorers continued to appear for further explorations and measurements. One of the most predominant mathematicians and astronomers of that time was John Taylor. Taylor discovered that by dividing the perimeter of the pyramid by twice its height, the sum of Π was evident to two decimal places. Taylor’s book called “The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built & Who Built It?” discusses his evidence that the creators of the Great Pyramid clearly had advanced mathematical knowledge which they

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) encrypted into the Pyramid’s construction, and that the square of a circle could be derived from these measurements (O’Gorman, 2003). A structural engineer from Leeds, named David Davidson, was the first to notice a hollowing of the core masonry on each side of the structure, a dip in the wall so to speak. By using this distinct hollowing of the core masonry, Davidson was able to take three measurements. As computed by modern science, these three measurements gave the equivalents of three lengths of year. The three years include the Solar, Sidereal, and the Anomalistic years. President of the French College of Astrologers, D. Neroman, in his book entitled “La Cle Secrete de la Pyramide,” revealed his discovery that the sum of the diagonals at the base of the Pyramid compute to 25,826 inches, when converted to years, this gives the average length in years of the precession cycle of the equinoxes. Through his thorough examination of the mathematics encrypted in the structure of the Pyramid, Davidson concluded, “It has taken man thousands of years to discover by experiment what he knew originally by a surer and simpler method” (Tompkins, 1971 pp108-112).

CONCLUSION These astonishing mathematical finds by experts along with other extraordinary discoveries and stories revealed by Pyramid exploration have kept these massive structures shrouded in both secrecy and awe alike. Newton’s Theory of Gravity and its relation with measurements taken at the Giza Complex notably seems to silicate deeper investigations (Moreira, 2010). Napoleon Bonaparte and Alexander the Great are among the legendary figures which were drawn to and inspired by these monumental works and undoubtedly, many of humankind’s most influential scholars to date have made admirable investigations into The Great

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) Pyramid of Egypt. A colossal structure that, after so much history, still remains an ideal candidate for further study.

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Influential Explorations to the Great of Pyramid Giza, Egypt (Failla, N. 2010) References Loxton, Daniel. "PYRAMID POWER. (Cover story)." Skeptic 12.2 (2006): 80-89. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 20 Apr. 2010. Moreira, Raquel Delgado. "WHAT EZEKIEL SAYS": NEWTON AS A TEMPLE SCHOLAR." 153-180. Science History Publications Ltd., 2010. Academic Search Elite. O'Gorman, Francis. "'TO SEE THE FINGER OF GOD IN THE DIMENSIONS OF THE PYRAMID': A NEW CONTEXT FOR RUSKIN'S THE ETHICS OF THE DUST (1866)." Modern Language Review 98.3 (2003): 563-573. Academic Search Elite. EBSCO. Web. 19 Apr. 2010. Spielvogel, Jackson. WESTERN CIVILIZATION. Belmont: Clark Baxter, 2006. 18-26. Tompkins, Peter. SECRETS OF THE GREAT PYRAMID. New York: Harper & Row, 1791.

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