Page 332 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

examination revealed that it incorporated several characteristics quite
alien and inexplicable to the modern eye, which that must have seemed
almost as alien and inexplicable to the Ancient Egyptians. For a start,
there was the stark absence, both inside and out, of inscriptions and
other identifying marks. In this respect, as the reader will appreciate, the
Valley Temple could be compared with a few of the other anonymous and
frankly undatable monuments on the Giza plateau, including the great
pyramids (and also with a mysterious structure at Abydos known as the
Osireion, which we consider in detail in a later chapter) but otherwise
bore no resemblance to the typical and well-known products of Ancient
Egyptian art and architecture—all copiously decorated, embellished and
inscribed.
10
Another important and unusual feature of the Valley Temple was that
its core structure was built entirely, entirely, of gigantic limestone
megaliths. The majority of these measured about 18 feet long x 10 feet
wide x 8 feet high and some were as large as 30 feet long x 12 feet wide
x 10 feet high. Routinely exceeding 200 tons in weight, each was
11
heavier than a modern diesel locomotive—and there were hundreds of
blocks.
12
Was this in any way mysterious?
Egyptologists did not seem to think so; indeed few of them had
bothered to comment, except in the most superficial manner—either on
the staggering size of these blocks or the mind-bending logistics of how
they might have been put in place. As we have seen, monoliths of up to
70 tons, each about as heavy as 100 family-sized cars, had been lifted to
the level of the King’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid—again without
provoking much comment from the Egyptological fraternity—so the lack
of curiosity about the Valley Temple was perhaps no surprise.
Nevertheless, the block size was truly extraordinary, seeming to belong
not just to another epoch but to another ethic altogether—one that
reflected incomprehensible aesthetic and structural concerns and
suggested a scale of priorities utterly different from our own. Why, for
example, insist on using these cumbersome 200-ton monoliths when you
could simply slice each of them up into 10 or 20 or 40 or 80 smaller and
more manoeuvrable blocks? Why make things so difficult for yourself
when you could achieve much the same visual effect with much less
effort?
And how had the builders of the Valley Temple lifted these colossal
megaliths to heights of more than 40 feet?

10 In addition to the three Giza pyramids, the Mortuary Temples of Khafre and Menkaure
can be compared with the Valley Temple in terms of their absence of adornment and use
of megaliths weighing 200 tons or more.
11 Serpent in the Sky, p. 211; also Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV, 1993.
For block weights see The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 215; Serpent in the Sky, p. 242; The
12
Traveller’s Key to Ancient Egypt, p. 144; The Pyramids: An Enigma Solved, p. 51;
Mystery of the Sphinx, NBC-TV, 1993.

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