Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery

by Christopher Knight

  Despite our failure to find any indication of ancient workings, we were still excited at the very new approach to unravelling the secrets of the pyramids that we had almost accidentally discovered. As we stood on a mound of sand under the hot morning sun we turned towards the northern horizon to admire the most famous historical objects in the world – the three massive pyramids of the Giza Plateau. Those distant pinnacles were, we still felt, connected to the spot beneath our feet.

  A Ploughed Circle

  We had always known that finding anything ancient at this location in Egypt’s desert was a very long shot indeed, just as the corresponding location, nearly 4,000 km away, that had brought us here, was itself no longer discernible at ground level.

  It had been just 16 weeks since we stood in a freshly ploughed field on the huge Newby Hall estate in North Yorkshire, England with our civil engineer friend, Edmund Sixsmith and the estate manager Peter Greenwood. We had had no luck in gaining permission to visit the location until Edmund rode in to our lives on his folding Brompton bicycle. Edmund, who runs an engineering consultancy in London, contacted us after reading about our work on prehistoric British units of measurement whilst he had been travelling on a train in Sweden. After our first meeting on the North Wales island of Anglesey, he became a significant member of our small, extended team of people with practical rather than purely academic expertise in the field of making sense of ancient engineering.

  In conversation we had told Edmund of our difficulty in gaining access to the Newby Hall Estate – and we were quite amazed at his response.

  ‘No problem. I’m pretty sure I can sort that out for you. The estate owner, Richard Compton, is a good friend of mine.’ This was an extraordinary but most welcome coincidence and, true to his word, Edmund duly arranged a meeting at the estate manager’s office at the end of February in 2008.

  Peter Greenwood could not have been more helpful. He had pulled out old maps of the relevant parts of the estate and copied them for us. After giving us a brief of everything he knew, we stepped into Peter’s four-wheel-drive and began a tour of the locations that interested us.

  The most important spot was a sloping field that had no crop growth at this early part of the year. Notwithstanding the clear view of the soil we could detect nothing of the structure we knew had been built here nearly 1,000 years before the Giza pyramids. However, we had aerial photographs with us, which gave a clear view of the shape of the original artefact, thanks to differences in the subsoil.

  Peter had shown us old maps that revealed the 5,500-year-old structure had been clearly visible until it was ploughed out sometime in the early 20th century. We had deduced its location and its importance from three other similar structures that were very much intact – just 10 km to the northwest. Fortunately there was sufficient evidence available to identify the size of the absent structure and pinpoint its precise centre. This was to prove to be incredibly important.

  As we left the cold, windswept hilltop that morning we knew that we would have to travel to Egypt because something extraordinary was appearing out of the mists of time. A completely unexpected picture of the past had presented itself. Against all sense and apparent credibility, it seemed from everything we now knew possible – or to be honest – highly likely that Hem-iwnu, King Khufu’s principal architect had stood in this same English field before he began his ambitious project to create something wonderful on the west bank of the Nile.

  Ancient Wonders

  As we passed between Khufu and Khafre’s man-made mountains we felt that sense of total awe that can never quite be captured by photographs or communicated though cinematography. The scale and shear solid mass of these objects creates an impression such that your entire body can feel their gravitational field. Close your eyes and they are still there.

  Even today, without their original brilliant white limestone coverings, the pyramids are soul-stirringly beautiful, sculpted by the brilliant glow of the Egyptian summer sun. These geometrically perfect structures now stand rather battered but proudly aloof on the raised outcrop known as the Mokkatam Formation, where in ancient times, the Nile had washed its eastern-facing cliff during the annual inundation. But today the rocks mark the limits of the crazy cacophony that is Cairo’s urban sprawl.

  To say that the three pyramids of Giza have been studied in minute detail would be an understatement. The largest of them, known alternatively as the ‘Great Pyramid’, the ‘Pyramid of Khufu’, or sometimes by the Greek name ‘Pyramid of Cheops’, is the only remaining and certainly the largest of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Even without its original gilded ben-ben or capstone it is 138.8 m in height with an estimated internal volume of 2.5 million m3 – (equal to 1,000 Olympic swimming pools). Strangely, the average block of stone is 1 m3. Facts and figures are impressive enough but not nearly so inspiring as standing at the base of Khufu’s pyramid and staring up at the unbelievable dimensions of something so huge it is hard to comprehend how anyone could have conceived its creation, let alone brought such an idea to reality.

  According to the ancient Greek historian Herodotus, the pyramid attributed to King Khufu took around 20 years to build from start to finish. Quite what sources Herodotus had for this claim is unsure, but despite the fact that he was writing two full millennia after the event, he does have a good track record of getting his facts broadly right. If it is truly the case that the Great Pyramid was constructed so quickly, the implications are staggering. It means that working seven days a week and throughout the year for two full decades, the craftsmen and labourers involved must have cut, squared off, dragged to the site and erected 342 stones every single day. The average stone weighs two and a half tonnes, though many are far heavier. If Herodotus is to be believed a stone block must have been added to the pyramid every two minutes or so!

  Anyone who has stood on the Giza Plateau between 11 am and 3 pm on any day between May to September will appreciate how physically draining it is simply to walk around the area. It seems impossible to imagine anyone continuously cutting, dragging and raising huge stone blocks under the unremitting glare of the desert Sun. Herodotus may have been proven correct about many of his writings, but we doubt he was correct on this occasion and we remain convinced that the Khufu pyramid must have taken much longer than 20 years to complete.

  The other two pyramids in the sequence of three are smaller. The second pyramid, standing a little to the southwest of the Great Pyramid, is attributed to Khufu’s third son, Khafre. It is almost as large as the Great Pyramid and unlike the other two it still has its higher faces covered in the original white casing, although it is now pitted and dulled with sand. Further still to the southwest is the pyramid of Menkaure, which looks almost ‘modest’ when set against its much larger companions, though it is still 61 m in height and is mightily impressive in its own right.

  It is strange to reflect that these three amazing structures, as familiar as they are to people in every corner of the world, are almost as mysterious now as they were to the 18th-century European explorers who first started a bout of ‘pyramid’ fever. Orthodox accounts suggest that the Great Pyramid of Khufu was the first of the three to be constructed, most likely around 2500 BC. Since deep within the pyramid there are three chambers, one of which contains what is taken to be a sarcophagus, it is generally accepted that the Great Pyramid was intended to be tomb – built specifically to house the body of King Khufu, the first of the great kings of fourth-dynasty Egypt. Khufu cannot be rightfully termed a Pharaoh because this was a title that came much later in Egyptian history.

  Inside the Great Pyramid the three distinct chambers, somewhat poetically and bearing no relationship to their ancient purpose, are known as the King’s Chamber, the Queen’s Chamber and the Unfinished Chamber. These modern, invented titles help shore up the widely held but entirely erroneous view that Egyptologists understand the intended function of these voids inside the pyramids.

  The ‘Unfinished Chamber’ is a particular m
ystery. It lies 30 m below the surface of the plateau where workers chipped away at the bedrock to cut out what was once thought to have been the original burial chamber for King Khufu. For years Egyptologists claimed the chamber is ‘unfinished’ because Khufu suddenly decided he wanted his burial chamber to be up in the main body of the pyramid rather than below ground. We find it hard to believe that the people who designed Khufu’s pyramid made such a gigantic error, or that Khufu was making up the layout as he went along. ‘I think I’ll have my burial chamber down here. Err, no, on second thoughts maybe it would be nice to have it up here.’ It just does not sound right. Khufu and his architect, Hemiwnu, were so precise in everything they did that we cannot easily accept this explanation.

  The mystery of this subterranean vault remains, but at least the orthodox Egyptology establishment has given up trying to sustain the notion that it was some kind of planning error. The powers that be have surrendered on this point, not least because there is also the problem that a similar ‘mistake’ happened with Khafre’s Pyramid, which also has an unfinished subterranean chamber – although not at such great depth.

  We had discussed these chambers at length and both of us had a strong feeling that they must have been not only deliberate but also highly important for some reason. After all, they were the first workings to be carried out on the Giza Plateau. We were later to find out that our hunch was right but we could never have guessed just how important these chambers are when it comes to understanding the enormous scale of extreme antiquity.

  No one can know for sure, but the Great Pyramid probably did originally contain interesting and valuable artefacts. It was plundered by thieves during the New Kingdom, over 3,000 years ago, leaving only one item in place. The robbers had no interest in trying to extract a large red granite sarcophagus that weighs over three tonnes. It is generally and logically assumed that this stone box once contained the mummified body of Khufu as there is also a sarcophagus in Khafre and Menkaure’s pyramid; or at least there was one in Menkaure’s pyramid, until it was looted by British archaeologists in the early 19th century and lost at sea on its way to a museum in England.

  The spellbinding beauty and scale of these three pyramids, along with a raft of unanswered questions, has led to a large number of ideas regarding what they were intended to achieve. These range from the safe assumption that they were simply grand mausoleums for the three named kings, through to wild notions such as the suggestion they were built by aliens or that the structures themselves possess super-advanced technological capabilities of various kinds. There are still people who claim that the building technology employed sprang from nowhere and that we lack the technology to build such edifices even today.

  Both of these claims are false. It would be quite possible, albeit with some difficulty and considerable expense, to build the pyramids today. And the notion that the expertise necessary to create these stone giants suddenly appeared is also clearly false. There is ample evidence of an experimental evolution from simple mud-brick tombs that lead over a period of time up to the Great Pyramid itself.

  The earliest Egyptians had buried their dead directly into the baking-hot desert sand, where the high, dry temperature desiccates the bodies to effectively mummify them. As the civilization developed, mud-brick structures known as ‘mastabas’ began to appear. These buildings were trapezoid structures – rectangular in plan with inward sloping sides and a flat top. Over time it became the practice to build one slightly smaller mastaba on top of another, which led to the development of the step pyramid (see figure 1). There then followed a phase during which the architects improved the design of the step pyramid by adding triangular infills for the saw-tooth sides, leading to the sort of smooth pyramid with which most people are familiar. The later stages of this process actually came about surprisingly rapidly – given the normally ponderous nature of building evolution.

  Prior to the modern age, innovation in any architectural styling or technology was a rare event, and one that was usually driven by need rather than a search for aesthetic excellence. The one great exception to this obser-vation was the cathedral-building revolution initiated by the Order of the Knights Templar from AD 1130 onwards, when both the technology and the beauty of architecture leapt to previously unseen levels – almost overnight.

  The first known stepped pyramid was that of Djoser at Saqqara, a few kilometres south of Giza. A series of developmental techniques followed, which included the Pyramid of Meydum, which was still a step pyramid but the stages were becoming so frequent that is was losing its saw-tooth profile. The so-called ‘Bent Pyramid’ at Dashour followed, in which the architects began planning structures with a super-ambitious angle of 60°. However, the realities of physics soon taught these experimental builders to moderate their ambitions and settle for sides that were slightly less steep.

  Figure 1. Diagrams showing the evolution of the pyramids

  A ‘smooth-sided pyramid’ appeared not long before the Giza complex was planned. It is known as the ‘Red Pyramid’ and was created at the instructions of King Snefru, who is believed to be the father of Khufu. The Red Pyramid has a slope of just over 43°, which is less that the later Great Pyramid, but it contained many of the architectural features associated with its grander and slightly later counterparts. It was built upon a foundation of stone blocks and contained interior tunnels and chambers of the sort found at Giza.

  However, the Great Pyramid of Khufu and its two companion pyramids appear to be much more than just an improvement on their forebears. They have properties that link them to the stars.

  Chapter 2

  •

  STAR WATCHERS

  The Orion Correlation Theory

  It is true that there is certainly a reasonably clear evolution of the pyramid builder’s art, but the Giza pyramids are clearly superior both in their scale and build-quality – in addition they exhibit complex features that have no apparent antecedence.

  One of the most hotly debated aspects of the Great Pyramid over recent years has been the series of narrow shafts cut into the blocks of rock. There are two in the King’s Chamber, which run steeply upwards to emerge on the outside of the pyramid, not too far from its pinnacle. It was originally suggested that these were simply ventilation shafts but this idea has now been abandoned and it is generally accepted that the shafts had some ceremonial purpose. Experts have observed that the builders of the pyramid must have put a great deal of time and trouble into the integration of these beautifully accurate, narrow tunnels in the mass of stone. It would have been quite impossible to chisel them into the rock after the pyramid was complete because they are far too narrow. The only way they could have been created was ‘layer by layer’, as the pyramid began to grow. There is another pair of shafts in the so-called Queen’s Chamber. These are similar to those in the King’s Chamber but, curiously, they are blocked by squares of limestone deliberately set into the masonry at the time of the pyramid’s construction.

  Since the 1960s it has been argued that these shafts are aligned to specific stars – the polestar in the north and Orion’s Belt in the south. Whilst this has been hotly debated, we are unaware of any alternative theory that makes as much sense. The reasons to suspect that it is correct are:

  • The Egyptians are believed to have aligned the pyramids to the four cardinal points of the Earth using Thuban, then the polestar, to establish north.

  • The stars close to the pole were important to the Egyptians because they never set.1 They were therefore described in ancient texts as the ‘imperishable’ or ‘undying’ ones. The kings believed that they too would be ‘imperishable’ after death.

  • The constellation of Orion has an important place in Egyptian mythology, being considered to be the soul of Osiris.2 Traditionally Osiris is considered to be the Lord of the Two Lands: Lord of the Heavens and Lord of the Earth. He was also considered to be Lord of the Dead and in this capacity was always represented in mummy wrappings.

  So
, the star-alignment theory seems highly reasonable. What about the next theory that came along?

  The path that had led us from the rolling green fields of northern Britain to the sandy wastes of Egypt was an entirely logical one based on the work of the well-known pyramid researcher, Robert Bauval – a man who had seen something quite special about the Giza pyramids.

  Robert Bauval was born to Belgian parents and brought up in Egypt’s second city of Alexandria, and has spent most of his life living and working in the Middle East. He was always keen on history and had not wasted his spare time amidst the remnants of Egypt’s long and illustrious past. Bauval studied ancient documents, crawled around in old passages and climbed sandy hills in order to better appreciate the skills of his Bronze Age counterparts in construction. He became quite preoccupied with a book called The Sirius Mystery, written by the American polymath Robert Temple, that spoke of a very early lost civilization and an ancient understanding of astronomy and mathematics that had been previously unsuspected. Bauval also became interested in the ‘Pyramid Texts’ – a wealth of fables, folk tales and historical accounts that had been painted and carved onto the interior walls of a series of pyramids in Saqqara, close to Cairo.

  Ultimately it wasn’t any of the Giza pyramids in isolation that came to fascinate Bauval, but rather the Giza complex as a whole because, in what amounted to a flash of inspiration, he was the first individual to realize that there was something quite unique about the way the three pyramids at Giza had been arranged. As a result, Bauval set out to study the whole arrangement of the Giza Plateau in greater detail.