Page 282 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

city of Cairo, a jumble of skyscrapers and flat traditional roofs separated
by the dark defiles of narrow streets and interspersed with the needle-
point minarets of a thousand and one mosques. A film of reflected street-
lighting shimmered over the whole scene, closing the eyes of modern
Cairenes to the wonder of the stars but at the same time creating the
hallucination of a fairyland illuminated in greens and reds and blues and
sulphurous yellows.
I felt privileged to witness this strange, electronic mirage from such an
incredible vantage point, perched on the summit platform of the last
surviving wonder of the ancient world, hovering in the sky over Cairo like
Aladdin on his magic carpet.
Not that the 203rd course of the Great Pyramid of Egypt could be
described as a carpet! Measuring just under 30 feet on each side (as
against the monument’s side length of around 755 feet at the base) it
consisted of several hundred waist-high limestone blocks, each of which
weighed about five tons. The course was not completely level: a few
blocks were missing or broken, and rising towards the southern end
there were the substantial remains of about half an additional step of
masonry. Moreover, at the very centre of the platform, someone had
arranged for a triangular wooden scaffold to be erected, through the
middle of which rose a thick pole, just over 31 feet long, which marked
the monument’s original true height of 481.3949 feet. Beneath this a
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scrawl of graffiti had been carved into the limestone by generations of
tourists.
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The complete ascent of the Pyramid had taken us about half an hour
and it was now just after 5 a.m., the time of morning worship. Almost in
unison, the voices of a thousand and one muezzins rang out from the
balconies of the minarets of Cairo, calling the faithful to prayer and
reaffirming the greatness, the indivisibility, the mercy and the
compassion of God. Behind me, to the south-west, the top 22 courses of
Khafre’s Pyramid, still clad with their original facing stones, seemed to
float like an iceberg on the ocean of moonlight.
Knowing that we could not stay long in this bewitching place, I sat
down and gazed around at the heavens. Over to the west, across limitless
desert sands, Regulus had now set beneath the horizon, and the rest of
the lion’s body was poised to follow. The constellations of Virgo and
Libra were also dropping lower in the sky and, much farther to the north,
I could see the Great and Little Bears slowly pacing out their eternal cycle
around the celestial pole.
I looked south-east across the Nile Valley and there was the crescent
moon still spreading its spectral radiance from the bank of the Milky Way.

18 Ibid., p. 87.
‘One is irritated by the number of imbeciles’ names written everywhere,’ Gustave
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Flaubert commented in his Letters From Egypt. ‘On the top of the Great Pyramid there is
a certain Buffard, 79 rue St Martin, wallpaper manufacturer, in black letters.’

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