Chapter 15 Chapter 15 The Great Pyramid

You are the mighty God, the LORD of hosts is your name...The wonders of God in the land of Egypt have continued to this day... Jeremiah Chapter 32 Verses 18-20 The amount of archaeological writing on the Bible is bewildering.These writings range from sound and objective research by those who seek to avoid drawing unwarranted conclusions, to those who have no scruples to twist the material to conform to the biblical account. Thousands of books and pamphlets have been written over 100 years to show that the "latest discoveries" in archaeology confirm all the details of biblical history, especially those stories of miracles that are ridiculed by the unbelievers.In some writings it is difficult to say that this distortion is unconscious.For example, Professor Hubert Grimm of the University of Munich published in the twenties a "translation" of a stele, which recounts how the infant Moses was rescued from the reeds by the Pharaoh's daughter.It was later found that the professor made arbitrary interpretations of the cracks and weathering marks on the stele, and combined them with hieroglyphs to obtain the desired translation.

Among the pseudo-archaeological documents written in English, the most prominent works are the three books of Sir Charles Marston: The Bible Is True (1934), New Evidence Concerning the Bible (1934) and The Birth of the Bible (1937).Among the less academic works, John Keeneman's Fact Finders (1940) is a more obvious example.From the book, the reader learns that Abraham's house has been unearthed, his signature even found, and evidence that St. Paul once preached in England.Keeneman, however, is cautious about confirming that Lot's wife was turned into a pillar of salt.He wrote, "There are indeed many pillars of salt in that area, but no one can tell which one is the remains of the unfortunate woman."

Every few years someone goes on an expedition to Mount Ararat to find Noah's Ark.Egerton Sykes, president of Britain's Holberger Society and editor of an Atlantic Island magazine, had planned such an expedition several years ago, but Russian authorities pressured Ottoman officials in Ankara to grant him a visa.According to the Russians, his expedition was part of a "plot by the Anglo-American forces to spy on the situation on the Russian frontier from Mount Ararat".However, another expedition in 1949 led by Dr. Alan Smith of Greensboro, North Carolina, did climb to 12,000 feet on the side of Mount Ararat.Unfortunately, they did not find the ark.In his report, Smith said, "We cannot say whether it is possible that the Ark may have landed at a lower place, or whether it was completely destroyed by the debris of the earthquake, because the earthquakes in this area are very violent. Moreover, the Ark may have been destroyed. Buried under the snow and ice on the north side of the mountains. We didn't find the Ark, but we did clear the way for someone else, who might have better luck."

Of course, it is impossible to even give a brief introduction to the strange biblical texts here.However, this aspect of so-called pyramidology is rather peculiar and colorful, and it is worth noting.This chapter is devoted to this subject (there are as many books on this subject as there are on the Atlantic Islands). The Great Pyramids of Egypt are associated with many superstitions of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, especially with the teachings of the Rosicruz and other occultists, but pyramidology was not born until 1859.It was that year that John Taylor, an eccentric partner in a London publishing firm, published his book The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built?Who built it? ".

Taylor had never been in a pyramid, but the more he studied the structure of the pyramid, the more he believed that the architect who built the pyramid was not an Egyptian, but an Israeli who acted according to God's will.Maybe he was Noah himself."Of all men," Taylor wrote, "the one who built the Ark was the most able to direct the building of the Great Pyramid."This is really an interesting story. Poor old Noah, after completing the arduous task of building the ark and surviving the flood, was sent to Egypt to guide the even more arduous work of building the pyramids!

The main reason why Taylor believes that the pyramids are designed by God is that he found that the structure of the pyramids contains various mathematical principles, far exceeding the scope of knowledge in the ancient Egyptian era.For example, by dividing the multiple of one side of the tower base by the height of the tower, you can get a value that is very close to pi.In addition, Taylor took pains to figure out that the measure of length used by the builders of the pyramids was precisely the biblical "cubit".Noah used this unit when he built his ark, Abraham when he built the Jewish Temple, and Solomon when he built his temple.Taylor believes that the "magic wrist" is about 25 inches long, based on the length of the earth's axis.Since the earth is oblate at the poles, its diameters differ markedly, so what could be a better natural basis for the divine unit of measurement than the axis on which the earth revolves?Divide the earth's axis by 400,000 to get the length of the magic wrist.Taylor also found other units of measurement of the gods from the pyramids, such as the capacity of a stone chest in the king's tomb, and he believed that all these units of measurement could find their basis in nature, so they were superior to the basis of other measurement systems.

In addition to the so-called truths embodied in the pyramids, Taylor also found dozens of passages in the Old Testament and the New Testament. If these passages are extracted from the context, they can be interpreted as talking about the pyramids.For example, in "Isaiah" chapter 19, verses 19-20, it is written: "In that day there shall be an altar to the Lord built in the land of Egypt... and it shall be done in the land of Egypt to the Lord of hosts." Signs and evidence...". "Job" chapter 38 verses 5-7 read: "If you know, tell me, who made the measure of the earth, and who drew the line on it. Where is the foundation of the earth, and what is the cornerstone of the earth? Who laid it. Then the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy."Taylor believes that even St. Paul is speaking of a pyramid in this passage: "...the chief cornerstone is Christ Jesus himself, by whom the houses, held together, grow into the holy temple of the Lord." (Ephesians Chapter 2, Sections 20-21).The pyramid, he explained, symbolizes the true church, with Christ as its top cornerstone (a symbol that, by the way, is common in Christian mythology and was adopted by the founding fathers of the United States as the backdrop for the Great Seal of the United States).

If it were not for the director of the Scottish Observatory, Charles Smith, a professor at the University of Edinburgh, Taylor's conjecture would have been quickly forgotten.Enthusiastic about Taylor's theory, the Smithsonian soon became convinced that the pyramids symbolized even greater truths than Taylor had imagined.His 664-page tome, The Legacy of the Great Pyramid, is to Biblical Pyramidology what Donnaco's work is to Atlanticosology. The first edition, published in 1864, was an immediate success.The book went on to be published in four more editions (the last edition was published in 1890 after extensive revisions) and was translated into several languages.Its influence far outweighed all later published works on the subject. In 1865 Smith traveled to Egypt at his own expense in order to personally measure the Great Pyramid.The results of his research were published in 3 volumes (Life and Work at the Great Pyramid (1867) and Monuments of the Wise (1868).

"The Legacy of the Great Pyramids" can be called a "masterpiece" among such works.A smart person who is passionate about a certain theory handles his research topic skillfully and effortlessly so that his work conforms to a pre-formed point of view. This is something that few books can do. Unfortunately, this book is due to Due to the limitation of space, I can only give a very brief outline of Smith's astonishing discovery. First of all, Smith found that the base of the Jinyu Pagoda was removed by the width of one surface stone of the pyramid, and the number was exactly 365, that is, the number of days in a year.The epistones were originally the outer skins of the pyramids.The first surface stone was unearthed after Taylor's death, so he did not know the width of the block.The size of the stone was a little over 25 inches, which Smith believed was exactly equal to the cubit of the god.If we determine a new inch, which Smith called the "pyramid inch," which is one-twentieth the width of the topstone, then we have the smallest divine measure used in building the pyramids.It is exactly one ten-millionth of the radius between the two poles of the earth.The Scottish astronomer believes the unit was passed down from generation to generation and later became the Anglo-Saxon inch.However, there was a slight change in the process of handing down, and the inch was slightly shorter than the god's unit.Many years later, another batch of surface stones was unearthed, but the width was completely different.By then, however, pyramid dimensions had been firmly established in the pyramidological literature, so those who were interested in the subject simply shrugged and admitted that the width of the first topstone "coincidentally" was exactly one cubit.

With incredible enthusiasm, Smith measured every measurable part of the pyramid with his pyramid inches, inside and out, to see how much scientific truth and historical fact he could uncover.His harvest was very rich.For example, multiplying the height of the pyramids by 10 to the 9th power gives a figure close to the distance from the earth to the sun.Varying the various lengths of the pyramids also yields the average density of the Earth, the period of the precession of the Earth's axis, the average temperature of the Earth's surface, and many other scientific facts that have only recently been discovered.In addition to the divine system of units of measurement for length, weight, volume, etc., Smith proposed a "pyramid thermometer".It determined that the freezing point was zero degrees, and set the indoor temperature of the pharaoh's tomb at the height of the 50th floor of the pyramid stone structure to 50 degrees.

Smith's most astonishing contribution, however, was his elaborate explanation of the theory of a man named Robert Menzies.This theory says that the internal passages of the pyramids symbolize a grand historical process.Accurately measuring these passages in pyramidal inches, with each inch counting as a year, together with a correct interpretation of the symbolism, allows the dates of important past and future events on Earth.For example, one can know that the world was created around 4004 BC, and also the time of the Great Flood and the departure of the ancient Israelites from Egypt, as well as the date of the construction of the pyramids. The beginning of a ramp called the Great Corridor marks the The birth of Christ.The other parts represent Christ's crucifixion (after 33 years on earth), his descent into hell, and his final resurrection.Continuing up the corridor, you will find that it ends in 1882 or 1911, the difference between the two years is due to the different methods of measuring the length of the Grand Corridor.According to Smith, this 29-year period is the time of the Great Tribulation before the second coming of Christ. It is not difficult to understand that Smith can achieve such an astonishing correspondence between science and history.Anyone who sets out to measure a structure as complex as a pyramid will quickly have a large number of dimensions at your disposal.As long as you have enough patience to match these dimensions over and over again, you will get many numbers corresponding to important historical dates or scientific data.Since it is not bound by any rules, it would be strange if this search for the "truth" of the pyramid did not achieve great results. Taking the height of the pyramid as an example, Smith multiplied it by 10 to the 9th power to get the distance from the earth to the sun.The 9 here is completely arbitrarily set.If the distance to the sun cannot be obtained by this simple multiplication, he can also use other multiplications to experiment to obtain the distance to the moon or the nearest planets, or to obtain other scientific data. This numbers game is made easier by two important facts. (1) The lengths of the pyramid parts are not recognized at all.Leading archaeologists of Smith's time disagreed with almost all the data, including the basic data of the length of the pyramid base.Later archaeologists made more accurate measurements after Smith, and the figures still vary.In many cases, Smith can choose from any of several different lengths.In addition, he can use his own measurements.Sometimes he added together conflicting measurements and used the average. (2) Various data reflecting scientific truth are also inaccurate.For example, in Smith's time, the distance from the earth to the sun was not known exactly, and the distance was different because the earth's orbit was not circular but elliptical.In this case, there is a wide range of options for log values.Either the shortest distance from the earth to the sun, the longest distance, or its average value can be taken.Even these three numbers can also be selected among different values ​​obtained by different astronomers at that time.All the scientific "truths" Smith cites contain such ambiguities. The only "truth" of the pyramid that is difficult to explain by playing with numbers is the value of pi.The Egyptians may have used this value consciously, but it seems more likely to be a by-product of another design.According to Herodotus, the pyramid was designed so that the area of ​​each side was equal to the area of ​​a square whose side was the height of the pyramid.If such a design could be achieved, the shape of the pyramid would be perfect.The ratio of the height to twice the tower base is naturally the exact π. Both Taylor and Smith talked about the number 5 as a key number in the structure of the pyramid.A pyramid has 5 corners and 5 faces.The jinyu tower inch is one-fifth of one-fifth of a cubit, and so on.Joseph Seth, one of Smith's believers, said: "It is no accident that so many 5 are used, and it is consistent with God's arrangement in nature and in new discoveries. It may be worth noting that everyone's limbs have 5 ends, 5 faculties, the Pentateuch, two rings composed of 5." Just kidding, if we look up some facts about the Washington Monument in the World Almanac, we can find quite a few 5's too.The height of the monument is 555 feet 5 inches.The base of the stele is 55 feet square, and the windows are opened 500 feet above the base of the stele.If the base of the stele is multiplied by 60 (that is, five times the number of months in a year), the number is 3,300, which is exactly the weight of the capstone in pounds.Furthermore, the word Washington has exactly 10 letters (2 times 5).If you multiply the weight of the capstone by the base, you get 181,500, which is close to the speed of light in miles per second.If the base of the stele is measured with a "monument ruler" which is slightly smaller than the standard foot, it can be concluded that one side is 56.5 feet.Multiply this number by 33,000 to get a number that is closer to the speed of light. Also, doesn't it make sense that the monument is obelisk-an ancient Egyptian architectural structure? Doesn't it also make sense that the one-dollar bill has a graphic of the Great Pyramid on the back of Washington's portrait? Again Or, the decision to put a pyramid on the dollar bill was announced by the Secretary of the Treasury on June 15, 1935—both the date and the year are multiples of 5.And isn't the 5 English words for the position of The Secretary of the Treasury exactly made up of 25 letters (5 times 5)? Only by using the limited numbers provided by the "Yearbook" to calculate, it only takes about 55 minutes for people who can do ordinary arithmetic to discover the above "truth".Considering that Smith took the measurements himself, got the hundreds of sizes available, and spent 20 years crunching those numbers, it's no surprise that he's achieved such a feat. Nonetheless, Smith's writings have impressed millions of naive readers.Dozens of books have been published in various languages ​​to advance this great research enterprise and to add much material.In France, the main advocate of pyramidology is F.Father Movagno. In 1879, the International Society for the Maintenance and Improvement of Weights and Measures was formed at a meeting held at the Old Church of Boston's South Tenth Ward.The association's purpose was to revise various units of measurement so that they conformed to the sacred pyramid standard, opposing the French "atheistic metric system".President James Garfield was a supporter of the association, although he declined to serve as its president. A journal called The International Standard was published in Cleveland in the 1880s by the Ohio chapter of the society.The president of the chapter, a civil engineer who prides himself on having an arm that is exactly a cubit long, wrote in issue 1 of the journal: "We are convinced that we are working for God, we have no any motive of selfishness or profit. We despise any kind of personal antagonism, but we declare that we will persevere against that most wicked French metric.  … We scorn the jeers of the ignorant and the sneers of the bigoted , that does us no harm....This is a 'battle of standards'. Let us always hold high the banner of truth, liberty, and fraternity, founded on the just measure that God alone can accept." A later issue has a song whose second verse reads: Overthrow all the tricks of the "metric system", That's what foreigners preach. We still believe in the God of our ancestors, Maintain the "rules" of the ancestors! The perfect inch, the perfect pint Sterling has a reputation for honesty. maintain their place in the world, Till the trumpet of the end of the world sounds! The prophecies in Smith's writings had a strong appeal to Protestant fundamentalists of all stripes, especially in England.One of Joseph Seth's most popular early works, The Miracle of Stone (1877), went through 14 editions.A colonel named Garnier wrote a book in 1905 proving that Christ would return in 1920 based on the pyramids.Walter Win published a similar work in 1926.He was not discouraged by the unfulfilled prophecy in the book, and he wrote another book in 1933, making the same poor prophecy again.Bertrand Russell summed up this type of work in a treatise as follows: "I rather like those who study the Great Pyramid in order to understand its mysteries. Great books have been written on the subject, some of which have been gifted to me by their authors. It is a curious fact that the Great Pyramid is The history of the world before the publication of the book always makes accurate predictions, but the predictions after the publication of the book are not so reliable. Generally speaking, the author predicts that there will be war in Egypt soon, followed by Armageddon. Armageddon between good and evil and the emergence of 'the enemies of Christ', but by this time so many people have been designated as 'the enemies of Christ' that the reader has to be skeptical of the claim." One American pastor who was deeply moved by Smith's research was Charles Russell of Allegheny, Pennsylvania, founder of a sect now known as Jehovah's Witnesses. In 1891, Reverend Russell published the third volume of his famous multi-volume Bible Studies.It is a work of biblical prophecy supplemented by the evidence provided by the Great Pyramids.A letter from Smith is included in the book.In the letter, the Scottish astronomer highly praised Russell's original and new contribution. According to Russell, both the Bible and the pyramids make it clear that Christ came a second time in 1874, though it was not seen.This advent brought about a 40-year "harvest period," during which the true believers of the church were called to Russell's leadership. Before the end of 1914, the 1000 Years of Beatitudes will begin.The dead will be resurrected and given a "second chance" to convert to Christ.Those who refuse will be wiped out, thereby purging the world of all evil.At the beginning of the Beatitudes 1,000 years, the faithful of the living Church will live forever.This is the meaning of the slogan of the "Jehovah's Witnesses" sect "Millions of living will live forever". In England, the Edgar brothers (John and Morton) were deeply moved by Russell's pyramid theory, and they couldn't wait to go to Egypt to measure it for themselves.There "from the symbolic and prophetic revelations of this building they successively discovered new mysteries", thus finding "perfect proof" for the priest's point of view.Their remarkable research left posterity with two volumes, the above quotation being from the first volume.Two books were published in 1910 and 1913, titled The Passages and Chambers of the Great Pyramid. To the great disappointment of the followers of Russell, the drama of 1914 was nothing more than a world war, and the faction lost thousands of followers.Russell's work on pyramid research slightly modified key words and sentences when publishing a new version to conceal the failure of the prophecy.For example, the 1910 edition states, "...the salvation of God's elect must have occurred sometime before 1914..." (p. 228).In the 1923 edition the sentence was changed to, "...the salvation of God's chosen people must take place shortly after 1914...." Morton Edgar (whose brother John died before the disappointing 1914) was Published a series of pamphlets, echoing the then-popular Russellian narrative that Christ (who had come to earth since 1874) had begun to exercise the invisible reign of justice over the world in 1914. After Russell's death in 1916, Judge Rutherford succeeded him, but he later abandoned pyramidology altogether.Rutherford violently attacked pyramidology in the two issues of "Watch Tower and Prophet" on November 15 and December 1, 1928, and put forward many original arguments. He said that the so-called altars in Egypt were actually The above is set by Satan to lead the devout believers astray.Did Jesus mention the pyramids?of course not.The judge wrote that studying the pyramids was a waste of time and showed a lack of confidence in the perfection of the Bible. Rutherford does not tell the reader in the article whether he, too, made false predictions.For years he had asserted that 1925 would mark the beginning of the Year of Great Joy.Unfortunately, this year passed without any major changes.The sect now discourages the sale and reading of Russell's work, and its adherents, while still believing in the imminent millennium, no longer date it. Another fundamentalist sect, the Anglo-Israeli movement, is even more keen to make use of this "stone bible".This superstitious group believed that the Anglo-Saxons and Celts were descendants of the 10 lost tribes of Israel, and thus the heirs of all of God's promises to Abraham.The main body in the United States is the American Anglo-Saxon Federation, with its headquarters in Haverhill, Massachusetts.Their fine monthly magazine has been running for over 20 years. The outstanding work on the pyramids in the Anglo-Israeli movement is the great work "The Great Pyramid: Its Divine Revelation", first published in 1924, which is equivalent to a volume of Encyclopedia Britannica.The author is David Davidson, a construction engineer in Leeds, England. A revised 8th edition was published in 1940.The book is based on Smith's writings, but with major differences in the prophecies.The "Last Tribulation" of the Anglo-Saxons will begin in 1928 and continue until 1936.From September 16, 1936 to August 20, 1953, the Anglo-Saxons, the "true" Israelites, will come together and be protected by God against the combined powers of the world seeking to destroy them.This is the Armageddon period of Armageddon, which ends with the return of Christ. Many Anglo-Israeli books and pamphlets are based on the writings of Davidson, especially some of Basil Stewart.In the US, Haverhill Group is now marketing the 10th edition of The Great Pyramids: The Proof of God by George Riffert of Easton, Pennsylvania.This book seems to be a popular version of Davidson's work. The first edition, published in 1932, attached great importance to the date of September 16, 1936.Anglo-Israelites in both Britain and the United States were thrilled when the date approached, but the day slipped by without major events. The latest edition of Riffert's book adds a chapter in which he admits that "a very practical problem remains to ascertain the true nature of the era whose decisive moment was September 16, 1936." Significance and nature." He cites several events of that day, the most important of which is that "the then King of England (later the Duke of Windsor) informed his prime minister, Mr Baldwin, of his determination to marry Mrs Simpson. " Invert ends the book by saying: "...by 1953, the present 'Babylon-Antichrist-Gentile' type of civilization, the capitalist money system for profit through exploitation and usury, the good and evil of Armageddon Armageddon, Restoration of God's spirituality of Israel and its administrative role in a new social and economic order, Overthrow of dictatorships, Restoration of Anglo-Saxon nations and transformation into a worldwide kingdom of heaven, Return of Jesus Christ Himself as King of kings Prepare and realize the 'Blessed 1,000 Years' era where all this will come." The Adventists have a sad habit of not throwing in the towel when one of their great prophecies is not fulfilled.Finding "errors" in calculations and making appropriate corrections would have been easy.It will be interesting, however, to see how the leaders of the Haverhill Group make their case after August 20, 1953, has crept away. It may be worth mentioning that there still exists a large body of mysticism on the subject of the pyramids, especially the Rosicruzian and theosophical legends.These writers rejected the biblical prophecies made by Smith, but they found many mathematical, scientific, astrological and occult symbols on the pyramids, and the symbols found by each person were quite different.According to Ms Blavatsky, the interior of the pyramid was used for religious ceremonies related to the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and most Theosophists today believe that this place holds a great deal of mystery, but only Known to those who have been taught.The most important reference in this regard is the two-volume work The Great Pyramid: Theory and Practice (1932-35) by the British theosist William Kinglan.Another mystical point of view is to link the pyramids with Jewish mystical philosophy, such as Ralston Skinner's "Hebrew-Egyptian Metaphysics" (first edition in 1875, revised in 1931) . Worthless though these works may be, they are not worthless if we see in them instances of great lesson.No other book shows as clearly as Smith's how easy it is to study and form a pattern from a large, unorganized data set.This messy juxtaposition makes it hard to believe at first glance that it is nothing more than the subjective product of one person's mind.In a sense, this is roughly the case with all the works of pseudoscientists.They find ways to not let the data itself speak for itself.Whether consciously or unconsciously, they falsify and distort objective facts with preconceived dogmas to fit them in support of their own dogmas which have no basis in the objective world.Sir Flinders Petrie, the eminent archaeologist who made very accurate measurements of the Pyramid, reported that he had found a Pyramidist secretly filing down a protruding stone in order to fit it into one of his theory! The capacity of the human mind to deceive itself by unconsciously "fabricating" facts - overemphasizing this and undermining that - is far greater than most people can imagine.The writings on pyramidology are a timeless and sad contribution to this capacity. For readers in the 2000s, are the works of the above-mentioned prophetic historians, like the predictions of the pyramidists, all fabricated at will?Chesterton's cheerful futuristic fantasy, Napoleon of Notting Hill, begins with an insightful passage. The species of which many of my readers are included—human beings, have been addicted to children's games since their infancy . . .A favorite game of theirs was called "Hiding Tomorrow in Darkness," or "Tricking the Prophet" (as the Shropshire country folk called it, I believe).People who play games listen to what wise people say about the next century.Then they waited for the wise men to die and buried them well.So they went away, and each went about his own business.that is it.It's a good pastime for a race with nothing but simple hobbies.