Page 148 - A Historical Lie: The Stone Age

A HISTORICAL LIE: THE STONE AGE

Some of the research onto the pyramids at Giza has shown that the
Ancient Egyptians possessed a highly developed knowledge of mathematics
and geometry. In addition to their knowledge of mathematics and geometry,
the people who planned the pyramids must also have known the measure-
ments of the Earth, its circumference, and the angle of tilt of its axis. This in-
formation about the pyramids, whose construction
began around 2,500 BCE, is even more striking when
one considers that they were built some 2,000 years
before the great Greek mathematicians Pythagoras,
Archimedes and Euclid:
- The angles of the Great Pyramid divide the
Nile delta region into two equal halves.
- The three pyramids of Giza have been
arranged so as to form a Pythagorean triangle,
whose sides have the proportions 3:4:5.
- The proportion between the height of the
pyramid and its circumference is equal to that
between the radius of a circle and its circum-
ference.
- The Great Pyramid is a giant sundial. The
shadows it casts between mid-October and
the beginning of March reflect the seasons and
the length of the year. The length of the stone
slabs around the pyramid is equivalent to the
length of one day's shadow.
- The normal length of the square base of the
pyramid is equal to 365.342 Egyptian yards (a

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