Page 307 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

Chapter 37

Made by Some God

I had climbed the Great Pyramid the night before, but as I approached it
in the full glare of midday, I experienced no sense of triumph. On the
contrary, standing at its base on the north side, I felt fly-sized and puny—
an impermanent creature of flesh and blood confronted with the awe-
inspiring splendour of eternity. I had the impression that it might have
been here for ever, ‘made by some god and set down bodily in the
surrounding sand’, as the Greek historian Diodorus Siculus commented in
the first century BC. But which god had made it, if not the God-King
1
Khufu whose name generations of Egyptians had associated with it?
For the second time in twelve hours, I began to climb the monument.
Up close in this light, indifferent to human chronologies and subject only
to the slow erosive forces of geological time, it reared above me like a
frowning, terrifying crag. Fortunately, I only had six courses to clamber
over, assisted in places by modern steps, before reaching Ma’mun’s Hole,
which now served as the pyramid’s principal entrance.
The original entrance, still well-hidden in the ninth century when
Ma’mun began tunnelling, was some ten courses higher, 55 feet above
ground level and 24 feet east of the main north-south axis. Protected by
giant limestone gables, it contained the mouth of the descending
corridor, which led downwards at an angle of 26° 31’ 23”. Strangely,
although itself measuring only some 3 feet 5 inches x 3 feet 11 inches,
this corridor was sandwiched between roofing blocks 8 feet 6 inches
thick and 12 feet wide and a flooring slab (known as the ‘Basement
Sheet’) 2 feet 6 inches thick and 33 feet wide.
2
Hidden structural features like these abounded in the Great Pyramid,
manifesting both incredible complexity and apparent pointlessness.
Nobody knew how blocks of this size had been successfully installed,
neither did anybody know how they had been set so carefully in
alignment with other blocks, or at such precise angles (because, as the
reader may have realized, the 26° slope of the descending corridor was
part of a deliberate and regular pattern). Nobody knew either why these
things had been done.

The Beacon

Entering the pyramid through Ma’mun’s Hole did not feel right. It was like

1 Diodorus Siculus, Harvard University Press, 1989, p. 217.
2 The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 88; The Great Pyramid: Your Personal Guide, pp. 30-1.

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