Before the Pyramids: Cracking Archaeology's Greatest Mystery

by Christopher Knight

  We are concerned; not that there are bad things necessarily happening here, but that anti-Masons (with ignorance and prejudice in equal measure) will construe this as a Masonic plot. If there was any influence on President Roosevelt back then, we certainly do not believe that there was anything negative about this activity then or at any time.

  If we are right – the motive of the Scottish Rite was simply to celebrate the Craft’s old knowledge and to make the United States all the stronger by adhering to the ritual of the ancients. But what exactly was the plan that they seem to have been playing out?

  The Underground Chamber

  The story of Enoch that is at the heart of the Scottish Rite is associated with triangles. The great triangle formed between the centres of the Pentagon, the Capitol and the Ellipse is 33 Megalithic Seconds of arc long. As there are 366 Megalithic Yards to a Megalithic degree, one could symbolically divide each degree of the Scottish Rite in 366 parts. In old times, it had been normal to attain one degree per year, which means that an initiate would progress by one Megalithic Yard for every sidereal day (one revolution of the Earth on its axis). On this basis, after 36 years of diligent study the brightest and the best would have attained the final point of distinction.

  So there is a fascinating correlation between the Neolithic idea of a geodetic Megalithic Degree of latitude and a degree of the Scottish Rite. One Megalithic Yard for every transit of a star such as Sirius across the sky. This is a perfect piece of Neolithic thinking. What else could the giant triangle on the ground be for? The importance of the Capitol and the Pentagon is obvious, but what makes the Ellipse so very special?

  In considering this issue our minds turned back to the comment by Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey, back in the 19th century, that he had control of the project to construct the Ellipse – except for an excavation that was taking place at the centre. This subterranean working was described as being under the authority of ‘District Commissioners’ – apparently concerning a sewer.

  We knew that the idea of an excavation at a holy spot is of central importance in Scottish Rite Freemasonry. Chris has visited Scottish Rite temples in the USA and seen how underground chambers are routinely constructed for the purpose of conducting Enochian rituals.

  Our suspicion was that this gigantic triangle (with its base connecting the structure that housed US military might with the centre of national government, and its upper point at the known excavation in the Ellipse) might be supporting something of high symbolic value; and, maybe, something much more than a symbol.

  Of course, the hypothetical chamber at the centre of the Ellipse would have been planned at the same time as the Capitol, and both were developed to their present state at about the same time. But the third point of the triangle was nonexistent until Hell’s Bottom was cleared for the construction of the Pentagon. Therefore, if our theory is correct, the 33-degree triangle is a mid-20th-century embellishment to a pre-existent site at the Ellipse.

  That would make perfect sense to us. Every generation seeks to build upon and enhance the achievements of its forebears. The Founding Fathers had quietly built in all of the physical values of Freemasonic lore that they could – and in the early 1940s a select group of 33rd-degree Freemasons did the same when introducing a new component into the fabric of their ‘New Jerusalem’.

  We have already spoken about the rituals of the Ancient and Scottish Rite concerning the Delta of Enoch – which is the ancient triangle of gold that was a repository of antediluvian knowledge.

  Christian scriptures include only passing references to Enoch; the Book of Enoch was very popular with the people who wrote the New Testament. While this book today is non-canonical in most Christian Churches, it is quoted in the New Testament (Letter of Jude 1:14–15) and by many of the early Church Fathers. It is the most common document found amongst the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran – but it became lost to the Western world by the end of the 1st century AD. It was eventually found again by James Bruce, a Scottish Freemason; Bruce had set out to find the lost book and he returned triumphant from Ethiopia in 1773. This was, of course, long after the details of the story were in use by Freemasons.

  Enoch’s name, in the Hebrew language, Sol Henoch, signifies ‘to initiate’ and ‘to instruct’. One tradition states that Enoch received from God the gift of wisdom and knowledge, and that God sent him 30 volumes from heaven, filled with all the secrets of the most mysterious sciences. The Babylonians thought him to have been intimately acquainted with the nature of the stars, and they attribute to him the introduction of astronomy.

  Freemasonry tells us that Enoch sought the solitude and secrecy of Mount Moriah, and it was on that spot that Enoch built a temple underground. His son, Methuselah, constructed the building; although he was not told the purpose of the structure. This temple consisted of nine brick vaults, situated perpendicularly beneath each other and communicating by apertures left in the arch of each vault. Enoch then instructed that a triangular plate of gold should be made with sides a cubit long. He enriched it with the most precious stones, and encrusted the plate upon a stone of agate of the same form. Enoch then engraved, in ineffable characters, the true name of the Deity, and, placing it on a cubic pedestal of white marble, he deposited the whole within the deepest arch. When this subterranean building was completed, he made a stone door in the ground and, attaching to it a ring of iron by which it might occasionally be raised, he then placed it over the opening of the uppermost arch, and so covered it over that the aperture could not be discovered. After the deluge, all knowledge of this temple and of the sacred treasure which it contained was lost until, in later times, it was accidentally discovered by another worthy of Freemasonry who, like Enoch, was engaged in the erection of a temple on the same spot.

  According to tradition this exact location was also the place where Abraham planned to sacrifice his son around 1900 BC.5

  The legend goes on to inform us that after Enoch had completed the subterranean temple, fearing that the principles of those arts and sciences which he had cultivated with so much assiduity would be lost in that general destruction of which he had received a prophetic vision, he erected two pillars – one of marble, to withstand the influence of fire, and the other of brass, to resist the action of water. On the pillar of brass he engraved the history of creation, the principles of the arts and sciences, and the doctrines of Speculative Freemasonry as they were practised in his times; and on the one of marble he inscribed characters in hieroglyphics, importing that near the spot where they stood a precious treasure was deposited in a subterranean vault.

  The thirteenth degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry, The Royal Arch of Enoch, uses triangles and focuses on the hiding and rediscovery of the underground chamber containing the lost knowledge of Enoch.

  Figure 23. Masonic regalia from the 13th degree of Scottish Rite Freemasonry

  Could the work carried on at the centre of the Ellipse during its construction have had a different purpose than the declared sewer maintenance? There can be no doubt of three facts:

  1. The stone placed at the centre of the Ellipse marks the focal centre of Washington DC. A very slight mistake was made in the original positioning of the White House and this led to a further error but there is little doubt that the place where the Meridian Stone was placed in 1890 was considered to be the very centre of the diamond that represented the District of Columbia. (See Appendix 9.)

  2. The rituals of the Ancient Scottish Rite of Freemasonry have heavily influenced the layout of the city from its inception to very recent times. And at the heart of these rituals is the idea of a secret underground chamber containing a triangle that holds antediluvian knowledge.

  3. There is, or was, a chamber beneath the stone at the centre of the Ellipse, which is at the top point of a 33-degree-long triangle that connects with the Pentagon and the Capitol.

  If that chamber does still exist and contains something of great importance to Freemasonry – what could it be?


  The date of the work conducted on this ‘sewer’ offers a potential clue.

  The Ellipse was created from 1877–80 and, according to Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Lincoln Casey’s report of 1878, at that time the area right at the centre was being excavated by people who were not under his control. At that time, 3,500 miles away, excavations were being conducted at Rosslyn, the so-called chapel in Scotland that was actually built as a repository for precious items recovered from beneath the Temple of Jerusalem.

  An Ancient Icon for a New Jerusalem

  Improvements were being made to Rosslyn at the time the Ellipse was constructed, culminating in the completion of a new baptistery and organ loft attached to the west wall in 1881. Could it be that Scottish Freemasons took something out from under Rosslyn at this time of necessary excavation and gave it to Scottish Rite Freemasons in Washington DC?

  This may sound like a leap of logic, but there are many reasons why such an idea would fit all of the available evidence.

  All our past evidence indicates that the desire to build a New Jerusalem took different forms at differing stages of history. As we mentioned earlier there was a strong push in the 12th century to create the New Jerusalem in Great Britain. A number of the priesthood of Jerusalem, who escaped after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple and the slaughter of the Jewish people, fled to Europe in AD 70. A prophesy in the Book of Revelation, a work that mysteriously found its way into the New Testament, states that 1,000 years after the destruction of Jerusalem it will be sacked again and the descendants of the priests must rise up and retake the city. Exactly on cue, Jerusalem was sacked by Seljuk Turks and the families of the Jewish priests (now Christians – at least on the surface) activated the states of Europe to create the First Crusade.6

  After the city was taken and the political climate under control, nine French knights, from the priestly families, began nine years of excavation. The Copper Scroll (one of the Dead Sea Scrolls found in Qumran in 1947) lists the documents and huge amounts of treasure hidden under the Temple by the priests who built it at the time of Christ.

  This small band of excavators lived in poverty for the nine years, then suddenly in AD 1128 became the richest people in the world and founded their own military-religious order. They became the famous Knights Templar. Records within Freemasonry and elsewhere state that these treasures were brought to Kilwinning in Scotland in 1140.

  In 1307, the Knights Templar were convicted of carrying out non-Christian rituals. They were declared to be heretics, and the order went underground.

  We have both shown in previous books that in the 15th century a new copy of the Jerusalem Temple was built in Lowland Scotland, to house the priceless treasures.7 This is the famed Rosslyn Chapel. It is highly likely, and now widely accepted, that whatever the Knights Templar had found in Jerusalem was committed to the earth deep below Rosslyn Chapel. Like the original Temple in Jerusalem, Rosslyn Chapel was far more than a simple building. It was nothing less than an observatory – a more modern version of what had been built at Thornborough in 3500 BC. Rosslyn Chapel was special, just as the Temple in Jerusalem had been, because at both locations the rising Sun at the midwinter and midsummer solstices split the sky in a very special way. In Jerusalem the Sun rose 30° south of east at the winter solstice and 30° north of east at the summer solstice. At Rosslyn it was 45° south of east at the winter solstice and 45° north of east at the summer solstice. Both buildings had been deliberately constructed with this all-important fact in mind.

  Imagine our surprise to discover that at the time Washington DC was planned the Sun at this latitude was rising at 30° south of east at the midwinter solstice and 30° north of east at the midsummer solstice – exactly the same as it had done at the original Jerusalem Temple! It may well be the case, bearing in mind the tremendous Freemasonic influence that was brought to bear on the creation of the United States, that this particular location was chosen for the capital at least partly, or maybe wholly, because of this fateful fact.

  By the middle to late 19th century, Rosslyn Chapel had become little more than a curiosity – and it was turned into a Christian church.8 The addition of the strange Victorian entrance at the west end, and of an organ loft, looked like moulding the building into a fairly orthodox parish church, something it was never intended to be.

  Meanwhile, far to the west, the United States had wrested itself from British rule. It was everything a Freemasonically motivated state should be, a nation based on equality, liberty and fraternity. And in the eyes of Scottish Rite Freemasons this made it the epitome of the New Jerusalem. As we have previously suggested, to many Freemasons the concept of a New Jerusalem is purely figurative and allegorical; it is a construct that exists inside individual Freemasons but not necessarily something made of stone and mortar.

  To the majority of Freemasons this remains true, but it is not what the ‘ultimate’ lessons of the Craft suggest. It has been impossible for us to get hold of a full, reliable account of the 33rd-degree ceremony and ritual – even assuming that such a thing has ever been published in a form that ‘could’ be obtained. However, we have been able to track down reliable accounts of some parts of the 33rd degree and we know that at one stage the Illustrious Grand Minister, one of the officers present, tells the can-didate(s) in his lecture that the object of 33rd-degree Freemasons is to rebuild the ‘material’ Temple of Solomon or at least to rebuild a moral temple, wherein truth and love shall dwell for its members.

  There is a clear distinction here between the ‘real, material’ temple (something made out of stone) and the moral temple, which exists only in Freemasonic hearts. There is a plain and quite unequivocal command here to 33rd-degree Scottish Rite Freemasons to recreate the Temple as a real and quite tangible place.

  At the same time the United States was lifting itself from a destructive and crippling Civil War, it was also freeing itself from the vestiges of that most pernicious scar upon its stated ideals – namely slavery. By 1865 slavery had been abolished all across the United States and the words of the Declaration of Independence at last held good. Meanwhile in Great Britain, at the same time slavery may not have been the lot of ordinary people in any legal sense, but in reality the average ‘wage-slave’ (including women and children) in textile mills, coal mines and a thousand other trades as the Industrial Revolution gained pace was as bad as it had been for many black slaves in the colonies.

  During the 18th century and well into the 19th, thousands of people, especially from Scotland and Ireland, were forced, either physically or economically, by absentee landlords to leave their homes and to find work elsewhere. To many this effectively meant emigration. Many of these people found their way to America – the home of the free – and a good proportion of the men were undoubtedly already Freemasons. The excavation and construction work being conducted at Rosslyn Chapel in the 1870s would have presented the best possible opportunity to dig below the chapel into ground far below and to remove what had been so carefully placed there 400 years earlier.

  We believe that the documents and Temple treasures were reburied under Rosslyn in a wide distribution such as was used under Herod’s Temple at the time of Christ. This means that most items will be deep underground in lead sealed containers back-filled with sand. However, some objects may have been stored in the subterranean vault described in Freemasonry. This vault under the Jerusalem Temple is said to have been used by King Solomon, and it had a long tunnel leading to the King’s palace – running accurately from north to south. Exactly the same chamber has been found at Rosslyn – with a tunnel running perfectly north to south for some 304 m from the so-called chapel to Rosslyn castle. We noted that this tunnel covers a distance of precisely one Megalithic Second of arc!

  The centre of the Ellipse is, of course, also exactly due south of the ‘King’s Palace’ – the White House. Could there be a tunnel? The cover story of constructing a sewer would have been a perfect excuse for any tunnelling.

  We cannot
know for sure if there is a chamber beneath the stone set in the middle of the Ellipse, let alone a tunnel to the White House. But we would wager a large bet that both are present and that an object or objects of considerable historic and cultural value are now residing in that chamber. It is even possible that Enoch’s triangle of gold is there but, if so, it is likely to be a copy made in Jerusalem during the early centuries BC.

  We truly believe that Washington was destined to be the New Jerusalem, the hub of the world that would herald in a new age – a new world order. The evidence, both direct and circumstantial, also points to an amazing treasure lying at the absolute centre of the city and the District of Columbia.

  The White House was built on the ‘White Lot’, a piece of land deliberately left alone despite all the building going on around it. This area was thought to be the very heart, not just of Washington DC but also of the District of Columbia. Its ultimate signature as a place of megalithic proportions and importance did not become evident until the Ellipse was finished and the Meridian Stone was placed at its very centre in 1890. Things would probably have moved quicker had it not been for the exhausting Civil War.

  The placing of the Meridian Stone brought to life an incredible series of deliberately planned measurements that had actually existed since Washington DC had first come into existence. The Meridian Stone became the centre of this fantastic web, though of course it isn’t really a web. When seen isolated from the megalithic measurements to the south and east, the true state of affairs regarding the Ellipse becomes quite obvious. What the megalithic lines represent is nothing more or less than a huge and elaborate arrow, pointing directly at the Meridian Stone and whatever lies beneath. (See colour plate 13).

  The arrow is a double delta, reminiscent of the delta stone of Enoch that was, and is, so important to Scottish Rite Freemasonry.