Page 286 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Site plan of the Giza necropolis
Herodotus saw the monuments in the fifth century BC, more than 2000
years after they had been built. Nevertheless it was largely on the
foundation of his testimony that the entire subsequent judgement of
history was based. All other commentators, up to the present, continued
uncritically to follow in the Greek historian’s footsteps. And down the
ages—although it had originally been little more than hearsay—the
attribution of the Great Pyramid to Khufu, the Second Pyramid to Khafre
and the Third Pyramid to Menkaure had assumed the stature of
unassailable fact.

Trivializing the mystery

Having parted company with Ali, Santha and I continued our walk into the
desert. Skirting the immense south-western corner of the Second
Pyramid, our eyes were drawn towards its summit. There we noted again
the intact facing stones that still covered its top 22 courses. We also
noticed that the first few courses above its base, each of which had a
‘footprint’ of about a dozen acres, were composed of truly massive
blocks of limestone, almost too high to clamber over, which were about
20 feet long and 6 feet thick. These extraordinary monoliths, as I was
later to discover, weighed 200 tons apiece and belonged to a distinct
style of masonry to be found at several different and widely scattered
locations within the Giza necropolis.

284