Don't Know Much About Mythology - Kenneth C. Davis [51]
The most likely method of construction involved a series of ramps. Without using wheels or pulleys, gangs of men dragged the blocks on sleds or rollers to the pyramid site and pushed the first layer of stones into place. Then they built long ramps of earth and brick, and dragged the stones up the ramps to form the next layer. As each layer was finished, the ramps were lengthened. Finally, they covered the pyramid with an outer layer of white casing stones, laid so precisely that from a distance the pyramid appeared to have been cut out of a single white stone. Most of the casing stones are gone now, but a few are still in place at the bottom of the Great Pyramid.
No one knows for sure how long it took to build the Great Pyramid. Herodotus claimed that the work went on in four-month shifts, with one hundred thousand laborers in each shift. Among Egyptologists who have studied the remains of what were practically small towns that housed and fed the workers, the modern consensus is that a workforce of between twenty thousand and thirty thousand, including the “service people,” who baked bread and fixed tools for the builders, completed the Great Pyramid in less than twenty-three years. Most of the labor was provided by farmers during the inundations. But there are still unanswered questions about the workers. As historian Charles Freeman notes, “What incentives were needed to keep so many men toiling for so long can only be guessed at.”
What is an Egyptian pyramid doing on the U.S. dollar bill?
There is another peculiarly American mystery that pertains to the pyramids, and there is one in your wallet or pocket. The dollar bill, with its strange combination of pyramids, eyes, and Latin text, has inspired considerable speculation and myth—in the sense of something commonly believed but untrue. Many people think that the symbol represents the powerful influence of the semisecret society called the Freemasons. According to this theory, the symbols in question—the pyramid topped by an all-seeing eye—were put there by the “Masonic president,” Franklin Delano Roosevelt, to show that the country had been taken over by Masons.
In fact, these symbols are actually the two sides of the Great Seal of the United States, which dates from the late 1700s. Benjamin Franklin, also a Freemason, is often credited with their use, but even that may be a myth. The “All-Seeing Eye of the Deity” is mentioned in Freemasonry, but the concept behind this image dates back to the Egyptians. The unfinished pyramid symbolized the unfinished work of nation-building. Contrary to much popular myth, the pyramid is not a particularly Masonic symbol. The eye in the pyramid was a common symbol of an omniscient deity that can be seen in Italian Renaissance painting, long before the birth of Masonry, which was not formed until the early 1700s.
The Great Seal of the United States, symbol of the nation’s sovereignty, was adopted on June 20, 1782, and the reverse side of the seal is what appears on the back of the dollar bill. A pyramid of thirteen courses of stone represents the Union, and is watched over by the “Eye of Providence” enclosed in a triangle. The upper motto, Annuit coeptis, means “He [God] has favored our undertakings.” The lower motto, Novus ordo seclorum, means “the new order of the ages” that began in 1776, the date on the base of the pyramid. Anti-Mason groups and conspiracy theorists have mistranslated this as “New World Order,” attempting to fit the seal into the belief that Masons constitute a vast international conspiracy to create such an “order.” When the first President Bush used that phrase during his presidency to describe the changing political map of Europe following the fall of Communism in Europe, it was quickly seized as further evidence of the “Masonic plot.”*
One of the oldest and largest fraternal organizations in the world, Freemasonry was formed in London in 1717