The Contradictions of Egyptian Archaeology
Ancient Egypt was populated by people of very high intellectual ability and great technical and architectural skills. However, I think it is worth pointing out that even today, after thousands of years, there are so many doubts raised by contradictory theories.
The absolute lack of references to science and technology in the excavations, inscriptions and texts has been interpreted as showing that the Egyptians did not possess any kind of technology. On the other hand, the technological material corresponding to the same eras analyzed gives a completely different picture from the previous one. Therefore, it is stated that Egyptian archaeology represents a huge contradiction, originating an immense inequality between the data obtained from philological interpretations and those deduced from the 'analysis of the remains of their technology.
All representations in connection with science and technology, which archaeologists use for their studies, always refer to official ceremonies that artists reproduced by making them public knowledge.
The scientific and technological elements were never represented. The Denderah figures represent an official "rope" ceremony, but they do not refer to the methods by which scientists were able to determine the meridian during the 4th Dynasty. The 11th Dynasty astronomical texts reflect a "popular" astronomy. The Karnak temple reliefs, in which Rameses II is shown raising an obelisk by pulling a rope, do not show the actual methods used for creating those monuments. The Rhind papyrus, which gives Pi as 3.16, does not explain the methods used to calculate the 22/7 value that appears in the pyramids. The Edfu representations and accompanying texts, where Pharaoh is said to have determined the angles by making use of a three-knot rope, according to Cantor in the 3, 4, 5 report, illustrate a technique for determining right angles with an error that is one degree greater than in 'Cheops' time. The measurement techniques used by the Egyptian harpentonauts with a margin of error of 1 mm/meter do not enlighten us about the measurements made in ancient Egypt, with errors a hundred times smaller; the copper chisels we know of could not drill through the quartzite found in the stone quarries; the string drills with emery powder, give no clue about the drill that drilled through black and white porphyry during the 1st Dynasty. Therefore, the total dissociation between an advanced science, such as that required by the Egyptian technology we know, and what appears in paintings and written texts is evident.
Is it therefore safe to assume the existence of secret teachings in Ancient Egypt? Perhaps due to some Extraterrestrial "gods"? Professor Erich von Däniken, for example, argues that the Pyramids of Egypt, South America and other parts of the world were built, or at least inspired and designed by extraterrestrials who, according to certain recent (rather convincing) theories, have been visiting Earth (at more or less separate periods), for thousands and thousands of years.
The following are some paragraphs from his work "Memories of the Future."
"On the Nile delta, and in the narrow banks on either side of the river, there is only fertile land. Despite this, experts calculate that when the pyramids were built, there were 50 million people in the country!" which disagrees with the estimate that in the year 3000 BC. Ia world population barely reached 20 million human beings. It becomes clear that in matters of such ancient calculations little matters a million people more or less. What is important to point out, however, is that all these people, especially those who lived in Egypt, must have been highly skilled in different trades since, apparently, there were not only real armies of masons, stonemasons, engineers and sailors; not only were there hundreds of thousands of slaves, but also a well-equipped army, countless merchants, farmers, officials and, of course, the almost immense court and priestly caste.
Could they, all of them, live off the product of the parched agriculture on the banks of the Nile? It was said that the immense stones used to build the pyramids were transported by rollers. Well, they must have been wooden rollers. Although it is hard to imagine that to make these rollers they would cut down the scarce trees that populated Egypt, just as they do today, especially date palms, a tree that does not lend itself very well, not least because there are very few date palms in the world that are as thick as those in Elche and Orihuela in Alicante. We say that because dates have always, and it is to be assumed even in such ancient times, been an indispensable food in Africa, and the leaves of the palms were the only ones able to cast their beneficial shade on that soil that was so sandy and dry. However, the rollers had to exist for real because, otherwise, these pyramidal constructions would have no technical explanation. Let us assume that the rollers had been made of wood. Were they imported from other countries? If so, the Egyptians would have needed a large merchant fleet and a perfect organization for transporting the goods once they landed in Alexandria and then continued down the Nile to Cairo. And this was the only alternative since, at the epoch of the pyramids, the Egyptians knew neither the horse nor chariots, which appeared during Dynasty XVII, i.e., 1600 B.C. So how were rollers made and transported? Rollers that, it seems, were inescapable."
The enigma of the rollers is not the only one to be reported. For example: how did the stonemasons operate? What means did the architects use to open those labyrinthine corridors and chambers? The walls are all polished and, almost all of them, are decorated with bas-reliefs. The galleries follow an oblique trajectory to the rocky floor. All of them have perfectly crafted steps leading to the deep burial chambers. All tourists stand open-mouthed in front of those huge monuments, with no one able to explain the technique used in their construction. What such monuments demonstrate instead, is the fact that the Egyptians dominated underground architecture from the earliest times since, the ancient tombs are as perfectly finished as the more modern ones. This means that there is no difference between the tomb of Teti of the Fourth Dynasty and that of Ramses I, of the New Kingdom, despite the fact that more than a millennium intervened between the two burials. It is clear, therefore, that it was not possible to improve the ancient technique, and one might even think that, in fact, the modern one got worse in relation to the primitive one.
In 1864, a book entitled, "Our inheritance in the Great Pyramid," by Charles Piazzi Smyth, was published, where a multitude of inextricable relationships between the pyramidal masses and the earth's sphere are featured. And by analyzing these relationships, certain data can be derived that are quite mysterious. The ancient Egyptians professed a cosmogonic religion: their solar god, Ra, moved among the heavens using certain vessels. Some Ancient Empire texts even describe these journeys, made with the help of the gods and their strange ships. Consequently, Egyptian kings were familiar with flights.
The pyramid of Cheops, among its many characteristics, has one in particular: its height in meters multiplied by a thousand million equals the distance between the Sun and Earth, or 149,504,000 kilometers (leaving aside differences in measurement caused by the passage of time and spoliation, differences that, despite the opinions of some scholars, lack importance in overall significance). Should this all be attributed to chance? Is it also chance that the meridian passing through the summit of the pyramid divides continents and oceans into two perfectly equal parts? Is it by chance that the area of its base divided by twice its height gives the famous value of Pi: 3.1416? Is it coincidental that a calculation related to the weight of the Earth was found there? Is it an accident that the rocky bottom on which the pyramids rest is perfectly level? Why did Cheops, the one who had the Great Pyramid of Giza built, choose that very rocky place as the base for his magnum opus? Actually, it is not so strange that he chose a large, boulder-strewn clearing as the base for the Great Pyramid; one might even think that the pharaoh wished to follow the progress of the construction work from his summer residence. Certainly, it would have been much easier and feasible to choose a place closer to the eastern quarry to facilitate transportation, and on the other hand, it is unthinkable that Pharaoh could have endured for years, day and night, the formidable din caused by the construction work. At this point we can formulate a question: is it not possible that it was the gods who had influenced this decision, using the mediation of the priestly caste? And the "gods" are wont to do things of great importance. For example, the pyramid of Cheops not only divides the continents and oceans into two exact parts, but is located right in the center of gravity of the continent. If this is indeed the case, all this shows that the construction of the Great Pyramid was decided by beings who knew perfectly the spherical shape of the Earth, as well as the exact distribution of continents and seas. What forces, what machines and what technical resources were employed to level that rocky terrain? And what means did the architects use to open those endless tunnels? How did they manage to illuminate them? Because, as we know, both in them and in the catacombs found in the Valley of the Kings, no kind of flashlight was used, since no wall or ceiling was stained by the smoke of the tede, and there is not even the slightest hint that they managed to make such traces disappear. How and with what tools did they manage to saw the gigantic blocks extracted from the quarries? How was their transportation and assembly, so perfect that not the slightest crack was left? There are many theories to explain all this: inclined planes, rebar, ramps, sand tracks on which to slide the huge blocks... and again the work of peasants, Egyptian laborers, hundreds, thousands...
This turns out to be impossible. Because the Great Pyramid is the confirmation of a technique never known. Today, despite all our advances, no architect would be able to reproduce the pyramid of Cheops. From the quarry, 2,600,000 blocks of enormous volume were extracted and carefully cleaned and transported to the place where the pyramid would be built, then placed with mathematical precision. And the walls were painted even in the depths of the underground corridors! Are we to think that Pharaoh had his pyramid built there purely on a whim? Or that the pyramid's "classic" and inimitable dimensions simply constitute a fluke on the part of the monument's creators? Thousands of workers, making use of some rollers (nonexistent) and ropes (also nonexistent), pushed and leveled, downward, blocks weighing twelve tons... This multitude of workers had to feed on grains (nonexistent) and live in huts (nonexistent) that Pharaoh had to have built in front of his palace. Thanks to some speakers (nonexistent) they managed to synchronize the work of this mass of worker ants in order to hoist twelve-ton blocks.
Let's look at some calculations:
If such miraculous workers had placed ten massive blocks every day, working nonstop, which is truly portentous, they would have needed about 250,000 days, or 664 years, to give the pyramid its shape, that is, to give a geometric form to the 2.5 million blocks. And all this without forgetting that the work was due to the inspiration of a pharaoh who in no way could see the finished monument, since no one can live 664 years! Philip II, at least, could follow the work of the Escorial from his famous stone chair.
Of course, this theory is not at all reliable, although some scientists have formulated it in all seriousness.
Who can believe, moreover, that such majestic monuments had no other purpose than to house the remains of a king? Perhaps all mathematical and astronomical symbols, while admitting very slight errors, can be attributed to chance?
Currently, almost everyone recognizes Pharaoh Cheops as the inspirer, instigator as well as the architect of his Great Pyramid. But why? We are convinced by those who assert that this pyramid could not have been built within a human lifetime. Agreed, and furthermore, all inscriptions and tablets refer to such a pharaoh. But one wonders: what if, as was the custom in such remote times, Cheops had such inscriptions and tablets forged?
Which was common in certain monuments of the time. When a dictatorial king (and they all were) wanted to grab all the glory, he resorted to forgery. And if this was the case, the pyramids may have been built long before the era of Cheops and his son Chephren.
In the Oxford Library there is a manuscript in which the Coptic writer Mas-Udi assures that it was the Egyptian king Surid who actually built the Great Pyramid... and Surid reigned in Egypt before the Flood, according to calculations in the Bible! (Here we cannot refer to the Great Flood featuring Upapanistim, mentioned in the story of Gilgamés, Sumerian king, nor to other more or less universal floods, the memory of which is preserved in the history of ancient peoples such as the Maya, for example.) Moreover, Surid, according to that manuscript, had his priests write down all his knowledge and occult such scriptures inside the pyramid. This means, that the Great Pyramid, according to the Coptic account, was built before Noah's Flood.
Herodotus makes a similar calculation in the second book of his History: the Theban priests showed him 341 colossal statues, each representing a generation of high priests from 11,340 years ago.
Well, it is well known that all high priests had their own statues erected while they were still alive. Herodotus himself, narrating his trip to Thebes, says that all the priests showed him their own statue to show him that sons always succeeded their fathers. And the priests themselves assured him that their data was very valuable because of the fact that it had been transmitted in writing from one generation to the next. They also revealed to him that each of the 341 statues represented a 'human age, and that prior to this age, the gods had lived among men. After such a sojourn, no gods had assumed human form again.
It is estimated that the historical age of Egypt is approximately 6,500 years. So why did the priests lie to Herodotus when telling him about the 11,340 years, emphatically assuring him that no gods had appeared again for over 341 generations? Such precise dates, engraved on the statues, would have been useless if the "gods" had not dwelt among men in very remote times.
Regarding the how, why and when of the pyramids, nothing is known with certainty. The only truth is that at Giza a pyramid (some pyramids) weighing 31,200,000 tons and nearly 150 meters high is raised as a demonstration of an incomprehensible labor effort to build a pharaoh's tomb.
Various peoples mastered the technique of embalming, and all the archaeological evidence suggests that prehistoric beings believed in returning to a second life, a return to bodily character.
This interpretation might be acceptable, although this belief was based on remote ideals of very ancient times. If our ancestors had believed only in a spiritual return, they would not have devoted so much care to their dead, let alone embalmed them.
What the appearances reveal, the perceptible evidence, is not as absurd as it seems. In fact, the ancient tales and legends provide sufficiently good arguments that the "gods" (probably Extraterrestrials) promised to return from the stars and resurrect well-preserved bodies. Therefore, since a new earthly life was expected, they embalmed the dead, who were buried along with their possessions and even with foodstuffs, surely so that at the time of resurrection they could recover from the countless centuries of fasting.
But, at this point, the question must be asked: who suggested to people the belief in temporal resurrection? Where did the idea come from that by storing the cellular tissue of a corpse in an impregnable fortress (tombs as burial monuments are almost a real fortress), the mummified body could come back to life after several millennia?
It is possible that Pharaoh, better informed than his vassals about the customs and essence of the "gods," had made this reflection:
"I must have a tomb that will withstand the passage of centuries, visible from great distances. The gods promised to return and see to it that I am resurrected..."
Is it not possible then that The Great Pyramid was born from this 'idea? And that his son Chephren followed his own reasoning? As did Mycerinus and many others?
All this only fascinates me, creating in me an enormous admiration for the priceless treasure that the ancient Egyptian people will carry with them forever....
