The Great Pyramid

"The mind has lost its cutting edge, we hardly understand the ancients."

GREGOIRE DE TOURS - 6th Century AD.

The Great Pyramid is the most comprehensively measured and surveyed building on the face of the planet today. This is for no other reason than its sheer magnitude as a construction project, and the unbelievable precision with which the project was carried out. Below is an interesting photo of the Great Pyramid taken from space, and listed below are some of the more incredible features of this structure.

A few facts...

- It is constructed from approximately 2.5 million dressed blocks, mostly of yellow limestone,    with Aswan granite (quarried 500 miles to the South), used for certain internal features

- The total mass is estimated at 90 million cubic feet, weighing 6-7 million tons

- Its original height was 481 feet, but its top few courses and capstone no longer exist, so it now reaches just over 450 feet. Its base covers an incredible area of 13 acres, and its perimeter is just short of 1 kilometre long

- Its four sides average 756 feet in length, with the difference between the longest and shortest sides being 8 inches, an error amounting to 0.09%

- This height to base ratio turns up another surprise. The mathematical constant P (Pi), supposedly discovered by the ancient Greeks over a thousand years later, is incorporated into the design.. ie.   great pyramid height/base ratio = any circle's circumference/radius ratio,  (756 x 2) / 481  =  3.14!

- The four sides of the Great Pyramid are also aligned to the four cardinal points with incredible precision. In fact, the average error in these alignments is just 3 arc minutes, equivalent to an error of  only  0.015%

The list above is but a short summary of the numerous scientifically significant measurements and features within the Great Pyramid, which make it stand alone as a remarkable architectural achievement. Others include precise astronomical alignments, geodetic location, advanced machining technology, trigonometrical modelling, and other uses of advanced mathematics in design, such as Phi, the 'Golden Section'. The question that occurs is why? Why such incredible precision? Why include so many advanced and mathematically significant measurements? Why go to all that bother? On the next page, I will review current thinking on the subject, and offer some of my own opinions.