Study of the Pyramids: Serious Scholarship and Pseudoscience | Middle East And North Africa

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STUDY OF THE PYRAMIDS

Dr Ian Shaw of the University of Liverpool wrote for the BBC: “There is still a great deal that remains mysterious about the basic structure of pyramids, and the technology that created them. If we are to gain a better understanding of pyramid-building, the best way seems to be a blend of detailed study of the archaeological remains and various kinds of innovative experimental work. Above all, this is the kind of research that relies on collaboration between Egyptologists and specialists in other disciplines, such as engineering, geology and astronomy. As far as stone masonry is concerned, many volumes have been published describing the surviving remains of pharaonic temples and tombs, whether in the form of traveller's accounts, archaeological reports or architectural histories (Badawy 1954-68, Smith 1958, being the first attempts to provide comprehensive historical surveys). |[Source: Dr Ian Shaw, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

“Between 1880 and 1882, Flinders Petrie, the first truly scientific archaeologist to work in Egypt, undertook some careful survey work on the Giza plateau. This was the site of the pyramid complexes of the rulers Khufu, Khafra and ë-all of whom lived in the Fourth Dynasty....Although there have been many meticulous studies of specific sites or buildings, only a few-notably Petrie's surveys of the pyramids at Giza and Meydum in 1883 and 1892-have focused on the technological aspects of the structures. On the other hand, it is remarkable that, despite Petrie's concern with the minutiae of many aspects of craftwork and tools, his general works include no study of the structural engineering of the Pharaonic period. |::| This gap in the literature began to be filled in the 1920s with Reginald Engelbach's studies of obelisks (Engelbach 1922, 1923), Ludwig Borchardt's many detailed studies of pyramid complexes and sun temples (eg Borchardt 1926, 1928), and the first edition of Alfred Lucas' Ancient Egyptian Materials and Industries (Lucas 1926), which included a substantial section devoted to the scientific study of stone working. |::|

“However, the first real turning point arrived in 1930 with the publication of Ancient Egyptian Masonry, in which Engelbach collaborated with Somers Clarke to produce a detailed technological study of Egyptian construction methods from quarry to building site (Clarke and Engelbach 1930). The meticulous excavations of George Reisner at Giza and elsewhere soon afterwards bore fruit in the form of the publication of The Development of the Egyptian Tomb down to the Accession of Cheops (Reisner 1936), and Reisner's work at Giza was later supplemented by the architectural reconstruction of the Step Pyramid of Djoser at Saqqara by Jean-Philippe Lauer, whose Observations sur les pyramides (Lauer 1960) was also informed by a sense of the fundamental practicalities of ancient stone masonry. |::|

“Both I.E.S. Edwards (1947, 5th ed. 1993) and Rainer Stadelmann (1985) produced general books on Egyptian pyramids which built on the observations of Borchardt, Reisner, Lauer and others, including substantial discussion of the technological problems encountered by Pharaonic builders. |Christopher Eyre (1987) has provided a detailed study of the textual and visual evidence for the organization of labour in the Old and New Kingdoms, which includes a great deal of data relating to quarrying and building (particularly covering such questions as the composition, management and remuneration of the workforce involved in procuring, transporting and working stone, as well as the timing of quarrying and construction projects). |::|

“Most recently, Dieter Arnold's Building in Egypt: Pharaonic Stone Masonry, published in 1991, is a wide-ranging study of the data, including meticulous discussion of the surviving evidence for quarrying and stone-working tools, and sophisticated, well-illustrated studies of the grooves and marks on stone blocks which can indicate many of the ways in which they were transported, manoeuvred into position and interlocked with the rest of the masonry. Like Clarke and Engelbach's Ancient Egyptian Masonry, it serves as an essential and welcome basis for all future study of Pharaonic stone masonry. Arnold's primary concern is with the technology rather than the materials; for a detailed discussion of the different types of stone utilised by the Egyptians in art and architecture, see De Putter and Karlshausen (1992).

Contextual Approach to the Study of Pyramids

Richard Bussmman of University College London wrote: The “contextual approach” embeds pyramids in their wider natural and organizational environment. At Giza, the area south of the pyramid plateau was the focus of construction activities. The massive Heit el-Ghurab, the “Wall of the Crow,” held back material washed down from the plateau and served to control access to the pyramid field. Walking south, a gate led to a settlement laid out as a series of oblong mud-brick galleries, probably used as temporary dormitories. Bakeries and cattle, imported perhaps from sites in the Delta, served the needs of the workmen who erected additional buildings from stone rubble for living and sheltering. Hundreds of seal impressions suggest that the adjacent area to the south was an administrative center that controlled the stream of people, goods, and activities. The seal inscriptions mention the names of Khafra and Menkaura, and the pottery confirms that the site was used predominantly in the mid to late 4th Dynasty. [Source: Richard Bussmman, University College London, UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, 2015, escholarship.org ]

“South of the Menkaura pyramid, Kromer found the dump of a settlement, originally perhaps comparable to the settlement excavated by Lehner. The seal impressions date to Khufu and Khafra, and the pottery can be paralleled with other early 4th Dynasty material. Nearby, a series of workshops, open courts, and an administrative building were located around what seems to be an S-shaped ramp.

“Excavations at Dahshur demonstrate that social and technological organization on a large scale was already in place a generation earlier. A large open court halfway between cultivation and the Red Pyramid and a temporary workmen camp to the south formed part of the construction activities. One section within the valley temple of the Bent Pyramid was converted into living space during the later Old Kingdom, perhaps for accommodating the royal funerary priests on duty. “Pyramid towns” are well known from titles since the early 4th Dynasty, but are archaeologically still elusive. They may have housed administrators, skilled workmen, and those recruited for the royal funerary cult. A decree of Pepy I indicates that the pyramid towns of Dahshur were located near the valley temple of the Red Pyramid where a large enclosure wall was found.

“The “contextual approach” shows that pyramids are part of a dynamic landscape. Many settlements and workshops are short- lived, reflecting constant change. Large-scale planning is evident from sites such as the Giza galleries and, presumably, pyramid towns. At the same time, the wide range of secondary buildings at all sites hints at a substantial degree of management on a local level, necessary to realize insufficient master plans of the central government.”

New Discoveries at the Pyramids in Egypt

In the early 2020s, researchers used Lidar — a method that applies laser pulses to penetrate obstacles like tree canopies or walls to see what lies beyond, — to map the interior of some pyramids and found previously hidden rooms. A nine-meter-long corridor was discovered in the Great Pyramid of Giza by the Scan Pyramids project, an international programm that uses scans to look at unexplored sections of the ancient structure. With the help of a technology called muon radiography — which uses cosmic ray particles to probe objects and construct 3-D models of their insides — scientists confirmed that the North Face Corridor stretches over nine meters (30 feet) and is over two meters (six feet) wide. Archaeologists are skeptical that these empty spaces have any ritual significance. As archaeologist Kate Spence told National Geographic in 2017, and as archaeologist Mark Lehner told the New York Times, research has shown that Egyptians likely built gaps into the pyramids to relieve pressure and keep them structurally sound. [Source: Amy McKeever and Michael Greshko, National Geographic, March 4, 2023]

In May, 2024 Archaeologists said the found a mysterious L-shaped structure at the base of the Great Pyramid of Giza with ground-penetrating high-tech methods and then said they had no idea what it was. Business Insider reported: The findings could explain why a large section of the densely packed Western Cemetery is empty. The Western Cemetery holds hundreds of rectangular tombs called mastabas that line the base of Giza's Great Pyramid. These mastabas belong to elite citizens and relatives of the Ancient Egyptian king Khufu, who ruled around 4,500 years ago. [Source: Jenny McGrath, Business Insider, June 1, 2024]

“However, in stark contrast to the many rows of tombs, one area of the cemetery is bare, with no structures. Below the sand, it's a different story, archaeologists recently discovered. What appears to be a flat, sandy surface might hide long-forgotten structures built thousands of years ago. Only a couple of feet below the surface lies what appears to be an L-shaped structure. Even deeper, there's another, larger structure connected to the first. The L-shaped structure's corners are "too sharp" to be naturally occurring, researcher Motoyuki Sato, who helped find the anomaly, told Live Science. That suggests humans constructed it and might explain why such a large swatch of the crowded necropolis remains empty above the sand, the researchers reported in a paper they recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Archaeological Prospection.

Scanning research in the mid 2010s revealed so-called thermal anomalies in Egypt's Great Pyramid of Khufu, suggesting a space that could be a tomb within the 4,500-year-old pyramid. Additional thermal anomalies have been detected at the pyramid of Khafre as well as the Red and Bent Pyramids at Dahshur. Thermal scan shows that the temperature of the area is elevated by a few degrees. Researchers say that this could be caused by many things, including internal air currents, differences in the materials used or by an opening behind the wall. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, November 13, 2015]

Great Pyramid of Giza Can Focus Electromagnetic Energy, Study Says

Anastasia Komarova of ITMO University wrote: An international research group has applied methods of theoretical physics to investigate the electromagnetic response of the Great Pyramid to radio waves. Scientists predicted that under resonance conditions, the pyramid can concentrate electromagnetic energy in its internal chambers and under the base. The research group plans to use these theoretical results to design nanoparticles capable of reproducing similar effects in the optical range. Such nanoparticles may be used, for example, to develop sensors and highly efficient solar cells. The study was published in the Journal of Applied Physics. [Source Anastasia Komarova, ITMO University in Saint Petersburg, Russia July 31, 2018]

While Egyptian pyramids are surrounded by many myths and legends, researchers have little scientifically reliable information about their physical properties. Physicists recently took an interest in how the Great Pyramid would interact with electromagnetic waves of a resonant length. Calculations showed that in the resonant state, the pyramid can concentrate electromagnetic energy in the its internal chambers as well as under its base, where the third unfinished chamber is located.

These conclusions were derived on the basis of numerical modeling and analytical methods of physics. The researchers first estimated that resonances in the pyramid can be induced by radio waves with a length ranging from 200 to 600 meters. Then they made a model of the electromagnetic response of the pyramid and calculated the extinction cross section. This value helps to estimate which part of the incident wave energy can be scattered or absorbed by the pyramid under resonant conditions. Finally, for the same conditions, the scientists obtained the electromagnetic field distribution inside the pyramid.

In order to explain the results, the scientists conducted a multipole analysis. This method is widely used in physics to study the interaction between a complex object and electromagnetic field. The object scattering the field is replaced by a set of simpler sources of radiation: multipoles. The collection of multipole radiation coincides with the field scattering by an entire object. Therefore, knowing the type of each multipole, it is possible to predict and explain the distribution and configuration of the scattered fields in the whole system.

The Great Pyramid attracted the researchers while they were studying the interaction between light and dielectric nanoparticles. The scattering of light by nanoparticles depends on their size, shape and refractive index of the source material. Varying these parameters, it is possible to determine the resonance scattering regimes and use them to develop devices for controlling light at the nanoscale.

"Egyptian pyramids have always attracted great attention. We as scientists were interested in them as well, so we decided to look at the Great Pyramid as a particle dissipating radio waves resonantly. Due to the lack of information about the physical properties of the pyramid, we had to use some assumptions. For example, we assumed that there are no unknown cavities inside, and the building material with the properties of an ordinary limestone is evenly distributed in and out of the pyramid. With these assumptions made, we obtained interesting results that can find important practical applications," says Dr. Sc. Andrey Evlyukhin, scientific supervisor and coordinator of the research.

Pyramids and Pseudoscience

Over the centuries scholar and psuedoscholars have suggested that maybe the pyramids were giants granaries built before the Great Flood or storehouses of secrets about astronomy and technology built by aliens for the benefit of mankind. The Moroccan traveler Ibn Batuta (1304-1377) reported that the Egyptian god Thoth "having ascertained from the appearance of the stars that the deluge would take place, built the pyramids to contain the books of science and knowledge and other matter worth preserving from oblivion and ruin." [Source: Daniel Boorstin, "The Creators"]

Kevin Jackson wrote: There are many who persist in attributing the Great Pyramid to some agency outside the human race. There is a whole branch of the publishing industry devoted to meeting this hunger for pyramidical mysteries, which is sharpened by movies such as Stargate and The Fifth Element, and shows no sign of tapering off. This accumulation of fringe beliefs is sometimes known as 'pyramidology'. [Source: Kevin Jackson, BBC, February 17, 2011 |::|]

Looking into the early days of investigation and enquiry into the Great Pyramid, it is hard to separate the genuine scholars from those who would now be regarded as cranks, since the radical split between scientific method and religious faith that characterises modern societies had not yet taken place. Sir Isaac Newton, for example, himself a keen pyramidologist, notoriously spent as much time on alchemical experiments and biblical interpretation as he did on the work in mathematics and physics for which he is now honoured. Many of those inquisitive Europeans who made the trip to Giza in the 17th and 18th centuries were drawn by the promise that it in some way embodied mysterious ancient wisdom; and though modern Egyptology, born of Napoleon's invasion of the country at the end of the 18th century, gradually became more scientific as time passed, even a reputable scientist such as Scotland's Astronomer Royal, Charles Piazzi Smyth (1819-1900), working in the 19th century, was convinced that the structure's proportions were inspired by the Christian God. |::|

“Others, like the sometime structural engineer David Davidson, went still further. Davidson persuaded himself that the Pyramid demonstrated a knowledge of the structure of the universe vastly superior to that of 19th-century science: 'the whole empirical basis of civilization', he wrote, 'is a makeshift collection of hypotheses compared with the Natural Law basis of that civilization of the past'.

Egyptology came of scientific age with the accurate and painstaking excavations of Sir Flinders Petrie and others from the late 19th century onwards. At the same time 'pyramidiocy', as it is sometimes called, reached epidemic proportions, with countless cranks purporting to explain just how the Giza structure predicted the First World War, the Second Coming of Christ, the Third Reich and what have you. |::|

“Not surprisingly, the Pyramid was also seized on by just about every one of the mystical cults that thrived in the late 19th and early 20th centuries — above all by the Theosophists, an influential group founded by one Madame Helena Petrovna Blavatsky (1831-91). In her widely read, if all-but-unreadable, books, The Secret Doctrine (1888) and Isis Unveiled (1877), she explained to her followers that the Pyramid was 'the everlasting record and the indestructible symbol of the Mysteries and Initiations on Earth'. Thanks to Mme Blavatsky, the Pyramid became an essential point of pilgrimage for all self-respecting occultists. Among the notable necromancers and magi who made the journey were the Russian mathematician and mystic PD Ouspensky, whose cult is still alive in various forms today; the largely innocuous self-appointed guru 'Dr' Paul Brunton, who wrote a bestselling book, A Search in Secret Egypt (1935), where he recalled his conference with weird spirits inside the Pyramid; and the most famous of all Black Magicians, Aleister Crowley (1875-1947), who claimed to have spent his honeymoon in the Pyramid, bathed in supernatural light. Occultists of all stripes continue to be keen on the Pyramid as a place of spirits and demons.

Books: “Secrets of the Great Pyramid by Peter Tomkins (Penguin, 1973); “Giza: The Truth by Ian Lawton and Chris Ogilvie-Herald (Virgin Books, 2000); “The Orion Mystery by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert (Arrow, 1994); “Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock (Century, 2001); “Isis Unveiled by Madame Blavatsky (Theosophical University Press, 1984; Links:Robert Bauval’s site ( robertbauval.co) caters for the growing debates and discussions that are now part of the 'Alternative History' scene. |::|

Edgar Cayce, von Daniken, Aliens and the Pyramids

Kevin Jackson wrote: The traditional belief that it was the product of some 'lost wisdom' from ancient times took on a new wrinkle round about 1923, when a poorly educated American by the name of Edgar Cayce (1877-1945), who had already made something of a name for himself as a trance medium, began to tell his listeners that they had lived previous lives in the lost, sunken continent of Atlantis. He claimed that he too had lived on Atlantis, and had been a high priest there. [Source: Kevin Jackson, BBC, February 17, 2011]

“Cayce told his believers that the most enlightened members of the population of Atlantis had fled the coming deluge and set up home in Egypt around 10,500 B.C. (Some eight millennia, that is, before the construction of Khufu's Pyramid). Cayce insisted that it was the refugee Atlanteans who had constructed, or at least designed, the Pyramid around 10,400 B.C. What's more, he said, they had built somewhere close by it a Hall of Records, crammed with their most marvellous secrets; and he predicted that this Hall would be uncovered in the last 20 years of the millennium. Fringe Egyptological circles were in a state of excitement throughout the 1990s, expecting an announcement any day. None came. |::|

“With the 1960s came something a little more space age. In 1969 — not so coincidentally, the year of the Apollo 11 mission that first put men on the moon — there appeared the first English-language version of the book Chariots of the Gods? The author of this curiously written and much publicised work was a Swiss hotelier, Erich von Daniken, and its theme passed into popular consciousness, borne along by serialization in tabloid newspapers.

“Briefly, von Daniken contended that the earth had long ago been visited by superior beings from other worlds, whose technology appeared to our distant ancestors as a form of magic; that our most ancient monuments, including the Great Pyramid (von Daniken maintains that its construction by existing earthly methods would have taken at least 664 years, although the evidence he gives for this is not clear), are the material evidence of that visit; and that the world's religions and mythologies reflect garbled memories of the culture shock it engendered. |::|

“Although it is sometimes hard to penetrate von Daniken's prose, he also appears to contend that the Pyramid was a sort of freezing chamber, in which the significant dead could be preserved until such time as the sun god Ra (an astronaut, naturally) returned to revive them. Despite widespread derision, the refutations of scientists, and the promptings of plain old common sense, von Daniken's writings remain in print to this day, and help perpetuate one of the leading folk myths of our time. |::|

New Agers and The Pyramids

Kevin Jackson wrote: “The 1960s and 70s also saw the rise of that loose coalition of unorthodox and far-fetched beliefs known as New Age philosophy. One of the more novel aspects of the craze took off in the mid-1960s, when attention shifted from the physical presence of the Giza structure to its proportions. A Czech radio engineer, Karel Dribal, heard rumours of the remarkable preservative powers of tiny model pyramids, made some tests of his own, and then announced to the world that a used razor blade, placed inside a cardboard replica of the pyramid just 15 inches high, would miraculously regain its original sharpness. Before long, the media rang with reports of people using mini-pyramids to keep milk fresh, and to sharpen not only blades but also brainpower. [Source: Kevin Jackson, BBC, February 17, 2011]

Some New Agers contend the Sphinx, the Pyramids and other monument were not built by the Egyptians but rather by some superior intelligence, perhaps from another planet. One group, led by the European writers Robert Bauval and Graham Hancock, believes the configuration of the Pyramids matches the position of the stars of Orion's belt as they appeared 10,500 years ago. This they say proves the pyramids were created by an ancient civilization that preceded the Egyptians.

New Agers deluge the Egyptian government with requests to probe sites and pay large sums of money to hold ceremonies when the sites are closed. Egyptians find it annoying that these groups believe the Pyramids were created by beings other than the ancient Egyptians. Shirley McClaine spent a night mediating inside the Great Pyramid and reported the pyramids were built in 70,000 B.C. and a giant crystal lies buried under the Great Pyramid. In 1998, a German tourist jumped to his death from the Cairo tower in the belief that a trip to the pyramids had made him invulnerable to death.

No Evidence The Pyramid Were Built by Jewish Slaves

Some have contended that the pyramids were constructed by Jewish slaves but there is no evidence to back this up. Owen Jarus wrote in Live Science: No archaeological remains that can be directly linked to the Jewish people have been found in Egypt that date back to 4,500 years ago, when the Giza pyramids were built. Additionally the story told in the Hebrew Bible about Jews being slaves in Egypt refers to a city named "Ramses. " A city named pi-Ramses was founded during the 19th dynasty (about 1295-1186 B.C.) and was named after Ramses II, who ruled 1279–1213 B.C. . This city was constructed after the era of pyramid construction had ended in Egypt. [Source: Owen Jarus, Live Science, July 1, 2022

"We have no clue, not even a single word, about early Israelites in Egypt: neither in monumental inscriptions on walls of temples, nor in tomb inscriptions, nor in papyri," wrote archaeologists Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silberman in their book "The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology's New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of its Sacred Texts" (The Free Press, 2001).

Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons, The Louvre, The British Museum, The Egyptian Museum in Cairo

Text Sources: UCLA Encyclopedia of Egyptology, escholarship.org ; Internet Ancient History Sourcebook: Egypt sourcebooks.fordham.edu ; Tour Egypt, Minnesota State University, Mankato, ethanholman.com; Mark Millmore, discoveringegypt.com discoveringegypt.com; Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, Discover magazine, Times of London, Natural History magazine, Archaeology magazine, The New Yorker, BBC, Encyclopædia Britannica, Time, Newsweek, Wikipedia, Reuters, Associated Press, The Guardian, AFP, Lonely Planet Guides, “World Religions” edited by Geoffrey Parrinder (Facts on File Publications, New York); “History of Warfare” by John Keegan (Vintage Books); “History of Art” by H.W. Janson Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, N.J.), Compton’s Encyclopedia and various books and other publications.

Last updated August 2024