Pyramidology

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The Great Pyramid, the subject of numerous theories of pyramidologists
Pyramid and Sphinx in the Description de l'Egypte (1810)

Different pseudo and borderline theories are summarized under the term pyramidology . The subject of these theories are the dimensions and arrangements primarily of the pyramids of ancient Egypt (especially the pyramid of Cheops ). The aim of the theories is mostly the dimensions and their proportions

  • to underlay mystical interpretations,
  • To make connections with other scientifically unaccepted theories (e.g. that the builders were refugees from the sunken Atlantis , extraterrestrials etc.), or them
  • To find prophecies for the future (especially regarding the date of Christ's return ).

Today the term is mainly used disparagingly.

Ancient and Medieval Reports and Legends

But much of what, in retrospect, appears to be unfounded speculation has its origin not in the overflowing imagination of modern scholars, but actually comes from antiquity. Therefore, the largely legendary reports of ancient authors and medieval travelers will be dealt with first.

Two aspects of pyramidology in particular have their roots in antiquity:

  • The assumption that the ancient Egyptians encoded or hid all later scientific knowledge and wisdom teachings in the pyramid: This corresponded to the ancient view that the older was always the better. Accordingly, the Egyptian culture, recognized at the time, must have had the deepest wisdom.
  • The perception of the pyramids as evidence of an ancient, enigmatic past, accordingly suitable as a projection surface for one's own assumptions and speculations: one must take into account that the pyramids were already 2000 years old at the time of Herodotus and authentic information about purpose and technology even then, if not long lost, when they were not available to a Greek “tourist”.

Herodotus

Herodotus reports that the Great Pyramid was built on the orders of a tyrannical king named Cheops. In three-month shifts, 100,000 workers would have fronted the buildings. In the first ten years a wide causeway had been built, a work that seemed almost as impressive to Herodotus as the building of the pyramids itself, since the road was about a kilometer long, 18 m wide and 14 m high and with smoothed stones had been proven, "a work that was not much smaller than the pyramid". In addition, underground chambers were built at the foot of the pyramids, in one of which Cheops himself was buried. Herodotus speaks of an island in an underground lake that is filled by a Nile canal. Each side of the pyramid is about 240 m long and the same is the height. It took 20 years to build.

Herodotus also reports that the pyramids were built in steps from the inside out, whereby the stones were lifted from one step to the next with the help of machines. He also mentions inscriptions on the outside of the pyramids. He tells of the origin of the middle queen pyramid G1b, that Cheops in his malice finally forced his daughter into prostitution in order to raise funds for the pyramid construction. However, this had stipulated a stone from every client as additional wage and G1b was built from these stones. After Cheops, his brother Chephren and his son Mykerinos each built smaller pyramids near the first pyramid.

Diodor

Diodorus reports in his in the 1st century BC Wrote universal history that the Great Pyramid was built by King Chemmis of Memphis. Its side length is seven plethra (about 220 m) and the height 6 plethra (about 190 m). He gives the age of the pyramids at least 1000 years, but also says that some authors call an age of 3400 years. In contrast to Herodotus, he believes that the stones were transported with the help of raised ramps, as there were no cranes at the time. 360,000 workers were involved in the construction and the construction time would have been 20 years. According to Herodotus, Diodorus also describes the pyramid builders as tyrants who forced all of Egypt to do hard labor. The embittered subjects threatened to destroy the corpses of the kings, which is why neither Chemmis (= Cheops) nor his brother Cephren (= Chephren) were buried in their pyramids, but in a secret place. He reports that the lower part of the pyramid of Mykerinos was clad with black stone and the upper part with white limestone like the two larger pyramids. On the north side there is an inscription that Mykerinos names as the builder.

Strabo

Strabo takes up the peculiar story that the pyramid of Mykerinos was built by a Greek courtesan named Rhodopis . Herodotus had mentioned it, but expressly rejected it and called it ahistorical. Strabo, on the other hand, tells a legend that is considered to be the earliest evidence of the fairy tale motif of Cinderella : An eagle stole a sandal from Rhodopis bathing in Naukratis , and dropped it into the lap of the Pharaoh who was just holding court in Memphis, who had no direct view of the person fell in love with the woman who wore the sandal, sent messengers to all parts of the sky to find the woman who wore the sandal and made the woman his queen. After her death, he built the pyramid for her (according to Strabo), although it was smaller, but particularly expensive because of the Ethiopian stone used for part of the cladding.

Pliny the Elder

In his many-volume natural history ( Naturalis historia ), Pliny the Elder cannot avoid mentioning the Egyptian pyramids. He very clearly disapproves of these buildings, since the motive for their construction is usually handed down that the pharaohs did not want to leave their fortune to successors or lurking rivals and not want to leave the lower people idle. He mentions the existence of numerous unfinished pyramids, only to mention the pyramids of Giza. He gives the exact location, mentions the Sphinx, gives its measurements, and that a pharaoh named Amasis is supposed to be buried in it. He gives the side length of the largest pyramid with 883 (Roman) feet (about 261.7 m), the height from the top with 15 feet (about 4.44 m). Possibly this information related to the height of the pyramidion . Inside there is a well 86 cubits (about 38.2 m) deep, through which water from the Nile got into the interior. On the question of the construction method and the necessary ramps, he presents two theories: According to one, the ramps were made of salt and saltpeter , after the completion of the pyramids the ramps were washed away by the Nile. According to the other theory, the ramps were made of bricks, which were then simply distributed to private households.

He mentions a few more details known from other reports. Finally, he gives a list of the authors who have written about the pyramids before him: Herodotus, Euhemerus , Duris of Samos , Aristagoras, Dionysius, Artemidorus, Alexander Polyhistor , Butorides, Antisthenes, Demetrius, Demoteles and Apion .

Late antiquity and the Middle Ages

Joseph in Egypt, in the background the pyramids intended as granaries
Pyramids in the Cosmographia of Sebastian Münster (1544)

In late antiquity, mentions of the pyramids became sparse. In the excerpt from the Aegyptiaca of Manetho , which is handed down in the 8th century by the monk Georgios Synkellos , there is a note that the Great Pyramid is not, as reported by Herodotus, a work of Cheops, but it becomes a king Souphis attributed to who despised the gods and wrote a holy book.

With the Arab conquest of Egypt around 640, the pyramids disappeared from the visual field of western culture for many centuries. It was only in the 15th century, on the threshold of modern times, that Cyriakus von Pizzicolli , an Italian merchant and humanist who tirelessly traveled to Greece and the Levant in search of ancient manuscripts, visited the pyramids and reports on them in his itinerary .

A few decades later, the Mainz official Bernhard von Breidenbach also visited Egypt on his trip to the Holy Land, but is relatively unimpressed by the pyramids and only mentions that they are tombs of Egyptian kings and not, as apparently often by his contemporaries believed to be the granaries that Joseph had built to avoid a famine in the seven lean years foretold by the Pharaoh's dream.

Biblical pyramidology

A key factor in the interest in the dimensions of ancient Egyptian monuments - and among them almost exclusively those of the Great Pyramid - were the numerous dimensions given in the Bible. In it, the dimensions of Noah's Ark , the Ark of the Covenant , and the Temple of Solomon are sometimes given very precisely and in detail. However, the underlying unit of measurement, the "biblical yard", has not been handed down. Already Isaac Newton tried of the length in its metrological historical speculation sacred cubit to determine. It was hoped that the exact length of the biblical cubit from the still existing Egyptian buildings as structural dimensions open up to, especially, of course, from the dimensions of the Great Pyramid, where the people of Israel had indeed helped to build, as was believed until modern Egyptology and archeology a much earlier construction date.

John Greaves

Title from Greaves' Pyramidographia (1646)

A prerequisite for speculations about the dimensions, orientation, etc. of the pyramids is the availability of reasonably reliable survey data. The first reliable measurements for the Cheops pyramid were first recorded by the English mathematician and astronomer John Greaves , who stayed in Cairo for over a year from 1638 to 1639 and published the results of the measurements in his 1646 Pyramidographia . Greaves gave the current height of the pyramid as 481 feet (= 146.6 m; correct value: 138.75 m), the original height of 693 feet (211.23 m; correct value: 146.6 m) and the length of the Side with 693 feet (= 211.23 m; correct value: 230.33 m).

Along with Greaves led the Italian architect and inventor Tito Livio Burattini measurements whose results have gone but lost, except for epistolary reports that Burattini of Athanasius Kircher sent a Jesuit polymath and Ägyptomanen, considered one of the first tried the hieroglyphs to decrypt.

Further work followed, above all that of John Shae Perring , whose excellent measurements carried out on numerous pyramids from 1839 onwards are still valid today.

Edmé François Jomard

But before that, pyramidology had found a first representative: Edmé François Jomard , participant in Napoleon's Egyptian expedition , 1813–1814 employee of the Description de l'Égypte , there author of the description of the pyramids of Memphis , as well as two supplementary chapters on the purpose of the pyramids and the system of measurement of the ancient Egyptians. He took the view that the pyramids (especially that of Cheops) were an "Urelle", based on the Egyptian royal cell as the structural dimension. He went on to say that the pyramids were creations of the ancient Egyptian scientists in which they hid or encrypted their knowledge of mathematics and astronomy. The pyramids were also places of initiation.

John Taylor

In 1859 the British publisher John Taylor published his book The Great Pyramid: Why Was It Built & Who Built It? In this he took the view that the Great Pyramid was not built by Egyptians but by Israelites according to a divine plan. He suspected Noah to be the builder . He also found out that the circumference of the square base is to a good approximation equal to the height. This relationship may have resulted from the construction without direct knowledge of . Herodotus reports that the height of the pyramid was measured so that the side area corresponds to the area of ​​a square whose side is the height. He also found a unit of measurement in the dimensions, the " pyramid cubit " ( pyramid cubit ), which he assumed corresponded to the biblical cubit. He underpinned all of this with quotes from the Bible that allegedly point to the Great Pyramid of Cheops.

Charles Piazzi Smyth

Illustration from Piazzi Smyth Our inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1877, Plate VII) with some chronological markings along the ascending passage

However, the classic pyramidology was written by Charles Piazzi Smyth , a Scottish astronomer. In 1864 his Our inheritance in the Great Pyramid appeared , which was an immediate success, is still being published today and has been translated into several languages. In 1865, Smyth went to Egypt to take measurements himself on the Great Pyramid of Cheops. At that time, parts of the cladding of the pyramid had been found and Smyth believed that he had found the length of the pyramid cell and thus Taylor's " pyramid inch " directly from the resulting dimensions . The pyramidal inch corresponded almost to the British imperial inch (1 pyramidal inch = 1/25 Pyramidenelle = 1.001 inch = 2.54254 cm). Since this correspondence enabled the British system of units to be placed on a biblical, if not divine foundation, Smyth's measurements served as a weighty argument against the opponents of the introduction of the metric system in England and the USA.

He found the value of 36524 as the side length of the pyramid, expressed in pyramidal inches, which corresponds very precisely to 100 times the length of the tropical year . At the same time, 500 million pyramidal inches (= 12,712.7 km) correspond to the length of the earth's axis (= 12,713.55 km). The height of the pyramid times 10 9 (5813 pyramid inches × 10 9 = 147.7978 million km) would correspond to the distance between the earth and the sun (= 149.6 million km). Smyth found himself pushed to further speculations by the use of the pyramidal inch as a measure of time, with one pyramidal inch corresponding to one year. Based on this, the dimensions within the passages and the Great Gallery were related to the biblical story and the Christian plan of salvation.

The Royal Society of Edinburgh first published Smyth's research results, and he was honored for it with the Keith Medal . His supposed results soon drew harsh methodological criticism, which led Symth to leave the Royal Society.

Charles Taze Russell

Pyramid chambers in John and Edgar Mortons The great pyramid passages and chambers (1910)
Pyramid section with chronological markings from Bible Students Convention Souvenir Report (1911)

Charles Taze Russell , founder of the Watchtower Society and the subsequent religious community of the International Bible Students' Association , later called Jehovah's Witnesses, was particularly fascinated by this salvation-historical-eschatological relationship . In 1891 he published Thy Kingdom Come , the third volume of his scripture studies . According to him, the return of Christ in secret had already occurred in 1874. In this year the Millennium should have already begun, with the so-called " Great Tribulation ", which should end by 1914 - then God's rule should be established worldwide. He found the evidence for this in the Bible and in the works of Smyth. The two brothers John and Morton Edgar were so impressed by Russell's work that they went to Egypt to carry out measurements themselves, which they published in a two-volume work in 1910 and 1913. Originally Russell put the length of a certain corridor inside this pyramid at 3416 inches and interpreted one inch as a year, which he points to the period 1542 BC. Came to AD 1874. He changed that a few years before the end of this 40-year tribulation period, i.e. before 1914, and gave this length as 3457 inches , so that the period mentioned now ended with 1914/15; the beginning of the "great tribulation" was postponed to this point in time. Russell's reference to Smyth's book remained the same, ie it was not evident that Russell would have relied on more recent measurements. Eventually, after Russell, the Bible Students gave up the Great Pyramid entirely as witnesses of faith.

Flinders Petrie

Flinders Petrie in Giza (around 1880)

The study and survey of the Pyramids of Giza by William Matthew Flinders Petrie in the 1880s marked the point in time of the separation between the pyramidologists and the emerging scientific Egyptology, of which Flinders Petrie became the father.

Petrie had brought home a copy of Piazzi Smyth's Our Inheritance in 1866 , which immediately fascinated both him and his father. Not only because both were interested in prehistoric antiquity (at the age of 19, Petrie and his father measured Stonehenge ), but also because a possible confirmation of biblical history based on Egyptian findings had to address the deeply religious Petries (his father belonged to the Plymouth Brethren ), but also because she had a personal relationship with Piazzi Smyth: his father had asked for the hand of Henrietta Smyth, the sister of Piazzi Smyth, but the family refused to give it to him. After all, William Petrie had met his future wife, Anne Flinders, in Smyth's house.

Father and son resolved to subject Smyth's theory to an on-site review as questions regarding Smyth's theories continued to emerge. After Petrie's father had repeatedly postponed the trip, Flinders Petrie decided in 1880 to travel to Egypt alone and with very limited resources. He settled himself in an empty grave near the pyramid and began to work with measuring instruments, some of which he had built himself, to precisely measure both the outside and the inside of the Great Pyramid. The result was so accurate that Petrie's figures are still valid today. However, they contradicted the theories of Piazzi Smyth and once and for all undermined speculations about a pyramid tariff. Rather, Petrie proved that the dimensions of the pyramid were based on the ancient Egyptian royal cell:

“In this respect, all theories that said that the number of days in a year was represented were absolutely erroneous. The size of the pyramid was determined by being 7 × 40 Egyptian cubits (20.6 inches) high and 11 × 40 cubits wide. This is confirmed by the pyramid of Meydum , which is older and 7 × 25 cubits high and 11 × 25 cubits wide. ... The angle of repose required for this 7-to-11 ratio is within the slight inaccuracy (two minutes) of the remains. "

- Flinders Petrie : Seventy Years in Archeology. P. 34f

With that, Petrie had found the "ugly little fact" that gave the "beautiful theory" the fatal blow. In the following years and decades he turned away from biblical speculation as far as his work was concerned and became the founder of scientifically founded Egyptology.

Modern pyramidology

Edgar Cayce (1910)

Biblical pyramidology tried to use the pyramids as evidence for biblical-Christian history and salvation history, i.e. to prove that the pyramids were something very specific. In contrast, the more secular modern theories aim at the fact that the pyramids are not or not only something, namely according to the central statement of Egyptology and archeology, tombs of the pharaohs and nothing else. Representatives of this modern pyramidology are Erich von Däniken and later Robert Bauval in the 1960s .

In between there is another group, represented by Edgar Cayce and Helena Petrovna Blavatsky . They built the pyramids into their esoteric theories. If for the biblical pyramidologists the Israelites were the actual builders of the pyramids, for Cayce it were refugees from the sunken Atlantis , where for Smyth and Russel the cornerstones of salvation history were coded in the pyramids, for Blavatsky the turning points of the theosophical cycles of the Egyptian initiates encoded in the dimensions of the pyramid. Basically, however, they only changed the context and otherwise made use of the concepts of the biblical pyramidologists and the data material they had accumulated.

Erich von Däniken

In 1968 Erich von Däniken published his book Memories of the Future , which quickly became a bestseller with millions in circulation. In it, Däniken presents a collection of “riddles of history”, for example: “What was the Ark of the Covenant ?” Or “What is behind the pictures of the Nazca plain ?” Däniken did not “solve” the puzzles directly, but rather wrapped his answers in The form of rhetorical questions that always resulted in the artefacts in question being testimony to the prehistoric visit of aliens. Of course, this also applies to the pyramids, although Däniken does not claim that these were built by aliens. He initially refers to a number of “inconsistencies”, using the treasure trove of his pyramidological predecessors (“Is it a coincidence that the base of the pyramid - divided by twice its height - results in the famous Ludolf number ?”).

But the core is: "Who is simple-minded enough to believe that the pyramid should be nothing but the tomb of a king?" That is a sentence that appears again and again in a similar form among the proponents of para-scientific pyramid theories . In the end, Däniken suggests that the pyramid building is a form of imitatio dei ("imitation of God" or in this case "imitation of the gods"), whereby extraterrestrial astronauts are to be assumed as gods who survive the millennia of an interstellar journey , put into a death-like form of hibernation . The observation of the resurrection of the apparently dead would have led the ancient rulers of Egypt to be provided with crisis-proof material goods and stored mummified in "quasi nuclear-bombproof" buildings (the pyramids) in the hope of resurrecting like the astronaut gods.

The idea of ​​the extraterrestrial gods in flying pyramids and as "cold sleeping chambers" as well as sarcophagi that serve as universal healing machines were the basis of the 1994 film Stargate by Roland Emmerich, outlined by Däniken .

Robert Bauval

Belt of Orion, north is up.

In 1994 the book The Orion Mystery ("The Secret of Orion") by the Belgian engineer Robert Bauval was published. In it he developed the theory of the "pyramids-Orion correlation", according to which the construction of the pyramids of Giza was planned as a whole, in such a way that the relative position and size of the three pyramids of Cheops, Chephren and Mykerinos of the location and The size of the three stars Alnitak , Alnilam and Mintaka , which together form the "belt" of the Greek constellation Orion (Egyptian Sah , the representation of Osiris). According to Bauval, the Nile , which flows in a curve to the north east of the pyramids, corresponds to the Milky Way in the sky , which runs in a similar way between the right shoulder of Orion, marked by the star Betelgeuse , and the constellation of Gemini .

Bauval further claimed that the so-called ventilation shafts within the great pyramid, two of which each extend from the king and queen chambers, are oriented towards the culmination points of certain star constellations or stars:

Manhole Tilt oriented on
King's Chamber (southern shaft) 45 ° Orion belt
King's Chamber (northern shaft) 32 ° 38 ′ α Draconis (around 2800 BC near the north celestial pole)
Queen's Chamber (southern shaft) 39 ° 30 ′ Sirius
Queen's Chamber (northern shaft) 39 ° β Ursae Majoris

Since, due to the precession of the spring equinox, the culmination heights change cyclically in the course of a Platonic year lasting about 25,700 years , the shaft inclinations are in good agreement with the culmination heights if the construction date is 2450 BC. Chr. Assumes.

In the following years Bauval published further books in which he expanded his theory, partly in collaboration with Graham Hancock , who in turn advocates the theory that the Great Sphinx was not, as Egyptology assumed, at the time of the Old Kingdom around 2500 BC. BC, but much earlier, namely around 10500 BC. At a time when the vernal equinox was moving into the constellation of Leo (hence the lion's body of the Sphinx). In addition, this date of construction would be in accordance with the date of the sinking of Atlantis mentioned by Edgar Cayce. Some geologists, including Robert M. Schoch, tried to support this theory by saying that the signs of weathering on the Sphinx would prove a correspondingly old age.

assessment

Established science does not take pyramidological speculation seriously today. She sometimes calls representatives of pyramidology “pyramidomanes” or “pyramidiotes”.

According to Umberto Eco , you can "do what you want" with the numbers that result from the measurements of Egyptian pyramids, depending on which unit of measurement you use. He refers to the scientific parody of the French archaeologist Jean-Pierre Adam, who measured a newspaper kiosk near his apartment and in the numbers and ratios found there the distance between the earth and the sun, the Greek lunar cycle , the date of the Battle of Tours and Poitiers and found the molecular formula of naphthalene . Similarly, the Dutch astronomer and skeptic Cornelis de Jager parodied the workings of pyramidology and other number- mystical speculations when he measured parameters of his bicycle and with a few mathematical conversions easily came up with several physical constants and astronomical values. He published the result in 1990 as "Velosofie".

According to Erik Hornung , a classification of pyramidology as pseudoscience or para-science is strictly justified only for the pyramidologists of the 20th century. Similar to the out of astrology resulting astronomy or from the alchemy produced chemicals have the newly created discipline Egyptology want to know from their dubious roots nothing more and react to today sensitive to everything that reminded of the tentative, speculative origins.

See also

swell

(sorted chronologically in ascending order)

Ancient and medieval sources

  • Histories of Herodotus II.124-129, II.134, II.149
  • Diodor Bibliothéke historiké I.63.2-64 [1]
  • Strabon Geographika XVII.33-37 [2]
  • Pomponius Mela De situ orbis libri tres I.9
  • Pliny the Elder Naturalis historia XXXVI.16-17 [3]
  • Georgios Synkellos Eclogue chronographias 63
  • Cyriacus of Ancona Itinerarium. Giovannelli, Florence 1742
  • Bernhard von Breidenbach Peregrinatio in terram sanctam. Peter Schöffer, Mainz 1486. ​​Facsimile: Fines Mundi, Saarbrücken 2008

Modern sources

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Hornung: Esoteric Egypt. Munich 1999, p. 28 f.
  2. ↑ Mark Lehner: The first wonder of the world. Düsseldorf 1997, p. 38 f ..
  3. ^ Herodotus: Historien II, 123.
  4. ↑ The report of the tomb of Cheops on an island in an underground lake was considered to be pure legend, until Zahi Hawass discovered a complex that largely corresponded to the description during an excavation in an underground chamber system of the Giza Plateau in 1999, which he found as a symbolic grave of Osiris classified. See Zahi Hawass "The Mysterious Osiris Shaft of Giza" ( April 29, 2014 memento in the Internet Archive ) (accessed November 5, 2009)
  5. ↑ Herodotus: Historien II, 124ff; II, 134.
  6. ↑ Diodor: Bibliothéke historiké I, 63, 2-64.
  7. ↑ Strabo: Geographika 17, 33-34.
  8. ↑ Herodotus: Historien II, 134.
  9. ↑ Pliny the Elder, Naturalis historia. XXXVI.16-17 .
  10. ↑ Ahmose II , a pharaoh of the String Dynasty, is known by the name Amasis . Nothing is known of a connection to the Sphinx.
  11. ↑ Altitudo a cacumine, pedestinations 15th
  12. ↑ Most of the names cannot be assigned because either the works in question have been lost and there are several possible authors, or because the authors are entirely unknown.
  13. ^ Georgios Synkellos: Eclogue chronographias. P. 63
  14. ^ Cyriacus of Ancona: Itinerarium Giovannelli. Florence 1742.
  15. ^ Bernhard von Breidenbach: Peregrinatio in terram sanctam. Mainz 1486.
  16. ^ Isaac Newton: A Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the Jews and the Cubits of the several Nations ... Translated from the Latin of Sir Isaac Newton, not yet published. In: Miscellaneous Works Of Mr. John Greaves. Hughs, London 1737
  17. ↑ Greaves: Pyramidographia. 1646, pp. 68f. His derivation of the original height from the inclination of the side surfaces seems incorrect. The specified side length is also clearly too small a value, but at that time the base of the pyramid and thus the lowest stone layer was hidden under debris due to the demolition of the outer cladding by the Arabs.
  18. ↑ Stadelmann: The Egyptian pyramids. 1997, p. 308.
  19. ↑ Stadelmann: The Egyptian pyramids. 1997, p. 267
  20. ^ Herodotus: Historien II, 125.
  21. ↑ For example, Isaiah 19.19 to 20  EU , Job 38.5-7  EU
  22. ↑ Smyth: Our Inheritance. 1874, p. 35f
  23. ↑ Smyth: Our Inheritance. 1874, p. 36
  24. ↑ Smyth: Our Inheritance. 1874, p. 31
  25. ↑ Smyth: Our Inheritance. 1874, p. 49f. Smyth attributes the discovery to the inventor William Petrie . The exact distance between the earth and the sun was not known at the time. A common value was 153 million km.
  26. ↑ Smyth: Our Inheritance. 1874, p. 386 ff. The theory was originally developed by a certain Robert Menzie.
  27. ^ Hermann A. Brück: Smyth, Charles Piazzi (1819-1900). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography . Oxford University Press, 2004, doi: 10.1093 / ref: odnb / 25948 .
  28. ^ Smyth, Charles Piazzi. In: Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Vol. 12. Charles Scribner's Sons, Detroit 2008, p. 499.
  29. ^ The evidence for this change in the German editions of Russell's Scripture Studies by Franz Stuhlhofer : Charles T. Russell and the Jehovah's Witnesses. The incorrigible prophet. Berneck 3 1994, pp. 42–45: "A growing pyramid?"
  30. ^ Martin Gardner: Fads and fallacies in the name of science. New York 1957, p. 181ff.
  31. ↑ Quoted in Joyce Tyldesley: Myth Egypt. Stuttgart 2006, p. 171
  32. ↑ Flinders Petrie: Seventy Years in Archeology. London 1931, p. 12f
  33. ↑ Joyce Tyldesley: Myth of Egypt. The story of a rediscovery. Reclam, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-15-010598-6 , pp. 167-196
  34. ↑ The Great Pyramid. In: The Theosophical Quarterly Vol. 31 (1933/34), pp. 151-155
  35. ↑ Däniken: Memories of the future: 1968, p. 118. So wrong, see above. The base divided by the height is approximately 52,900.
  36. ↑ Däniken: Memories of the Future. 1968, p. 121
  37. ↑ Däniken: Memories of the Future. 1968, p. 124ff
  38. ↑ Christoph Auffarth, Loren T. Stuckenbruck (Ed.): The Fall of the Angels (= Themes in Biblical Narrative Series. Volume 6). Brill, Leiden u. a. 2004, ISBN 90-04-12668-6 , pp. 70ff. ( in Google Books ).
  39. ↑ Gilbert Buval: Secret of Orion. 1994, p. 240.
  40. ↑ Gilbert Buval: Secret of Orion. 1994, pp. 200f.
  41. ↑ For example in: Stadelmann: The Egyptian Pyramids. 1997. pp. 270 u. 284
  42. ↑ Umberto Eco: About the perverse uses of mathematics. In: the same: The history of the legendary countries and cities. Hanser, Munich 2013, ISBN 978-3-446-24382-8 , pp. 87-94 (here the quote).
  43. ↑ Cornelis de Jager: Velosofie. Rekenen aan de Grote Piramide en m'n fiets . In: Skepter , 3, Heft 4 (1990), pages 13 ff .; Gero von Randow : My paranormal bike . Rowohlt, Reinbek 1998.
  44. ↑ Hornung: Esoteric Egypt. Munich 1999, p. 9.
  45. ^ Tompkins: Cheops. The secrets of the Great Pyramid. 3rd edition. Scherz, Bern / Munich 1976, pp. 133-137.