The message of the Sphinx: a quest for the hidden legacy of mankind Read Online Free PDF

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    Also ‘almost impossible’, since the mathematical value pi (3.14) is not supposed to have been calculated by any civilization until the Greeks stumbled upon it in the third century BC, [84] is the fact the designed height of the Great Pyramid—481.3949 feet—bears the same relationship to its base perimeter (3023.16 feet) as does the circumference of any circle to its radius. This relationship is 2 pi (i.e. 481.3949 feet x 2 x 3.14 = 3023.16 feet).
    Equally ‘impossible’—at any rate for a people like the ancient Egyptians who are supposed to have known nothing about the true shape and size of our planet—is the relationship, in a scale of 1:43,200, that exists between the dimensions of the Pyramid and the dimensions of the earth. Setting aside for the moment the question of whether we are dealing with coincidence here, it is a simple fact, verifiable on any pocket calculator, that if you take the monument’s original height (481.3949 feet) and multiply it by 43,200 you get a quotient of 3938.685 miles. This is an underestimate by just 11 miles of the true figure for the polar radius of the earth (3949 miles) worked out by the best modern methods. Likewise, if you take the monument’s perimeter at the base (3023.16 feet) and multiply this figure by 43,200 then you get 24,734.94 miles—a result that is within 170 miles of the true equatorial circumference of the earth (24,902 miles). Moreover, although 170 miles sounds quite a lot, it amounts, in relation to the earth’s total circumference, to a minus-error of only three quarters of a single per cent.
    High precision
    Such fine errors are within the general margins of tolerance found at the Great Pyramid. Indeed, although it has a footprint of over 13 acres, and consists of some six and a half million tons of limestone and granite blocks, the sheer mass and size of this monster of monuments are not its most impressive characteristics. More astounding by far is the incredible high-tech precision that is built into every aspect of its design.
    Before going into the details, let us consider the implications of very fine precision in very large monuments.
    An analogy with the simple wrist-watch helps. If you are after an accuracy of, say, a few seconds per week, then an ordinary quartz watch costing fifty dollars or less will do the trick. If you want accuracy to within a fraction of a second per year, however, then the quartz watch will no longer serve and you will have to turn to something of the order of an atomic clock.
    A similar situation applies in the construction industry. If you are building a brick wall that is to appear straight within plus or minus 1 degree per 100 metres and the whole roughly directed due north, then any good bricklayer should be able to meet your specification. However, if your requirement is for a wall that is straight within 1 arc minute per 100 metres and directed exactly due north, then you are going to need a laser theodolite, an ordnance survey map accurate to 10 metres, and a highly qualified team of professionals including an expert setting-out engineer, an astronomer, a surveyor, several master-masons and a week or so to ensure that the precision you are aiming for has in fact been achieved.
    Such ‘atomic clock’ precision was achieved by the builders of the Great Pyramid more than 4500 years ago. This is not a matter of historical speculation, or of theory, but of plain, measurable facts.
    For example the earth’s equatorial circumference of 24,902 miles works out at around 132 million feet, with the result that a degree of latitude at the equator is equivalent to approximately 366,600 feet (i.e. 132 million feet divided by 360 degrees). Each degree is divided into 60 arc minutes, which means that 1 arc minute represents just over 6100 feet on the earth’s surface, and each arc minute is then further subdivided into 60 arc seconds—with the result that 1 arc second is equivalent to a distance of about 101 feet.