On a rocky plateau a few miles southwest of Cairo, Egypt and one-quarter of a mile from the west bank of the Nile stands a mass of stone and rubble that the ancient Greeks wrote into history as the “first wonder of the ancient world” – the Great Pyramid of Giza. Although time, the elements and man have taken their toll on this stately structure, we must marvel at its size, weight and endurance as well as the master architect and craftsmen who designed and built it.
Estimated to be at least 5,000 years old, the Great Pyramid stands as the most imposing engineering feat of all time. The Great Pyramid is unparalleled. It is the largest building on Earth. It contains some 90 million cubic feet of masonry, enough to build 30 Empire State buildings or a road eighteen feet wide and a foot thick from Salt Lake City to New York (2,182 miles).
The base occupies 13.1 acres or enough land, it has been estimated, to house the huge cathedrals of Milan and Florence, St. Paul’s Basilica in Rome, Westminister Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral. According to I.E.S. Edwards in ‘The Pyramids of Egypt’, the base has been surveyed as follows: east 755.88 feet, west 755.77 feet, north 755.43 feet, south 756.08 feet.
Although no two sides are identical, the difference between the shortest and the longest is 7.9 (0.007 percent error). The exterior above ground has a surface area of 22 acres and was originally covered with White Tura limestone that shone in the sun and moon light.The core stones are made up of and estimated 2.3 to 2.5 million separate blocks of limestone each weighing tons.
All locomotives in teh world could not pull the pyramid, since it weighs 6.5 million tons.The blocks are fitted so that the joints are never more than one-fiftieth of an inch wide and the cement is so strong and find that it defies modern chemical analysis. The stone will break before the cement joints give.
The entire structure was originally aligned to true north and south. This implies almost perfect right angles at the four corners. That a building this large was constructed by ancient man 5,000 years ago with a precision that we cannot achieve today in our construction projects, is clearly shown by the preceeding data. We are, however, left with a number of questions which we shall examine.
The most common question is, who built this enormous pyramid? If we accept the thoughts of the archaeologists and of the historian Herodotus, the Great Pyramid was built as a tomb for the body of the pharaoh Khufu. There are some problems with this orthodox view however. There is no direct archaeological evidence proving Khufu built the pyramid. Most of the evidence proves the reverse case, that he did not build the pyramid, but repaired it and took his name from the pyramid.
Herodotus wrote his works 2,000 years after the pyramid was built. Thus, there is some suspicion that his works are wrong even though he probably had access to records that have long since been destroyed. The most commonly accepted view of archaeologists is that the pyramid was built in 23 years with the help of 400,000 workmen with no modern machinery, working for a period of three months a year when the Nile flooded its banks. The workmen are thought to have used inclined planes.
Some simple calculations will show you that even if working 24 hours a day, every day of the year for 23 years, you would still have to place a stone into position every 4 minutes and 39 seconds to complete the job. It’s impossible.
The mathematical and cosmic formulas built into the pyramid are truly amazing. We will present a few for the readers’ benefit to show the beauty and precision that is incorporated into the pyramid.
The designer of the Great Pyramid saw modern man’s need for a scientific unit of measure based upon the exact dimensions of the Earth. The pyramid builders used a measurement called the ‘pyramid inch’, equal to 1.0011 inches (British). This unit is one-five hundred millionth the distance from the North Pole to the South Pole through the center of the Earth. Thus, the ancients calculated the diameter of the Earth as 7,899.31 miles and our modern satellites give us a distance of 7,899.8 miles.
The circumference of the Great Pyramid is 36,524.22 pyramid inches, or 100 times the number of days in a solar year (365.2422 days or 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 49.7 seconds).
The distance from the Earth to the Sun is given as approximately 92 million miles. The altitude of the pyramid is 5,813.01 pyramid inches. If this is multiplied by 1 billion and then converted to miles, the answer is 91,837,484 miles, or the same as the distance from the Earth to the Sun.
As well, the Great Pyramid contains the value for Pi (3.14159). This figure is very important since it is the mathematical relationship upon which the whole universe is designed.
The mean temperature of the Earth is 68 degrees fahrenheit. This is also the same temperature maintained at all times inside the King’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid.
Thus, we see the wonderful facts that were incorporated into the pyramid. Many of these measurements were not confirmed until recent times with modern satellites. The Great Pyramid was designed so that man would not lose these important relationships and mathematical wonders should any great calamity strike the peoples of the Earth. This did happen and we are just now regaining that knowledge. But we are also on the brink of losing all through war and destruction.
