Pyramids and Precession

No. 3

In my last article I wrote about watching “The Bible” miniseries and the story of Abraham and Sarah, and my changing frame of reference. I also introduced Graham Hancock’s book, Fingerprints of the Gods, which I would next write about and how it had a similar effect in my questioning my previous frame of reference.

Fingerprints of the Gods is not a book I would have normally chosen to read because fiction dominates my reading list. But I was fascinated by the myriad of subject areas covered in Hancock’s book. Two of which I’ll describe here—pyramids and precession. Much of what he wrote about, put into question some of what I had understood about the past but hadn’t thought about for a long time.

The famous Egyptian pyramids were built an estimated 4,500 years ago and thought to be the tombs of Egypt’s pharaohs Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure. But why, Hancock points out, having studied, investigated and visited the pyramids multiple times prior to the book’s publication in 1995, is there little to no evidence of these individuals around the pyramids. One would think they would have been full of markings and articles to honor and identify the pharaohs to the afterworld.

The answer, he writes, from the experts, is that the tombs were robbed of their artifacts long before explorers discovered them. The pyramids were supposedly built by thousands of slaves hauling limestone and granite blocks up dirt ramps and into position using ropes, pulleys and other primitive tools. Some of the blocks weighed upwards of 80 tons and were moved a distance of fifty miles. All very difficult to imagine but to my mind the precise positioning of these blocks in the pyramid, that remain in position to this day, is just as incredulous.

Hancock makes me question that my supposedly factual education, in some cases, may actually be based on expert guesses.

Then he writes that pyramids were not only built in Egypt but in Mexico, Peru and Mesopotamia. I was unaware that civilizations in Mexico and Peru were even known to exist 4,500 years ago, never mind having the capability to construct such enormous structures. The Great Pyramid of Cholula, for instance, in Puebla, Mexico is arguably the largest pyramid by volume in the world.

More still, comes in the design of the Great Pyramid of Giza and the idea that it represents the Northern Hemisphere. Turns out that multiplying the height of the pyramid by the precessional number 43,200 equals the polar radius of the earth. And multiplying the base perimeter by that same number equals the equatorial circumference of the earth. (The precessional number comes from “precession of the equinoxes” or the earth’s precession that I’ll get to momentarily.) Also, dividing the pyramid’s base perimeter by its height equals 2pi. These ancient architects seemingly had familiarity with the constant pi. I thought Archimedes of Syracuse was recognized as the discoverer of pi in 250 BC, over 2,000 years after the Great Pyramid was supposedly constructed.

Then my question, why is there no mention of the pyramids in the Bible? They were certainly around based on the timelines of both. Much of the dramatic narrative of the Old Testament took place in Egypt. The Greek historian Herodotus in The Histories was the first to write about the pyramids in the 5th century BC.

Then I read about precession. Precession of the earth or “precession of the equinoxes,” is what causes the slow change in our orientation to the stars including the position of the sun on the first day of spring (the vernal equinox). I don’t remember ever learning about precession. The phenomenon is a result of how the earth spins as it orbits the sun. The axis it spins on wobbles a bit (like a slowing spinning top) at an angle of 23.5° to the axis perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. I find it difficult to peek into something like precession and not get a deep sense of a much grander design behind the universe and how precisely it all seems to fit together. The mystery behind its origin seems to elude us but the precise interlinking of this spectacular machination seems not without intention. What I mean is, it’s difficult to accept all we’ve discovered about the universe as being randomly or accidentally formed. It all fits together too well not to implore thoughts of intelligent design beyond human understanding.

Precession was first recognized by Hipparchus in 127 BC using previous work from Timocharis of Alexandria 150 years earlier and from the Babylonians before that. Science didn’t create precession or make it happen. Science revealed the design to us.

I picked these two examples—something constructed on earth and something beyond earth—amongst the myriad of phenomena described in Hancock’s book because they represented two things that had started to occur to me. First, some incredible edifices have been built in antiquity that we have theories about but don’t really understand. Second, I can no longer believe that something like precession exists by accident. The universe seems like an unimaginably intricate clock, where all the different pieces we figure out over time astoundingly seem to fit together. We don’t understand how or why, but each seemingly has its own purpose in supporting the universe and life as we know them. And the many edifices, like the pyramids, that we uncover, exist not only as part of that intricacy but potentially to tell us more than what we may first have understood, even though we have grave difficulty in changing our frames of reference to better understand. We hold onto our frames of reference like they’re our very lifeblood.

My next instalment will be discovering “The Psychological Significance of the Biblical Stories” from Jordan Peterson.