Graham Hancock: evaluation

Transcript context

…Well, the three great pyramids of Giza are different from later pyramids. This is another problem that I have with the whole thing is the story of pyramid building. When did it really begin? The timeline that we get from Egyptology is the first pyramid is the pyramid of the Pharaoh, Djoser, the Step Pyramid at Saqqara, about 100 years or so before the Giza pyramids were built. Then, we have this explosion in the fourth dynasty of true pyramids. We have three of them attributed to a single Pharaoh, Sneferu, who built, supposedly, the pyramid at Meidum and the two pyramids at Dahshur, the Bent and the Red Pyramid. Then, within that same 100-year span, we have the Giza pyramids being built. This is according to the Orthodox chronology. Then, suddenly, once the Giza project is finished, pyramid building goes into a massive slump in Ancient Egypt. The pyramids of the Fifth Dynasty are, frankly speaking, a mess outside. They’re very inferior constructions. You can hardly recognize them as pyramids at all. But what happens when you go inside them is you find that they’re extensively covered in hieroglyphs and imagery, repeating the name of the king who was supposedly buried in that place. Whereas, the Giza pyramids have no internal inscriptions whatsoever. What we do have is one piece of graffiti about which there is some controversy. Basic statistics: it’s a 6 million-ton structure. Each side is about 750 feet long. It’s aligned almost perfectly to true north, south, east, and west within 3/60ths of a single degree, the 06ths, because degrees are divided into 60s. It’s the precision of the orientation and the absolute massive size of the thing plus its very complicated internal passageways that are involved in it. In the ninth century, the Great Pyramid still had its facing stones in place, but there was an Arab Caliph, Khalifa al-Mamun, who had already realized that other pyramids did have their entrances in the north face. Nobody knew where the entrance to the Great Pyramid was. But he figured if there’s an entrance to this thing, it’s going to be in the north face somewhere. He put together a team of workers. They went in with sledgehammers. They started smashing where he thought would be the entrance. They cut their way into the Great Pyramid for a distance of maybe 100 feet. Then, the hammering that they did dislodged something. They heard a little bit further away, something big falling, and they realized there was a cavity there. They started heading in that direction. Then, they joined the internal passageway of the Great Pyramid, the descending and the ascending corridors that go up. When you go up the ascending corridor, every one of the internal passageways in the Great Pyramid that people can walk in slopes at an angle of 26 degrees. That’s interesting because the angle of slope of the exterior of the Great Pyramid is 52 degrees. We know mathematicians were at work as well as geometers in the creation of the Great Pyramid. egrees. That’s interesting because the angle of slope of the exterior of the Great Pyramid is 52 degrees. We know mathematicians were at work as well as geometers in the creation of the Great Pyramid. If you go up the Grand Gallery, which is at the end of the so-called ascending corridor, and it’s above the so-called Queen’s Chamber… You go up the Grand Gallery. You’re eventually going to come to what is known as the King’s Chamber in which there is a sarcophagus. That sarcophagus is a little bit too big to have been got in through the narrow entrance passageway. It’s almost as though the so-called King’s Chamber was built around the sarcophagus, already in place. Above the King’s Chamber are five other chambers. These are known as relieving chambers. The theory was that they were built to relieve the pressure on the King’s Chamber of the weight of the monument. But I think what makes that theory dubious is the fact that even lower down, where more weight was involved, you have the Queen’s Chamber, and there are no such relieving chambers above that. In the top of these five chambers, a British adventurer and vandal called Howard Vyse, who dynamited his way into those chambers in the first place, allegedly found… Well, he claims he found a piece of graffiti left by a work-gang naming the Pharaoh Khufu. It’s true. I’ve been in that chamber, and there is the cartouche of Khufu there. Quite recognizable. But the dispute around it is whether that is a genuine piece of graffiti dating from the Old Kingdom or whether Howard Vyse actually put it there himself because he was in desperate need of money at the time. I’m not sure what the answer to that question is. But it’s one of the reasons that Egyptologists feel confident in saying that the pyramid is the work of Khufu. Another is what is called the Wadi al-Jarf Papyri, where, on the Red Sea, the diary of an individual Merer was found. He talks about bringing highly polished limestone to the Great Pyramid. It’s clear that what he’s talking about is the facing stones of the Great Pyramid. He’s not talking about the body of the Great Pyramid. He’s talking about the facing stones of the Great Pyramid during the reign of Khufu. That’s another reason why the Great Pyramid is attributed to Khufu. But I think that Khufu was undoubtedly involved in the Great Pyramid and in a big way. But I think he was building upon and elaborating a much older structure. I think the heart of that structure is the subterranean chamber, which is 100 feet vertically beneath the base of the Great Pyramid. Anybody who suffers from claustrophobia will not enjoy being down there. You’ve got to go down a 26-degree sloping corridor until a distance of about 300 feet. It’s 100 feet vertically, but the slope means you’re going to walk a distance of… Not walk. You’ve got to ape walk. You’re almost going to have to crawl. I’ve learned from long experience that the best way to go down these corridors is actually backwards. If you go forward, you keep bumping your head on them because they’re only three feet five inches high. You get down to the bottom. You have a short horizontal passage, and then you get into the subterranean chamber. d, you keep bumping your head on them because they’re only three feet five inches high. You get down to the bottom. You have a short horizontal passage, and then you get into the subterranean chamber. The theory of Egyptology is that this was supposed to be the burial place of Khufu, but after cutting out that 300-foot long, 26-degree sloping passage, a lot of which passes through bedrock, and having cut the subterranean chamber out of bedrock, gone to all that trouble, they decided they wouldn’t bury him there. They built what’s now known as the Queen’s Chamber as his burial chamber. But then they decided that wouldn’t do either. They then built the King’s chamber, and that’s where the Pharaoh is supposed to have been buried. Those Arab raiders under Khalifa al-Mamun didn’t find anything in the Great Pyramid at all.…

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