The apex is missing, however by projection to the theoretical apex; the angle of slope gives a relationship of the pyramid’s height to the perimeter of is designed base equal to the radius of a circle to its circumference. In case you didn’t follow that, if you divide the distance around the base of the pyramid by its height, the product is _ , a measurement that should not have been known to ancient man.

There are other mathematical marvels. Of several units of measurement, the Sacred Cubit (25.0265 inches, one ten-millionth of the mean polar radius of the Earth as determined during the International Geophysical Year 1957-8) is found in multiples establishing the pyramid as a textbook of geophysical and astronomical data. The side of the designed base square measures 365.242 Sacred Cubits – the exact number of days in the solar year. Other measurements derived from the ‘hollowing-in’ of the sides as established in the 1920s by Leeds engineer David Davidson accurately represent sidereal (365.256) and anomalistic (365.259) years. The pyramid or primitive inch (1.00106 inches: 1/25^th of the Sacred Cubit) is also implicated in the repetition of specific values. Measurements of exactly 365.242"P are found in the King’s Chamber complex.

Whatever its past, the Great Pyramid kept it secrets on the great Giza Plateau for millennia until the ninth-Century Arab Caliph, Abdullah Al Mamum undertook to investigate it after he had heard that the pyramid contained secret chambers full of highly accurate ancient maps of the world and other astronomical charts and tables.

With a team of architects, builders and stonemasons, the Caliph set off in the year now known to Westerners as AD820 to enter the giant structure for the first in thousands of years. It soon became obvious why they were in fact the first adventurers up to that time to enter the pyramid, for they were unable to find an entrance to the structure. Eventually they hit upon the idea of heating the limestone blocks then dowsing them in cold vinegar until they cracked. Using this painfully slow method they managed to burrow through 100 feet of solid rock until reaching a narrow, four-foot high passage that climbed steeply upwards.

At the top end of this passageway they discovered the pyramid’s original entrance, forty-nine feet above the ground. They then followed the passageway downwards. Eventually after a slow descent into the unknown, they found a chamber. An empty chamber.

The men explored around in the eerie darkness; convinced that there must be other chambers or passageway - for surely the structure had not been built only to leave it empty?

Sometime later, Al Mamun’s men returned with news. They had discovered what appeared to be another corridor, this time sloping upwards. However, if it was a corridor, possibly leading to a room full of lost knowledge and riches, then its mystery was to remain, for the corridor was blocked by a gigantic granite plug, barring them from proceeding further.

The men then attacked the granite with hammer and chisels, however the block proved to be too strong. Disillusioned and frustrated they rested, before realising that if they could not the plug hack through the plug, then maybe they could chisel around it. And they did. And they found another plug. So they did the same thing again. And they found another plug. And then another.

Eventually they emerged exhausted into a low-ceilinged corridor that slanted upwards until it intersected with a level passageway. The men hoped that after all their efforts this passageway would lead them to their destiny – a hidden chamber full of lost knowledge and perhaps those craved for riches. The passageway did lead to a chamber, but this chamber (later named the Queen’s chamber) was also empty. The explorers were perplexed. Why go to all this trouble to house seemingly nothing? They continued to believe that somewhere in this giant structure, something must be hidden or buried and they were determined to find it.

The search continued with this time an increasing sense of excitement, for the explorers then discovered a corridor with walls of polished limestone twenty-eight feet high. They named this area the Great Gallery. It is easy to understand a feeling of mounting tension as they climbed a further 156 feet into the unknown before they discovered a vast chamber, thirty-four feet long, seventeen feet wide and nineteen feet high. They named this the King’s chamber. 

This chamber, lost for so many centuries, slowly began to reveal its secrets as the light of the men’s torches cast a yellow glow on its walls. But far from being filled with great riches, the room appeared empty. But then, there, at the far wall, they could see a sarcophagus. A sarcophagus so large that the room was clearly built around it, and if the room, then perhaps the pyramid itself. The men moved tentatively forward and looked inside.

Nothing. No body and certainly no treasure. In a fury the explorers hacked into the floors and walls determined to find some recompense for their endeavours, but there was nothing; not only no treasure nor knowledge, but mysteriously, no sign whatsoever that the room had ever been entered before their visit, for they were clearly the first to get by the huge stone plugs in the passageway, and there was no other apparent way in.

The men left the pyramid perplexed, mystified and dejected. Clearly some people had gone to extraordinary lengths to build this complex and intriguing structure, with its shafts, blocks and chambers, yet there was apparently not a single clue as to why they had done so; not a name, body, writing or even a single hieroglyph etched on a wall to hint at the pyramid’s purpose or function.

Following this first known foray, little is known of pyramid exploration until 1638 when a British mathematician, John Greaves visited Egypt. His contribution to the Great Pyramid enigma was the discovery of a narrow well that descended vertically from the bottom of the Grand Gallery. He concluded that this was probably an escape route for the builders after they had set in place the granite plugs that had caused Al Mamum so much frustration. Unfortunately Greaves’ planned reconnaissance of the tunnel came to an abrupt end after only sixty feet; not because of any blockage or other secret, but because of the numbers of bats and the stench of their foul air.

Over the following centuries thousands visited the pyramids, curious and eager to seek out its secrets. Without realising it, each and every one of those visitors contributed to the eventual discovery of another puzzle that continues to intrigue researchers: for each visitor left behind small traces of water vapour from breath and perspiration. The cumulative effect of these deposits over the centuries literally made the inside of the pyramid start dissolving. As the build-up continued, it became inevitable that unless something was done the structure itself would become unsafe. The task of finding a solution to this problem was given to the German Archaeological Institute.

The Institute appointed an engineer, Rudolf Gantenbrink (right), as a consultant to work on the problem. Gantenbrink’s experience of robotics in both nuclear plants and undersea exploration, coupled with his amateur fascination with the pyramids made him an ideal choice for the job. He recognised that the solution to the immediate problem of humidity was to increase the airflow throughout the pyramid. As it was already known that the pyramid had a series of ducts throughout, Gantenbrink set about designing a robot that could travel up and down these ducts to make an evaluation of their condition from the inside. This would then inform what work would be required to clear the shafts from centuries of debris.

The robot explorer he invented he named ‘Upuaut’, an ancient Egyptian word for ‘Opener of the Way’, and on completion of its work, heavy-duty fans were fitted to the ducts to blast fresh air into the pyramid thereby solving the water vapour problem.

Following on from the success of Upuaut, Gantenbrink went on to design ‘Upuaut 2’ (above), a modified version of the original robot with its own traction system that would allow it to climb up and down the shafts unaided. Upuaut 2 also had headlights; a laser guidance system and a small video camera to send back pictures to a monitoring console. In due course the robot was lowered into the shafts to start its work.

Gantenbrink later sent a video of the second machine’s journey to Robert Bauval, an author and long time investigator of the pyramids. Bauval takes up the story:

"I quickly put the [video] tape in and watched as the robot appeared outside the Great Pyramid. Rudolf [Gantenbrink] put the robot into the opening of the southern shaft in the Queen’s Chamber and then guided it with the controls on a worktop inside the chamber. The robot began filming inside the shaft. Slowly and laboriously it climbed, going upwards for about sixty-five meters before coming to a stop. In front of it, clearly visible, was what looked like a miniature portcullis slab, of the sort used by the Egyptians to seal off a burial chamber.

Attached to the slab, or sliding door, were two copper fittings, one of which was broken, a fragment of it lying on the floor of the shaft. This last part of the shaft was lined with polished Tura limestone, which as far as we know was used inside the pyramids only for lining chambers and was considered sacred by the pyramid builders. It could also be seen from the movement of the robot’s laser beam that the slab at the end of the shaft was not fully in contact with the floor, but left a gap of about half a centimetre; there was a triangular chip removed from one corner, providing a tantalising glimpse of a grooved channel and a dark recess beyond. Though not conclusive, the video evidence was that what we were looking at was a hatchway leading, perhaps, to some hidden chamber." (24)

The door was discovered on 22^nd March 1993 [NOTE the following was written before a recent drilling through the door which revealed yet another door further up the passage] yet no further exploration of what may lie behind the door has been undertaken; indeed a week after the discovery Gantenbrink was told to pack up his robot and leave the site. The German Archaeological Institute denied there was anything mysterious about this. "The project was finished. The shafts had been explored and there was nothing further to do. The blocking stone that was found at the end of the shaft is very normal. All these shafts were originally blocked. It is the normal construction. It is not possible to open the blocking; the Egyptians would never allow it." (25)

Gantenbrink however did not agree and applied an engineer’s perspective to the issue, citing the polished limestone noted by Bauval around the area of the door. This stone is found nowhere else in the 180 meters of shafts explored to date and suggested an upgrading to something grander, rather than abandonment of the shaft as Egyptologists propose. Gantenbrink also noted evidence of structural damage around the doorway (found no where else in any of the shafts) indicative of internal stress in the area, suggestive of a cavity, and this idea is supported by the stress relieving construction techniques deployed around the door; blocks laid vertically rather than horizontally. The door also appears to be free of mortar, whilst all the joints between the blocks forming the shaft are mortared. (26)

Gantenbrink does not speculate as to what may be found behind the door, only that it is a door. "I take an absolute neutral position," he stated, "it is a scientific process, and there is no need whatsoever to answer questions with speculation when these questions could be answered much more easily by continuing the research … We have a device [ultrasonic] that would discover if there is a cavity behind the slab. It is nonsensical to make theories when we have the tools to discover the facts." (27)

Yet the Egyptian authorities did not want to know. The English language Egyptian Gazette of 20^th April 1993, nearly a full month after the find, even claimed that the Upuaut robot had never even entered the shafts, ‘German Scientist’s claim a hoax’ ran the headline (28) before the editor changed his mind and reinvented the story as a major find. Strangely, the director of the Giza plateau site, Dr Zahi Hawass (left) was sacked at the same time as the find (although later reinstated) and Gantenbrink’s scheduled meeting with the Egyptian Minister of Culture "never happened. A press conference was scheduled. It never happened." (29)

Two months later, Dr Mohammed Ibrahim Bakr, the man responsible for sacking Hawass, was himself sacked, and on leaving, claimed that he had been brought down by an official ‘Mafia’ whose aim was to impede the archaeological work for their own purposes. (30)

Vyse, in then typical British gunboat diplomacy style, started his exploration of the Great Pyramid by blasting his way through the rock above the King’s Chamber. There he discovered four sealed chambers and allegedly found hieroglyphics painted in red on the walls, one of which included the name of Chephren, thus the later association. Indeed this is the only association between Chephren and the Great Pyramid.

Researcher Graham Hancock, however, casts down on the authenticity of the hieroglyphics noting that the hieroglyphic ‘graffiti’ was the only sign of Chephren’s name found anywhere in the pyramid. Secondly, the graffiti was located in an obscure chamber where only Vyse had access, and lastly, several of the hieroglyphs were painted upside down and others were misspelt or written using bad grammar.

It became Hancock’s contention that Vyse forged the hieroglyphics to justify the costs of his expedition, although this view finds little favour with Egyptologists.

Despite this initial excitement however, Bauval and Hancock noted that the angle of Orion’s belt did not exactly match the layout at Giza. Using a computer to reconstruct the positions of the stars in the sky over millennia, they found that the only time the stars on the belt of Orion perfectly matched the position of the pyramids was in 10,500BC.

In isolation, of course, this date could be dismissed as pure fantasy. However other scientific evidence has already confirmed that the Sphinx was carved thousands of years before its accepted date. The Sphinx also has a link to the date of 10,500BE: for it was then and only then that the giant structure faced its own image in the sky.

Convinced of a land-star connection, Hancock went on to establish whether the layout of other historic sites mirrored other constellations in the sky and he published his findings in a recent book ‘Heaven’s Mirror’. In this work Hancock attempts to demonstrate an "interface between ground and sky" at sites around the world and to also link these to the date 10,500BCE to support his theory that there was a now lost civilisation in existence at that time.

One site Hancock identified was at the temple of Angkor Wat in Cambodia.

Located in north-western Cambodia, Angkor, the capital of the Ancient Khmer Empire was possibly founded around the Ninth Century AD by King Jayavarman II. However, the city reached its peak glory in the 12th Century under Kings Suryavarman II and Jayavarman VII. The most beautiful and most famous monument in the city, Angkor Wat, lies about one kilometre south of the Royal town of Angkor hom which was founded by Jayavarman VII. King Suryavarman II, who reigned between AD 1131 and 1150, dedicated the Temple of Angkor Wat to the Hindu God Vishnu. The Temple was constructed over a period of 30 years, and illustrates some of the most beautiful examples of Khmer and Hindu art.  

Covering an area of about 81 hectares, the complex consists of five towers, which are presently shown on the Cambodian national flag. These towers are believed to represent the five peaks of Mount Meru, the Home of Gods and centre of the Hindu Universe. Angkor Wat features the longest continuous bas-relief in the world, which runs along the outer gallery walls, narrating stories from Hindu mythology. With the decline of the Ancient Khmer Empire, Angkor Wat was turned into a Buddhist Temple and was continuously maintained, which helped its preservation. In 1992, the UNESCO World Heritage Committee declared the monument, and the whole city of Angkor, a World Heritage Site.

Hancock demonstrates that mathematics built into the structure of the temple proving that on the spring equinox, Angkor Wat would be aligned to the rising sun.

He also demonstrates that nearby temples, when connected by a line, appear to show the constellation Draco in the sky: just as the Giza pyramids appear to show Orion’s belt in the night sky, so does Angkor Wat appear to show Draco.

However, when Hancock attempted to compare the layout at Angkor with the constellation of Draco in the sky at the time the temple was built, 1150AD, he found that Draco’s positioning did not reflect the ground layout.

However by turning the clock back, he was able to find a time when the ground and sky layouts appeared to mirror one another. And the date at which this happened was the same as at Giza: 10,500BCE. (Left, top – Draco as it is seen in the sky. Left bottom – a line connecting the temples at Angkor.) Yet Hancock’s assertions are ultimately unsatisfying.

He can provide no link between 10,500 years BCE and the construction at Angkor in 1150AD, albeit he makes a mild assertion that the current temples may have been constructed on more ancient sites.

Whilst Hancock is able to demonstrate with clarity the astronomical complexities of Angkor Wat, the same precision is simply not evident in the layout of the temples on the ground and the constellation of Draco in the sky.

There is, however, other evidence scattered throughout the world of a former civilisation that does not rely upon mere speculation nor seemingly contrived links. One such piece of evidence recently came to light at Stonehenge in Britain.

Egyptian Mysteries