Conspiracy Theory of New Age Belief: Or, "The Aliens Did It"

As some of you are aware, I love ancient Egypt. Their history is my favorite in all of the ancient world. I've had dreams about excavating in the Valley of the Kings.

That said, you know where I'm coming from when I talk about this article.

Since, after all, I am but a lowly student whose years are few, I will not let my mouth run away, and instead will reproduce pertinent parts of the article and ask pointed questions.

When the Arab Abdullah Al Mamoun finally forced his entry into the chamber in AD 820 - the first entry since the chamber was sealed in some long ago time - he found the coffer entirely empty. Egyptologists assume that this was the final resting place of Khufu, yet not the slightest evidence suggests that a corpse had ever been in this coffer or chamber. Nor have any embalming materials, any fragments of any article, or any clues whatsoever been found in the chamber or anywhere else in the entire pyramid that in any way indicates that Khufu (or anyone else) was ever buried there. How do you know? Were you there? Anyway, embalming materials weren't usually kept in the same chamber. And, mind you, we have no idea if there ARE other chambers that have simply been blocked off in an ingenious way.

The attribution to Khufu of the Great Pyramid is founded solely upon three very circumstantial pieces of "evidence":

the legends told to and reported by Herodotus who visited the pyramids in 443 BC

the funerary complex near the Great Pyramid with inscriptions citing Cheops/Khufu as the reigning pharaoh

in the pyramid itself, on a granite slab above the ceiling of the main chamber, some small, roughly scribbled chalk marks that have a slight resemblance to a hieroglyphic symbol for the name of Khufu. Objection. 'small, roughly scribbled', 'slight resemblance'--very subjective. For instance, I might not be able to tell what the time signature of a piece is because my ear isn't very good, but the Beloved Blogmistress can.
re: the funerary complex. Mortuary temples--what he is talking about--were the location where bodies were embalmed, sometimes visited, and certain rituals might occur (the Opening of the Mouth, etc.). See his comment above--"Nor have any embalming materials...been found in the chamber." That, good sir, is why.

The Great Pyramid is constructed with approximately 2,300,000 limestone and granite blocks. Weighing between 2.5 and 50 tons each, these stone blocks had to be quarried from the earth. Herein lies our first unsolved problem.

In the Cairo museum one can see several examples of simple copper and bronze saws, which Egyptologists claim are like those utilized in the cutting and shaping of the pyramid blocks. These tools present a problem. On the Mohs scale of mineral hardness, copper and bronze have a hardness of 3.5 to 4, while limestone has a hardness of 4 to 5 and granite of 5 to 6.

The known tools would only barely cut through limestone and would be useless with granite. No archaeological examples of iron tools are found in early dynastic Egypt, yet even if they were, the best steels today have a hardness of only 5.5 and thus are inefficient for cutting granite. Experiments have been done, by Zahi Hawass (Egypt's leading Egyptologist) and others. They know how it was done, and that it can be done.

Still further evidence that the dynastic Egyptians did not construct the Great Pyramid may be found in sediments surrounding the base of the monument, in legends regarding watermarks on the stones halfway up its sides, and in salt incrustations found within. Silt sediments rising to fourteen feet around the base of the pyramid contain many seashells and fossils that have been radiocarbon-dated to be nearly twelve thousand years old. Yes, because carbon-dating is always absolutely accurate. (/sarcasm) Though it *can* be very accurate, when it comes to ancient history the results are frequently dubious at best.

Moreover, the author earlier dismissed so easily the "legends reported to and told by Herodotus"--yet here he views "legends regarding watermarks" with far less skepticism. If he could justify this, then it wouldn't bother me so much--but he does not give a citation or an explanation why he finds one set of legends to be less credible than the other.

Further, when the Great Pyramid was first opened, incrustations of salt an inch thick were found inside. While much of this salt is known to be natural exudation from the stones of the pyramid, chemical analysis has shown that some of the salt has a mineral content consistent with salt from the sea. These salt incrustations, found at a height corresponding to the water level marks left on the exterior, are further evidence that at some time in the distant past the pyramid was submerged halfway up its height. "Consistent with" does not necessarily mean 'Is'. My skintone and eye color are both consistent with a being of Nordic descent. However, I have no relatives from that particular region.

Let us turn our attention briefly to the matter of the purpose or multiple purposes of the Great Pyramid, drawing for our discussion on both the exact measurements made by modern scientists and the mythic legends of the remote past. A few facts:

The sides of the pyramid are lined up almost exactly with the cardinal points of the compass. The accuracy of this alignment is extraordinary, with an average discrepancy of only about three minutes of arc in any direction or a variation of less than 0.06 percent.

The Great Pyramid functioned as an enormous sundial. Its shadow to the north, and its reflected sunlight to the south, accurately marked the annual dates of both the solstices and the equinoxes. The basic dimensions of the Great Pyramid incorporate measurements from which the earth's size and shape can be calculated. This is not surprising. During the middle ages, many scientists knew of the earth's size and shape to a fair degree of accuracy.

The pyramid is a scale model of the hemisphere, incorporating the geographical degrees of latitude and longitude. The latitude and longitude lines that intersect at the Great Pyramid (30 degrees north and 31 degrees east) cross more of the earth's land surface than any other lines, thus the pyramid is located at the center of the land mass of the earth (the pyramid is built on the closest suitable site to this intersection). "Closest suitable site". Sounds like coincidence to me...but what do I know?

The original perimeter of the pyramid equals exactly one-half minute of latitude at the equator, indicating that its builders measured the earth with extreme precision and recorded this information in the dimensions of the structure. Altogether these measurements show that the builders knew the exact dimensions of the planet as precisely as they have been recently determined by satellite surveys. "As determined by satellite surveys". ...this sounds to me like the author is slowly leaning towards the usual diatribe of "The Aliens did it!"

Measurements throughout the pyramid show that its constructors knew of the proportions of pi (3.14...), phi or the Golden Mean (1.618), and the "Pythagorean" triangles thousands of years before Pythagoras, the so-called father of geometry, lived. Ancient Egypt was home to one of the most advanced civilizations in the Ancient World. More than one person can come up with pi and the Pythagorean Theorem. And if anyone would, it would be the Egyptians.

Measurements show that the builders knew the precise spherical shape and size of the earth and had accurately charted such complex astronomical events as the precession of the equinoxes and the lunar standstill dates. The minute discrepancies of the lengths of the base of the pyramid (several inches over the 230 meter length of its base) reveal not an error on the part of the builders but an ingenious means of incorporating into the pyramid the "discrepancies" of the earth itself, in this case the flattening of the earth's globe at the poles. Mr. Gray is intentionally including facts which cannot be proven within the context of his article. He does not cite any studies to prove such. Moreover, the "facts" are all designed with the intention of pointing to an extraterrestrial civilization, unless Mr. Gray believes that years before the Egyptians there was a globe-trotting civilization with artificial satellites.

Shafts leading upward from the two main chambers, previously thought to be air shafts for ventilation, have been shown to have another purpose. A miniature electronic robot mechanically crawled sixty-five meters up the shafts and confirmed that the south and north shafts in the Kings Chamber are pointed to Al Nitak (Zeta Orionis) and Alpha Draconis respectively, while the south and north shafts of the Queens Chamber point to Sirius and Orion. This is an archaeological straw man. On the whole, it's fairly irrelevant, and is included just to sound important. If, in fact, the shafts in the chambers do point to stars or constellations or whatever, then it's very interesting but fundamentally irrelevant. Unless you're trying to prove aliens did it.

The scientists conducting this research have shown that the layout of the three pyramids on the Giza plateau precisely mirror the position of the three main stars in the Orion constellation. (While crawling along one of the shafts in the Queens chamber, the robot's cameras photographed a previously unknown closed door that may lead to some hidden chamber.) Ah, yes. The Orion Correlation Theory...first proposed by Robert Bauval, if I recall correctly, who believes firmly that in the area of 10,000 BC there was an extremely advanced "global progenitor civilization".

What does all this mean? Why did the ancient builders of the Giza pyramids, whoever they may have been, encode so much precise mathematical, geographic, and astronomical information into their structures? What was the purpose of the Great Pyramid? This is the same sort of thinking that got people in trouble with "The Da Vinci Code"...

While no authoritative answer can presently be given to this question, two intriguing matters suggest a direction for further inquiry and research. The first has to do with the persistent legends that the Great Pyramid, and especially the main chamber, were used as some sort of sacred initiation center. I'm only going to say this once. The Masons may like to trace their heritage to the Egyptians and Knights Templar all they like, but it is wishful thinking. I can also try to trace my background to Constantine, but that wouldn't make it correct.

According to one legend, students who had first undergone long years of preparation, meditation and metaphysical instruction in an esoteric school (the mythic "Hall of Records" hidden deep beneath the desert sands somewhere near the Great Pyramid and the Sphinx) were placed in the granite coffer of the main chamber and left alone throughout an entire night. Here he goes again placing one kind of legend--even less substantial than the ones told to Herodotus--above the other.

The coffer was the focal point of the energies gathered, concentrated, aimed, and directed at the main chamber by virtue of the precise mathematical location, alignment, and construction of the pyramid. ...energies?

These energies, considered to be especially potent at certain precisely calculated periods when the earth was in a particular geometric alignment with solar, lunar, and stellar objects, were conducive to the awakening, stimulation, and acceleration of spiritual consciousness in the suitably prepared adept. ...something smells funny...it smells like deep-fried New Ageism BS...

Napoleon himself spent a night alone in the chamber. Were you there? This is, to my knowledge, an urban legend and an urban legend alone. Emerging pale and dazed, he would not speak of his powerful experiences, only saying, "You would not believe me if I told you." "There were fields of...poppies..."

A second matter needing further inquiry from the scientific community studying the Great Pyramid - and one that might help explain the subject just discussed - concerns the matter of unexplained energetic anomalies frequently noticed and recorded in the main chamber. Would it be so hard for Mr. Gray to define 'energy'? Geez. What IS it?

In the 1920s, a Frenchman named Antoine Bovis made the surprising discovery that, despite the heat and high humidity of the main chamber, the dead bodies of animals left in the chamber did not decay but completely dehydrated. The stones in the pyramids exude salt, as he pointed out earlier. Salt dries. More specifically, it replaces moisture in flesh with crystals. Natural mummification. What I want to know is...what proof is there? And why was he leaving dead animal corpses in the chamber?

Thinking that there might be some relationship between this phenomena and the position of the main chamber in the pyramid, Bovis constructed a small-scale model of the pyramid, oriented it to the same direction as the Great Pyramid, and placed the body of a dead cat at the approximate level of the main chamber. ...he killed a cat?...

The result was the same. As he had observed in the Great Pyramid, the cat's body did not decay. That's the undead for you.

In the 1960s, researchers in Czechoslovakia and the U.S., conducting limited studies of the geometry of the pyramid, repeated this experiment with the same results. They also found that the form of the pyramid somehow mysteriously kept foods preserved without spoiling, sharpened dull razor blades, induced plants to germinate and grow more quickly, and hastened the healing of animals' wounds. "There was also a strange sort of smoke while they conducted their research. They all felt really happy..."

Other scientists, in consideration of the high quartz content of the granite blocks in the main chamber and the incredible pressures those blocks are subjected to, theorized that the main chamber may have been the focal point of a powerful piezoelectric field; magnetometer measurements inside the chamber indeed showed higher levels than the normal background geomagnetic field. So...speaking as one who has never been the scientific type...it's a giant magnet?

Although much research remains to be done in these areas, legend, archaeology, mathematics, and earth sciences seem to indicate that the Great Pyramid was a monumental device for gathering, amplifying, and focusing a mysterious energy field for the spiritual benefit of human beings. Yes. And please stop smoking whatever it is that you're smoking before you write another article.

Whew. Well, that was exhausting. Oh...for what it's worth, here's an excerpt from a Wikipedia entry on Antoine Bovis.

The Bovis scale, named after a French radiesthesist called André Bovis (1871-1947; also referred to as either Antoine or Alfred by some authors) is a concept used by dowsers and adherents of geomancy to quantify the strength of a postulated "cosmo-telluric energy" inherent in a location.

The unit of the Bovis scale has no known definition and isn't in any way based on physics. The "measurement" consists of the dowser walking around the place with an object (like a pendulum, dubbed "biometer") and declaring the Bovis number. A number of 6,500 is considered "neutral", lower figures affect human "energies" negatively, higher numbers positively. Numbers above 10,000 are in the "ethereal range", considered places of power.

And here's radiesthesia:

Radiesthesia is the paranormal or parapsychological ability to detect "radiation" within the human body. According to the theory, all human bodies give off unique or characteristic "radiations" as do all other physical bodies or objects. Such radiations are often termed an "aura".

A practitioner of radiesthesia believes in his or her ability to detect the interplay of these radiations. Thus radiesthesia is cited as the explanation of such phenomena as dowsing by rods and pendulums in order to locate buried substances, diagnose illnesses, and the like. Some radiesthesia practitioners like Israeli mentalist Uri Geller or German astrologer Alexander Rostamí claim that they can help oil companies to find crude petroleum reserves and other natural resources by using paranormal abilities, but this claim has not yet been proven.

Doesn't that make you trust the author?

I can smell a New Ageist a mile away...