Page 182 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock
P. 182

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS



                      Great Pyramid represents the northern hemisphere in a scale of 1:43,200.
                                                                                              18
                   In Part VII we shall see why this scale was chosen.



                   Mathematical city


                   Rising up ahead of me as I walked towards the northern end of the Street
                   of the Dead, the Pyramid of the  Moon, mercifully undamaged by
                   restorers, had kept its original form as a four-stage ziggurat. The Pyramid
                   of the Sun, too, had consisted of four stages but Bartres had whimsically
                   sculpted in a fifth stage between the original third and fourth levels.
                     There was, however, one original feature of the Pyramid of the Sun that
                   Bartres had been unable to despoil: a subterranean passageway leading
                   from a natural cave under the west face. After its accidental discovery in
                   1971 this passageway was thoroughly explored. Seven feet high, it was
                   found to run eastwards for more than 300 feet until it reached a point
                   close to the pyramid’s geometrical centre.  Here it debouched into a
                                                                       19
                   second cave, of spacious dimensions, which had been artificially enlarged
                   into a shape very similar to that of a four-leaf clover. The ‘leaves’ were
                   chambers, each about sixty feet in circumference, containing a variety of
                   artefacts such as beautifully engraved slate discs and highly polished
                   mirrors. There was also a complex drainage system of interlocking
                   segments of carved rock pipes.
                                                       20
                     This last feature was particularly puzzling because there was no known
                   source of water within the pyramid.  The sluices, however, left little
                                                                21
                   doubt that water must have been present in antiquity, most probably in
                   large quantities. This brought to mind the evidence for water having once
                   run in the Street of the Dead, the sluices and partition walls I had seen
                   earlier to the north of the Citadel, and Schlemmer’s theory of reflecting
                   pools and seismic forecasting.
                     Indeed, the more I thought about it the more it seemed that water had
                   been the dominant motif at Teotihuacan. Though I had hardly registered
                   it that morning, the Temple of Quetzalcoatl had been decorated not only
                   with effigies of the Plumed Serpent but with unmistakable aquatic
                   symbolism, notably an undulating design suggestive of waves and large
                   numbers of beautiful carvings of seashells. With these images in my
                   mind, I reached the wide plaza at the base of the Pyramid of the Moon
                   and imagined it filled with water, as it might have been, to a depth of
                   about ten feet. It would have looked magnificent: majestic, powerful and


                   18  Stecchini, in appendix to Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 378. The perimeter of the
                   Great Pyramid equals exactly one-half minute of  arc—see  Mysteries of  the Mexican
                   Pyramids, p. 279.
                     The Pyramids of Teotihuacan, p. 20.
                   19
                   20  Mysteries of the Mexican Pyramids, pp. 335-9.
                   21  Ibid.


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