On November 10, 1999, I flew out of Indianapolis heading for England. My Webmaster, Nick Annies, had arranged, with the Petrie Museum, for the inspection of the core while the museum was closed for academic research. Nick and I took the train to King’s Cross on Monday, November 15, 1999. A short walk to the University College, London, found us, at 10:30 A.M., standing on the bottom step of the Petrie Museum, looking up at a gregarious doorman who advised us to have a cup of tea while we waited for the museum to open and then pointed us in the direction of a cafeteria. Not only a cuppa did we find there, but a wonderful English breakfast as well!
Then it came time to inspect the infamous Core #7. Although I had talked and written about this core for more than fifteen years, this was not the reverent visit to a holy relic that one might expect. I was not especially breathless with excitement to take the artifact into my latex-gloved hands. Nor was I impressed with its size or character. To tell the truth, I was profoundly unmoved and disappointed. With the old Peggy Lee song “Is That All There Is?” bouncing around in my head, I peered at this insignificant-looking piece of rock that had fueled such a heated debate on the Internet and in living rooms and pubs across the globe.
I was thinking to myself as I looked at the rough grooves on its surface, “How do I make sense of this?” And, “What was Petrie thinking about?” I looked up at Nick Annies standing over me. He had a look on his face that reminded me of my mother, within whose face I sought comfort when, at the age of eight, I was lying on the operating table having a wart burned out of my palm by a long, hot needle.
Not a word passed between us as I formulated my ultimate confession to the world. I had made a huge mistake in trusting Petrie’s writings! The core appeared to be exactly as Reid and Brownlee had described it! The grooves did not appear to have any remote resemblance to what Petrie had described. With the truth resting where a wart once grew, I was frozen in time.
With resignation I proceeded to check the width between the grooves using a 50X handheld microscope with .001 gradated reticle to .100 inch. At this point, I was certain that Petrie had been totally wrong in his evaluation of the piece. The distance between the grooves, which are scoured into the core along the entire length, was .040–.080 inch. I was devastated that Petrie had even gotten the distance between the grooves wrong! Any further measurements, I thought, would just be perfunctory. I couldn’t support any theory of advanced machining if Petrie’s dimensions of .100 inch feed-rate could not be verified! Nevertheless, I continued with my examination.
The crystalline structure of the core under microscope was beyond my ability to evaluate. I could not determine, as surely as Petrie had, that the groove ran deeper through the quartz than through the feldspar. I did notice that there were some regions, very few, where the biotite (black mica) appeared to be ripped from the felspar in a way that is similar to other artifacts found in Egypt. However, the groove passed through other areas quite cleanly without any such ripping effect, though again I support Brownlee’s assertions that a cutting force against the material could rip the crystals from the felspar substrate.
I then measured the depth of the groove. To accomplish this I used an indicator depth gauge with a fine point to enable it to reach into a narrow space. The gauge operated so as to allow a zero setting when the gauge was set on a flat surface without any deviations. When the gauge passed over a depression (or groove) in a surface, the spring-loaded indicator point pushed into the groove, causing the needle to move on the gauge dial, indicating the precise depth.
The depths of the grooves were .002 and .005 inch. (Actually, because there were clearly discontinuities in the groove at some locations around the core, the actual measurement would be between .000 and .005 inch.)
Then came the great question. Was the groove a helix or a horizontal ring around the core? I had deferred to Reid and Brownlee’s assertions that they were horizontal and I was, at this juncture, painfully assured that it was the correct thing to do. It was Petrie’s description of the helical groove that made Core #7 stand apart from modern cores. It was one of the principal characteristics upon which I had based my theory of ultrasonic machining. But what I held in my hand seemed to support Reid and Brownlee’s objections to this theory, for they said that the core had an appearance similar to any other core one may produce in a quarry.
White cotton thread was the perfect tool to use when inspecting for a helical groove. Why not use a thread to check a thread! I carefully placed one end of the thread in a groove while Nick secured it with a piece of Scotch tape. While I peered through my 10X Optivisor, I rotated the core in my left hand, making sure the thread stayed in the groove with my right. The groove varied in depth as it circled the core, and at some points there was just a faint scratch that I would probably not have detected with my naked eye. As the other end of the thread came into view, I could see that what Petrie had described about this core was not quite correct.
Petrie had described a single helical groove that had a pitch of .100 inch. What I was looking at was not a single helical groove, but two helical grooves. The thread wound around the core following the groove until it lay approximately .110 inch above the start of the thread. Amazingly, though, there was another groove that nestled neatly in between!
I repeated the test at six or seven different locations on the core, with the same results. The grooves were cut clockwise, looking down the small end to the large—which would be from top to bottom. In uniformity, the grooves were as deep at the top of the core as they were at the bottom. They were also as uniform in pitch at the top and bottom, with sections of the groove clearly seen right to the point where the core granite was broken out of the hole.
These are not horizontal striations or rings as trumpeted in Giza: The Truth, but rather helical grooves that spiraled down the core like a double-start thread.
To replicate this core, therefore, the drilling method should produce the following:
A clockwise double helical groove from top to bottom with a .110 to .120-inch pitch.
A groove between .000 and .005 inch deep.
A taper from top to bottom. Some ripping of the quartz is acceptable.
I was quite impressed with the deepness of the groove, so after returning home I walked out to the tool room and talked to toolmaker Don Reynolds, who was working on a surface grinder. I asked him if he had a sharp diamond wheel dresser. (These are used to dress carborundum and other types of grinding wheels.) He did in fact have one; it had been barely used, and had a nice sharp point. (These industrial diamonds are set into a steel shank, which is then fixtured so as to sit on a magnetic chuck.) I asked him how deep a groove he thought he could scratch into a piece of granite with the diamond.
He said, “Let’s find out!”
We walked over to a granite surface plate while I jokingly admonished him not to try it on the work surface. He pressed the diamond point into the side of the plate. Bearing down with all the weight he could throw behind it, he scoured the side of the plate with a scratch about four inches long.
We both felt the scratch. “How deep would you say that is?” I asked.
“Oh, between .003 and .005 inch,” he said.
“Let’s check it out then!” I said.
Don fixtured an indicator gauge in a surface gauge and zeroed the fine needle point on the surface. As he passed it over the groove, the point dropped into the groove and the dial read only .001 inch!
The reason I bring this up is that it has been suggested that if the core did have a spiral groove, it would have been created by the lateral pressure of a spinning drill as it was being rapidly withdrawn from the hole. Bringing all my thirty-eight years of experience to bear, for the following reasons I cannot imagine that this is remotely possible:
This idea relies on centrifugal force to cut the groove, as the drill is being withdrawn and passing over a widening gap, and to achieve greater centrifugal force, the drill would need to spin faster.
There wouldn�
��t be sufficient lateral force to cut a groove in granite to a depth of .001 inch, let alone .005 inch. It is as simple as that.
With a spinning drill shank that has the freedom to roam inside an oversized bearing, the drill will seek the path of least resistance, which is away from the granite.
Petrie’s observations were valid when he claimed that this was not a viable means of creating the groove, because of a buildup of dust between the tube and the granite.
Why such a commotion regarding a small, insignificant core? Because it was seen as the weakest area of my work, and therefore easily disputed. It also served to obscure and divert attention from other, more significant artifacts that I have described. Thus, I would challenge the orthodox camp to forget about Petrie’s Core #7 for now and provide explanations for all of the other artifacts I describe in my book. I would challenge them to demonstrate, with the tools they have educated us with for centuries, how the ancient Egyptians created such awesome precision and geometry in hard granite, diorite, basalt, and schist.
They can’t.
For these, my friends, are the products of a highly advanced civilization.
34 How Did the Pyramid Builders Spell Relief?
Do We Really Know Why the Ancients Used Such Giant Stones in the Pyramid’s So-Called Relieving Chambers?
Christopher Dunn
While conducting explorations in the Great Pyramid in 1836, the British military man Colonel William Richard Howard-Vyse was in a crouched space above the King’s Chamber examining a mysterious layer of granite beams that were similar to the granite beams that formed the ceiling of the King’s Chamber beneath him. The crouched space is named Davison’s Chamber, after Nathaniel Davison, who had discovered it in 1765.
Howard-Vyse, who reportedly had received £10,000 from his family for this exploration and, more important, to liberate themselves from his presence, was intent on making a significant discovery and thus far was not having any luck. The granite layer over his head posed a tantalizing clue that something might be lying behind it. Noticing a crack between the beams of the ceiling, Howard-Vyse mulled over the possibility of yet another chamber existing above. Being able to push a three-foot-long reed into the crack, without obstruction, seemed an indication that there must be some other space beyond.
Howard-Vyse and his helpers made an attempt to cut through the granite to find out if there was another chamber above. Discovering in short order that their hammers and hardened steel chisels were no match for the red granite, they resorted to gunpowder. A local worker, his senses dulled by a supply of alcohol and hashish, set the charges and blasted away the rock until another chamber was revealed.
Similar to Davison’s Chamber, a ceiling of monolithic granite beams spanned the newly discovered chamber, indicating to Howard-Vyse the possible existence of yet another chamber above. After blasting upward for three and a half months and to a height of forty feet, they discovered three more chambers, making a total of five.
The topmost chamber had a gabled ceiling made of giant limestone blocks. To construct these five chambers, the ancient Egyptians had found it necessary to use forty-three pieces of granite weighing up to seventy tons each. The red-granite beams were cut square and parallel on three sides, but were left seemingly untouched on the top surface, which was rough and uneven. Some of them even had holes gouged into their topsides.
In this article we will look at the evidence and attempt to explore reasons for this phenomenal expenditure of resources from both the conventional perspective and the alternative perspective. Considering the enormous effort that must have gone into delivering to the Giza plateau these enormous monoliths, we will ask, “Within the framework of the established hypothesis on the Great Pyramid, was all of this work really necessary?”
By today’s standards, quarrying and hauling five hundred miles for just one of the forty-three granite beams that are placed above the King’s Chamber would not be a simple task. Yet the ancient Egyptians accomplished this task not just once, but many times. The seveny-ton weight, however, is not the limit of what the ancient Egyptians were capable of. Large obelisks of up to four hundred tons were also quarried, hauled, and erected. Howard-Vyse surmised that the reason for the five superimposed chambers was to relieve the flat ceiling of the King’s Chamber from the weight of thousands of tons of masonry above.
Although most researchers after Howard-Vyse have generally accepted this speculation, there are others, including the world’s first Egyptologist, Sir William Flinders Petrie, who have not. Important considerations cast doubt on this theory and prove it to be incorrect.
What needs to be considered is that there is a more efficient and less complicated technique in chamber construction elsewhere inside the Great Pyramid. The Queen’s Chamber negates the argument that the King’s Chamber’s overlying “chambers of construction” were designed to allow a flat ceiling. The load of masonry bearing down on the Queen’s Chamber is greater than that above the King’s Chamber, due to the fact that this chamber is situated below the King’s Chamber.
If a flat ceiling had been needed for the Queen’s Chamber, it would have been quite safe to span this room with the kind of beams that are above the King’s Chamber. The construction of the Queen’s Chamber employed cantilevered limestone blocks that transferred the weight of the masonry above to the outside of the walls. A ceiling similar to the one in the King’s Chamber could have been added to this design and, as with the beams above the King’s Chamber, the beams would be holding up nothing more than their own weight.
When the builders of the Great Pyramid constructed the King’s Chamber, they were obviously aware of a simpler method of creating a flat ceiling. The design of the King’s Chamber complex, therefore, must have been prompted by other considerations. What were these considerations? Why are there five superimposed layers of monolithic seventy-ton granite beams? Imagine the sheer will and energy that went in to raising one of the granite blocks 175 feet in the air! There must have been a far greater purpose for investing so much time and energy.
I made the above argument in my book, The Giza Power Plant. Since its publication, the contrary opinion that I had articulated had evidently become a point of discussion on a message board because I received an e-mail from Egyptology student Mikey Brass, within which was a link to a translation of a German magazine article. The question was posed to Frank Dörnenburg, a participant in the discussion: Why so many layers? He writes:
I have been debating elsewhere, the Kings Chamber, and the question of why five ‘Relieving’ Chambers were needed to be used to spread the massive weight above the King’s Chamber. My answer to this was I simply did not know. A good answer to this question can be found in Göttinger Miszellen 173: “The old method of corbelling channeled the weight force directly to the walls of a chamber. The new, and here for the first time used, gable-roof redirects the force down AND sideways. If the Egyptians had put the gable roof in the King’s Chamber directly on the ceiling like in the Queen’s Chamber, the sideways force would have damaged the great gallery. So they had to put the gable above the upper layer of the gallery’s construction. The easiest way to do this was to stack small chambers. And if you look at a cross section you will see that now the sideways force of the roof goes well over the roof of the gallery.”
Superficially, what is proposed in the above hypothesis may seem plausible. It is, however, a construct founded on flawed assumptions and an incomplete analysis of the entire King’s Chamber complex. Before accepting it as factual, we need to consider the following.
The hypothesis assumes that dynamic lateral forces would follow the direction of the angled blocks and that these lateral forces would accumulate as more stone was piled on top of the gabled blocks. According to the hypothesis, the consequence of each block added above the King’s Chamber causes additional lateral thrust to push against the southern end of the grand gallery.
The drawing on page 253 represents a mechanical setup with which many manu
facturing technologists are intimately familiar. It is a steel plate resting in a V-block. If we allow that the above hypothesis is correct, the plate would push on surface A, causing lateral movement.
At rest, the plate will put more pressure on the opposite surface due to the center of gravity of the piece. Except for gravity, there are no dynamic forces at work. There is only dead weight, which is distributed according to each member’s center of gravity. When an object is placed on an inclined plane, it has the potential to move down that plane by gravitational forces acting upon it. This movement continues until an obstruction is encountered, at which time the kinetic energy that causes lateral motion ceases.
Forbidden History: Prehistoric Technologies, Extraterrestrial Intervention, and the Suppressed Origins of Civilization Page 30
