Page 280 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

30° but at 29° 58’ 22”.
16
Compared to the true position of 29° 58’ 51”, this was an error of less
than half an arc minute, suggesting once again that the surveying and
geodetic skills brought to bear here must have been of the highest order.
Feeling somewhat overawed, we climbed on, past the 44th and 45th
courses of the hulking and enigmatic structure. At the 40th course an
angry voice hailed us in Arabic from the plaza below and we looked down
to see a tiny, turbaned man dressed in a billowing kaftan. Despite the
range, he had unslung his shotgun and was preparing to take aim at us.

The guardian and the vision

He was, of course, the guardian of the Pyramid’s western face, the
patrolman of the fourth cardinal point, and he had not received the extra
funds dispensed to his colleagues of the north, east and south faces.
I could tell from Ali’s perspiration that we were in a potentially tricky
situation. The guard was ordering us to come down at once so that he
could place us under arrest. ‘This, however, could probably be avoided
with a further payment,’ Ali explained.
I groaned. ‘Offer him 100 Egyptian pounds.’
‘Too much,’ Ali cautioned, ‘it will make the others resentful. I shall offer
him 50.’
More words were exchanged in Arabic. Indeed, over the next few
minutes, Ali and the guard managed to have quite a sustained
conversation up and down the south-western corner of the Pyramid at
4:40 in the morning. At one point a whistle was blown. Then the guards
of the southern face put in a brief appearance and stood in conference
with the guard of the western face, who had now also been joined by the
two other members of his patrol.
Just when it seemed that Ali had lost whatever argument he was having
on our behalf, he smiled and heaved a sigh of relief. ‘You will pay the
extra 50 pounds when we have returned to the ground,’ he explained.
‘They’re letting us continue but they say that if any senior officer comes
along and sees us they will not be able to help us.’
We struggled upwards in silence for the next ten minutes or so until we
had reached the tooth course—roughly the halfway mark and already well
over 250 feet above the ground. We gazed over our shoulders to the
southwest, where a once-in-a-lifetime vision of staggering beauty and
power confronted us. The crescent moon, which hung low in the sky to
the south-east, had emerged from behind a scudding cloud bank and
projected its ghostly radiance directly at the northern and eastern faces
of the neighbouring Second Pyramid, supposedly built by the Fourth

16 Piazzi Smyth, The Great Pyramid: Its Secrets and Mysteries Revealed, Bell Publishing
Company, New York, 1990, p. 80.

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