What Mysteries does Pyramid Conceal? Part.IV

 And who made up this massive labor force? The Greek historian Herodotus put the number of workers at 100000 men, replaced every three months for a period of 20 years, though this is probably an exaggeration. An ancient barracks found nearby housed around 4000 men, and there were most likely several barracks in the area. The workers were not slaves and the work was not coerced, casting doubt on the biblical stories of cruel taskmasters brandishing whips. An inscription on the tomb of one pharaoh boasts that he never struck a worker hard enough to knock him down.

In fact, prisoners of war performed much of the heavy work, while peasants did much of the skilled labor. Paid in food, the peasants worked during the flood season, when farming was impossible. The pyramids can be said to have granted these workers certain immortality just as they have the pharaohs buried within.

In recent times, scientific research has shown that the orientation of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau- Cheops, Chefren and Mykerinos corresponds exactly to the stars in the constellation known as Orion’s Belt. In ancient Egypt, Orion’s Belt symbolized the god Osiris, the most important of the Egyptian gods.

In recent years, a German engineer, Rudolf Gantenbrink, probed the secrets of some of the narrowest passages as yet unreachable by human explorers with the help of a remote controlled robot camera. Gantenbrink discovered an enormous door at the end of a shaft. But he was never able to find out what lies hidden behind the door.

What Mysteries does Pyramid Conceal? Part.III

In the 20^th century, one widely held theory held that the pyramids were carried to earth by aliens, and dropped into their current positions by UFOs. And yet the real story behind their creation which took place over a period of about 30 years is no less impressive, if less fantastic. 

The building process began with the hewing of the rocks, which were removed from quarries some as far as 600 miles away in Aswan. Most historians think the rocks were probably floated on rafts down the Nile in flood season, even though there is no archeological evidence of rafts large enough to float rocks of such enormous size. At the site of the pyramid, workers would first establish a level building surface by flooding the area with water, cutting a system of channels, and then digging until the water was level. A perimeter was then established and cut to the appropriate level, with the occasional large chunk of rock preserved.

A massive stone causeway was built on the banks of the Nile, facilitation the unloading process. The stones were dragged on wooden sledges resting on rollers for the half mile to the building site. Here, a team of masons and stonecutters worked at the rocks, smoothing them and preparing them for use.

Once ready, the huge stones were rolled into position, a process complicated by the fact that the wheel did not arrive in Egypt for another 800 years. Some scholars have suggested that the Egyptians built enormous tamps, lengthened as the building progressed, but with a constant slope; others have suggested a spiral tamp that snaked its way up the pyramid. The stone would be pushed to the tip of the ramp, and then placed on a bed of liquids mortars. It was then left to set. The ramps would be dismantled when the workers reached the top of the pyramid, as masons worked their way downward and smoothed the stones.

What Mysteries does Pyramid Conceal? Part.II

The most magnificent pyramid standing today the only surviving structure of the seven wonders of the ancient world is the pyramid at Giza, built during the reign of Cheops, the Greek name for King Khufu. At the time of its construction, the pyramid rose some 482 feed, covered 13 acres, and weighed at least 6.5 million tons. Napoleon calculated that the material from which it was built over 2300000 blocks would form a wall around France 10 feet high and one foot wide. The grand scale of the Cheops pyramid is matched by its precise design.

 Each side of its base measures some 776 feet, and the sides vary by only 7.9 inches; the pyramid’s stones are placed so accurately that it’s impossible to fit a sheet of paper between them. The sides of the pyramid run with an error of a little more than 4 degrees, almost exactly from north to south and from east to west.

In the 19^th century, as archeologists mapped out the pyramids, the wonder induced by these details encouraged a whole new pseudo scientific discipline. “Pyramidology” sought to discover the “Pyramid inch,” a standard unit that allowed the Egyptians to build with such uncanny precision. Standard such as pi, the mass and circumference of the earth, and the distance of earth to sun were suggested. Others proposed the theory that the pyramids were great stone texts, in which details of the entire history of the world had been encoded.  Pyramidologists stretched to even greater imaginative lengths to explain how these stone marvels were constructed. 

What Mysteries does Pyramid Conceal? Part.I

Even today, almost five thousand years after its completion, the Pyramid of Cheops in Egypt is a technical masterpiece. But its builders left no plans that might explain how it came to be built. It is still not completely clear why the pyramid was erected. With so few answers available, it seems that the great Pyramid will be surrounded by mystery forever.

 On the west bank of the Nile stand the astonishing Pyramids. The very shape of the pyramid, with its sturdy, earthbound base and its apex reaching for the heavens, articulates the combination of technical skill and spiritual commitment that their construction required.

The golden age of construction in Egypt occurred during the Fourth Dynasty, from 2868 to 2613 BC. For the most part, the pyramids were meant to serve as burial chambers for Pharaohs and other high officials. The foundation of the Egyptian monarchy relied on the immortality of the Pharaoh, and thus was predicted on a devout belief in an afterlife.

 The pyramid not only glorified the pharaoh but served as a sort of antechamber in which he would wait until he entered the next world. The Egyptians perfected the art of embalming to preserve the buried body, and often stocked the pyramids with royal amenities the pharaoh would want with him in the afterlife. In one tomb, for example, archeologists found some 40,000 stone vessels, enough to satisfy even the most regal of mummies as well as a retinue of servants, often buried close by the pharaoh.