• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1023 0

how Smyth achieved these astonishing scientific and historical correspondences. If you set about measuring a complicated structure like the Pyramid, you will quickly have on hand a great abundance of lengths to play with... since you are bound by no rules." In fact, Gardner, in his book Fads and Fallacies, demonstrates that the Washington Monument proves as much about history, astronomy, and numerology as does the Great Pyramid—if you have the patience and the time to waste on silly projects. One of Smyth's supporters, rhapsodizing over the relationship of the figure five to the pyramid, pointed out that it has five corners and five sides. The Pyramid Inch is one fifth of a cubit. There are five terminations in the human body, five senses, five books of Moses, and so on. But, Gardner shows us, there is just as much "fiveness" in the Washington Monument. Its height is 555 feet 5 inches. The base is 55 feet square, the windows are 500 feet from the base. Multiply five times the number of months in a year by the base, and you get 3,300—the number of pounds the capstone weighs. Using his "Monument Foot" (if Smyth can have a Pyramid Inch, why not a Monument Foot?) we have a base of 56.5 feet, which when multiplied by the capstone weight gives us 186,450—a figure remarkably close to the speed of light in miles per second. And so on and on.

Von Daniken can take courage from the fact that he is joined in his enthusiasm for Pyramidology by Charles T. Russell, now deceased, who founded the Jehovah's Witnesses cult. Russell announced in 1891 that before the close of 1914 the dead would all rise and again be annihilated if they chose not to accept a "second chance" to be saved. Once again, the faithful scurried into the Pyramid passageways to apply their tape measures to new predictions, seeking agreement with Russell. The year 1914 came and went.

There is one aspect of the Great Pyramid that seems to defy coincidence or wishful thinking, however. It seems fairly certain that the ancient Egyptians did not know the value of the very important constant we know as pi—often approximated as or 3.14. It is the ratio between the circumference of a circle and its diameter. Although both the Egyptians and the Japanese almost found it, they failed to recognize its importance, and its appearance in the Pyramid seems surprising. If we divide twice the length of one base side by the height of the Pyramid, we obtain pi correct within three figures. Recent investigation, as described in the "Nova" TV program, suggests that the practical Egyptians used a rolling wheel as a device to mark off distances, and the use of such a device would automatically introduce pi into the structure if the diameter of the wheel were one of the standards in use, as seems almost inescapable. But if space beings actually were there, why didn't they think to tell the Egyptians about the magical number pi? It shows up nowhere else!

Von Daniken, unable to believe that the ancients actually did the prodigious construction project themselves, tells us that no construction tools have been found in connection with the Great Pyramid. Not true. Ropes, rollers, chisels, and mallets are to be seen there and in collections all over the world. He says that we could not repeat this construction feat today, using our best technology. Again, not true. It is estimated that there are two and a half million blocks of stone in this colossal monument, and the quarries fifteen miles across the Nile River even show us some blocks partly cut out of the mass and abandoned when sufficient amounts were obtained. "Nova" discovered that today it takes two men fifteen minutes to cut a block out of the quarry. Estimates of how many blocks could be carried aboard the same size and type of vessel used in ancient times, of the labor needed for the construction of the ramps at the site, and of other logistics show that the thirty years and four-thousand-man work force estimated to have been required for the construction would seem to be adequate for the job. With more advanced technology, the