Page 310 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

something of inestimable value must lie beyond them.
Might this not have been what the pyramid builders had intended the
first intruder who reached this far to feel? It would be premature to rule
out such a strange and unsettling possibility. At any rate, thanks to
Ma’mun (and to the predictable constants of human nature) I was now
able to insert myself into the unblocked upper section of the original
ascending corridor. A smoothly cut aperture measuring 3 feet 5 inches
wide x 3 feet 11 inches high (exactly the same dimensions as the
descending corridor), it sloped up into the darkness at an angle of 26° 2’
30” (as against 26° 31’ 23” in the descending corridor).
9
8
What was this meticulous interest in the angle of 26°, and was it a
coincidence that it amounted to half of the angle of inclination of the
pyramid’s sides—52°.
10
The reader may recall the significance of this angle. It was a key
ingredient of the sophisticated and advanced formula by which the
design of the Great Pyramid had been made to correspond precisely to
the dynamics of spherical geometry. Thus the original height of the
monument (481.3949 feet), and the perimeter of its base (3023.16 feet),
stood in the same ratio to each other as did the radius of a sphere to its
circumference. This ratio was 2pi (2 x 3.14) and to express it the builders
had been obliged to specify the tricky and idiosyncratic angle of 52° for
the pyramid’s sides (since any greater or lesser slope would have meant a
different height-to-perimeter ratio).
In Chapter Twenty-three we saw that the so-called Pyramid of the Sun at
Teotihuacan in Mexico also expressed a knowledge and deliberate use of
the transcendental number pi; in its case the height (233.5 feet) stood in
a relationship of 4pi to the perimeter of its base (2932.76 feet).
11
The crux, therefore, was that the most remarkable monument of
Ancient Egypt and the most remarkable monument of Ancient Mexico
both incorporated pi relationships long before and far away from the
official ‘discovery’ of this transcendental number by the Greeks.
12
Moreover, the evidence invited the conclusion that something was being
signalled by the use of pi—almost certainly the same thing in both cases.
Not for the first time, and not for the last, I was overwhelmed by a
sense of contact with an ancient intelligence, not necessarily Egyptian or
Mexican, which had found a way to reach out across the ages and draw
people towards it like a beacon. Some might look for treasure; others,
captivated by the deceptively simple manner in which the builders had
used pi to demonstrate their mastery of the secrets of transcendental
numbers, might be inspired to search for further mathematical

8 The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 91.
9 Ibid., p. 88.
Or 51° 50’ 35” to be exact, Ibid., page 87; Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 112.
10
11 See Chapter Twenty-three.
12 Ibid.

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