Page 420 - Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

Graham Hancock – FINGERPRINTS OF THE GODS

scaling-down, as it turns out, is not absolutely exact, but it is very near.
Moreover, when we remember the bulge at the earth’s equator (our
planet being an oblate spheroid rather than a perfect sphere), the results
achieved by the pyramid builders seem even closer to 1:43,200.
How close?
If we take the earth’s equatorial circumference, 24,902.45 miles, and
scale it down (divide it) by 43,200 we get a result of 0.5764 of a mile.
There are 5280 feet in a mile. The next step, therefore, is to multiply
0.5764 by 5280, which produces a figure of 3043.39 feet. The earth’s
equatorial circumference scaled down 43,200 times is therefore 3,043.39
feet. By comparison, as we have seen, the perimeter of the Great
Pyramid’s base is 3,023.16 feet. This represents an ‘error’ of only 20
feet—or about three-quarters of 1 per cent. Given the razor-sharp
accuracy of the pyramid builders, however (who normally worked to even
finer tolerances), the error is less likely to have resulted from mistakes in
the construction of the giant monument than in an underestimation of
our planet’s true circumference by just 163 miles, probably caused in
part by failure to take account of the equatorial bulge.
Let us now consider the earth’s polar radius of 3949.921 miles. If we
scale it down 43,200 times we get 0.0914 of a mile: 482.59 feet. The
earth’s polar radius scaled down 43,200 times is therefore 482.59 feet.
By comparison the Great Pyramid’s height is 481.3949 feet—just a foot
less than the ideal figure, an error of barely one-fifth of one per cent.
As near as makes no difference, therefore, the perimeter of the Great
Pyramid’s base is indeed 1:43,200 of the equatorial circumference of the
earth. And as near as makes no difference, the height of the Great
Pyramid above that base is indeed 1:43,200 of the polar radius of the
earth. In other words, during all the centuries of darkness experienced by
Western civilization when knowledge of our planet’s dimensions was lost
to us, all we ever needed to do to rediscover that knowledge was to
measure the height and base perimeter of the Great Pyramid and multiply
by 43,200!
How likely is this to be an ‘accident’?
The commonsense answer is ‘not very likely at all,’ since it should be
obvious to any reasonable person that what we are looking at could only
be the result of a deliberate and carefully calculated planning decision.
Commonsense, however, has never been a faculty held in high esteem by
Egyptologists, and it is therefore necessary to ask whether there is
anything else in the data which might confirm that the ratio of 143,200 is
a purposeful expression of intelligence and knowledge, rather than some
numerical fluke.
The ratio itself seems to provide that confirmation, for the simple
reason that 43,200 is not a random number (like, say, 45,000 or 47,000,
or 50,500, or 38,800). On the contrary it is one of a series of numbers,
and multiples of those numbers, which relate to the phenomenon of

418