Examining the Pyramids

Herodotus, the “father of history,” lived during the 5th century B.C. He was the first of many to record either legend or theory about the Great Pyramid of Giza, which was built in Egypt an estimated 2,000 years before his “history” was written. According to Herodotus:

“It took ten years' oppression of the people to make the causeway for the conveyance of the stones, a work not much inferior, in my judgment, to the pyramid itself. This causeway is five furlongs in length, ten fathoms wide, and in height—at the highest part—eight fathoms. It is built of polished stone and is covered with carvings of animals. As I said, it took ten years to make the causeway, the works on the mound where the pyramid stands, and the underground chambers, which Cheops (the Egyptian king) intended as vaults for his own use. These last were built on a sort of island, surrounded by water introduced from the Nile by a canal. The pyramid itself was 20 years in the building. It is a square—800 feet each way, and the height the same—built entirely of polished stone fitted together with the utmost care. The stones of which it is composed are none of them less than 30 feet in length. The pyramid was built in steps, battlement-wise as it is called, or, according to others, alter-wise. After laying the stones for the base, they raised the remaining stones to their places by means of machines formed of short wooden planks. The upper portion of the pyramid was finished first, then the middle, and finally the part which is lowest and nearest the ground.”

Early Efforts of Examination

Since the time of Herodotus, thousands of scientists, researchers, authors, historians, philosophers, theologians, and psychics have probed, measured, photographed, and studied the Great Pyramid in ways too numerous to mention. These serious researchers have written millions of words in reporting the results of their work—and yet hardly any two agree on their findings. Efforts with early computer tapes and cosmic rays added to the mystery of how, why, and when the Great Pyramid and the others were built. According to the head of a group that worked with an IBM 1130 computer at the Ain Shams University in Cairo, the computer analyses appeared to be scientifically impossible. He stated that there was either a substantial error in the pyramid which affected the recordings, or that some mysterious force, which defied the laws of science, was at work in the pyramid. A duplicate copy of these tapes were analyzed by a computer in Berkeley, California, which also reported the same results through analysis after analysis.

One would have to be a mathematician, scientist, and technologist to understand the calculations on which current pyramid statistics are based.

Examining the Great Pyramid

The Great Pyramid is comparable to a 48-story building in height, but would cover 7 city blocks—approximately 14 acres. It contains 90 million cubic feet and 30 Empire State Buildings could be built from its stone. These stones number 2,500,000, weigh from two and a half tons to 70 tons each, and range to 27 feet in length, five feet in width and seven feet in thickness. The space between these huge stones is no wider than a sheet of aluminum foil, yet between their polished surfaces is a thin film of white cement. Chemists are unable to duplicate the composition of this cement.

The Great Pyramid is oriented to true north. Although it was built an estimated 5000 years ago, it is only three minutes of angle off the north-south axis of the Earth. (The best efforts of modern man is the Paris Observatory, which is six minutes off true north.) The north-south axis and the east–west axis of the pyramid divide the Earth's terrain equally. The entire 14-square acres are level to within a half-inch.

Technology has determined accurate measurements of the Earth itself and its relationship with other bodies only recently. The pyramid seems to contain many of these measurements in its structure. It records the density of the Earth, the weight of the Earth, the sun's distance from the Earth, the volume of the Earth's crust above sea level, the ocean level of the Earth, the terrestrial year, and the precision of our equinox. The Great Pyramid is built to the specific geometric proportions of pi.

Much of the interior of the pyramid is solid stone. The entrance to the corridor leading into the center is on the north face, 55 feet above ground level and midway across the face. The corridor—about 3 feet square—descends into an underground chamber at an angle of 26 degrees. But 60 feet into the descending corridor, it is intersected by an ascending corridor of identical size. This corridor is 129 feet in length and rises at an angle 26 degrees. A passage at the top of the ascending corridor leads to the "queen's chamber," which is calculated to be exactly midpoint between the north and south sides of the pyramid and directly under the capstone. It measures more than 17 by 18 feet, with a pointed roof rising to a height of over 20 feet. The east wall contains a niche, three feet deep, 15 feet high and five feet wide. Its purpose, of course, is unknown. Two ventilation shafts rise from the queen's chamber, one on the north wall and the other on the south wall.

The continuation of the ascending corridor at the 129 foot mark is called the “grand gallery." It is over 100 feet long and nearly 30 feet high. This gallery was designed with the same slope of 26 degrees. At the upper end of the gallery is a narrow, low passageway less than four feet square, which leads to the “king's chamber." This chamber is completely built of polished red granite blocks and measures slightly over 17 feet by 34 feet, and is 19 feet high. In the north end and the south end are shafts similar to the ones found in the queen's chamber. Near the west wall stands a lidless, rectangular box. The flat ceiling consists of nine limestone slabs with an approximate total weight of 400 tons. Three more ceilings of exact construction are above, and a fifth and final ceiling is pointed. It is thought the purpose of this peculiar construction of the roof was to help support the superstructure of the pyramid and eliminate any risk from the forces of nature, such as an earthquake.

The original outer surface of the Great Pyramid was finished with slabs of highly-polished Tura limestone. These were later stripped from the pyramid and used in the construction of olden Cairo. The original capstone may have never been completed or, psychic Edgar Cayce said in one of his readings, that the final tip was made of five cubits of gold set with a diamond or quartz and may have been removed for its value or safekeeping. Cayce also said that the pyramid was built over 10,000 years ago by non-Egyptians, and was not built for the purposes of entombment, but as a storage place (by means of its construction) for the history of mankind from the very beginning up to the year 1998. This history is allegedly written in the language of mathematics, geometry, and astronomy.

Pyramids as Inspiration

Egyptologists are sincere in their beliefs that the pyramid was nothing more than a tomb or, at most, a combination tomb and temple. Others regard the site as an initiation temple into the great mysteries. One of the more modern theories is that the giant structure is also a machine—for example, a pump. Some are convinced that if the capstone were in place, the pyramid would function as a giant beacon or perhaps a laser beam. Since mummies are usually not found in pyramids and never above ground, it is at least reasonable to consider there were other uses for the structure than just burying kings.

In 1976, The Guide to Pyramid Energy by Bill Kerrell and Kathy Goggin stated that, “Pyramids are certainly no overnight sensation—not when you consider the antiquity of the Great Pyramid of Giza." However, it wasn't until the late 1940s that a radio technician named Karel Drbal became curious enough about the pyramid shape to research its energy phenomenon. He spent the next ten years working with a small cardboard copy of the Great Pyramid.

In 1959, Drbal obtained a Czech patent on the “Pharaoh's Shaving Device," which consisted of a small 6'' base cardboard pyramid with the exact mathematical dimensions of the Great Pyramid. When a razor blade was stored inside the cardboard pyramid between shaves—at the level of 1/3 the height with the whole thing oriented toward true north—the razor blade would actually stay sharp for an unusually long period of time.

At the time of Drbal's discovery, most Americans still assumed that a pyramid was simply a thing they buried pharaohs in. Then Sheila Ostrander and Lynn Schroeder published a book titled Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain. They gave an account of this Czech patent and instructions on how anyone could build his/her own experimental pyramid… and all the fun began. Thousands and thousands of Americans began experimenting with pyramids. Big ones, little ones, metal ones, plastic ones, cardboard ones, glass ones... Some tried meditating in people-size ones. Some constructed them over their beds and slept in them.