The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids

by Scott Creighton

  Figure 8.1. Dakota smokeless fire pit

  As the balloon becomes buoyant, a rope net containing the stone blocks is fixed to the fully inflated balloon—the payload. A fixed guy rope that runs from the uppermost level of the pyramid down to the lifting station is looped through a couple of O-rings fitted to the underside of the rope net containing the stone blocks. This will effectively tether the balloon to the guy rope, and when the anchor rope is released, the balloon will float up with its cargo, following the path of the guy rope to the top level of the pyramid (see figure 8.2). There may also be a couple of lighter ropes attached to haul the balloon and its “weightless” cargo more quickly up the pyramid slope.

  Upon reaching the end of the guy rope at the top of the pyramid, the balloon is once again anchored, and the stones are released from the rope net. The balloon may then be allowed to deflate and recycled back down the pyramid as another cycle of balloons ascend with their payloads. Or the inflated balloon may be hauled down the pyramid by the other ropes, ready to take up another load. It should be added, of course, that a larger balloon could lift heavier blocks, and by clustering a number of balloons together, even heavier loads might be raised in this manner.

  Figure 8.2. Hot air balloon carries stone to top of pyramid.

  So, through the science of thermodynamics applied to a primitive hot air balloon it may well have been possible for the pyramid stones to have “flown into place”—just as some ancient legends tell us.

  PHYSICAL EVIDENCE

  But did the ancient Egyptians in fact discover such a lifting technique? Is there any evidence of such? As it turns out, there are some tantalizing clues that hint that they just might have done so. First of all we find that around the perimeter of the pyramids and on the wider Giza plateau there are numerous pits cut deep into the bedrock. These pits range from about twenty to as much as sixty feet deep, and some of them are indeed connected by a small horizontal shaft or tunnel near their base (figure 8.3), a tunnel, it should be noted, that is much too small for any person, even a child, to pass through.

  Figure 8.3. Stone pits around Giza with horizontal “air channels” near the base. Note the arrows pointing to connecting air channels.

  This connecting horizontal link tunnel may be the telltale sign for the very type of fire outlined above—the Dakota smokeless fire pit (figure 8.1). As mentioned, one of these deep-hewn stone pits would contain the firewood for burning while the other pit provided a draft of air via the horizontal connecting tunnel to produce the convection current. With the pit hewn directly into the plateau bedrock there would be no possibility of the pit collapsing, and the stone itself within the pit would also heat up, thus boosting the temperature from the pit. And with the fire burning very efficiently in the pit far below the balloon material, burning embers or flames from the fire would be much less likely to set the balloon material ablaze.

  A CURIOUS ARTIFACT

  Around the Giza plateau several mysterious stone tools in the shape of a mushroom with three curved grooves have been found (figure 8.4). Egyptologists do not really know what this tool was intended for or exactly how it would have been used, but they believe it to be part of some form of proto-pulley system.

  Figure 8.4. Mysterious stone tool found at Giza

  Of these strange artifacts, Lehner writes, “The Mystery Tool—Examples of these have been found at Giza, apparently dating to the Old Kingdom. They are mushroom-shaped with one or two holes through the stem and three parallel grooves cut into the head. It has been suggested that they could have been bearing-stones or proto-pulleys, with the stem inserted into a pole or scaffold and the grooves acting as guides for ropes. There is no rimmed wheel, as in a true pulley, but the direction of pull could probably have been changed by running the ropes through the grooves.”2

  This “mystery tool” set into a tall “pole or scaffold” is precisely the kind of tool that would be required at the top level of the pyramid to raise the guy rope sufficiently high enough from the pyramid structure to allow the hot air balloon and its cargo to safely land at the top level of the pyramid (figure 8.5).

  The guy rope would pass over the center groove of the mystery tool, whereupon its end would be anchored securely to the pyramid, while the other two grooves could be used as guides for two additional ropes that would be used to haul the balloon and its “weightless” cargo quickly up the pyramid’s slope. This tool is not a pulley as such but could merely have functioned as a guide for the ropes to prevent them from rubbing against the sharp edge of the pyramid slope and potentially snagging and snapping.

  Figure 8.5. Mystery tool fitted to an A-frame to raise and guide the guy rope

  THE BALLOON BULB

  Anyone who has seen a traditional-shaped hot air balloon will recognize its similarity in shape to that of a standard lightbulb. And anyone who has ever attended a hot air balloon flight will have seen how the balloon is first laid flat on the ground; it starts out as a long, thin stretch of material that slowly inflates horizontally on the ground until finally, with sufficient hot air, it gradually rises to the vertical and is ready for takeoff.

  In ancient Egyptian art we are often presented with images of flying solar barques, white balloon-like objects surrounded by a pair of wings, suggesting that these balloon-like objects had the ability to take to the sky like a bird. Also, somewhat remarkably, there is even a scene in ancient Egyptian art that may depict a hot air balloon actually being inflated. The scene in question (figure 8.6) is presented in the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, and according to conventional Egyptology, it supposedly depicts the ancient Egyptian god Horus emerging from a lotus flower.

  Figure 8.6. Top: a horizontal hot air balloon being inflated. Bottom: relief carving believed by Egyptologists to show Horus emerging from a lotus flower. But could that flower instead be a hot air balloon?

  Notice how the balloon shape in the lower image in figure 8.6 lies horizontally on its side and is similar to a modern hot air balloon being laid out and filled with hot air, as shown in the upper image. What is also interesting about this particular relief is that the text on the wall alongside it makes mention of the “sky carriers.” In some interpretations of this relief the goddess sitting on the stone block to the far right of the image is likely the ancient Egyptian goddess Amaunet, the goddess of air, although this could also be the god Heh, who was also an air/ sky god identified with Shu, who supposedly held up the pillars of the sky. Or is Heh referenced in this context, perhaps as holding or carrying someone or something up into the sky? This air goddess is also depicted as a snake (or serpent), which we observe within the center of the balloon-like object.

  Intriguingly, on other walls of the Dendera temple are images that also depict this balloon-type object, but in these images the balloons are presented upright (with the snakes of the air goddess Amaunet again depicted within the balloon shape) as though the balloons are now flying up in the air and carrying a cargo in some form of netting or basket beneath them (figure 8.7).

  Is it perhaps the case then that in these reliefs we are witnessing a linen balloon being filled with hot air for the lifting of heavy stone blocks? Or does the conventional explanation of this image, that it represents the god Horus being born inside a lotus flower, make more sense? In the context of considering hot air balloons in this image, the depiction of Horus makes perfect sense because this god was, after all, the ancient Egyptian god of the sky.

  Objectors to such a proposal will undoubtedly point to the fact that the Temple of Hathor at Dendera was constructed long after the great pyramid-building age. This fact, however, does not invalidate the proposal, because the ancient Egyptians often made reference in their art and texts to practices and rituals whose roots had long since been lost in antiquity and which, in later times, had become couched in the language of religious ritual, the original function and meaning obscured and long lost.

  Figure 8.7. Vertical (inflated) balloons depicted in the Dendera temple appear to carry a pa
yload of stones.

  As stated in chapter 7, after the Old Kingdom collapsed, ancient Egypt plunged into a long period of upheaval, chaos, and decline, entering into a relative “dark age” that Egyptologists tell us lasted around two hundred years—long enough for skills and knowledge to be forgotten and lost. Only vague memories would have been passed down to the later generations, campfire stories that would have become legendary, and one of those legendary tales may well have been that the stones of the pyramids “flew into place.” If the ancient Egyptians did indeed discover and use the thermodynamic power of the hot air balloon in the manner presented in this chapter, then the legend of the “flying pyramid stones” of ancient Egypt may not be such a “flight of fantasy” as it might at first appear.

  9

  Project Osiris

  The traditional result of Osiris’s dismemberment is that there are many so-called tombs of Osiris in Egypt; for Isis held a funeral for each part when she had found it . . . all of them called the tomb of Osiris.

  PLUTARCH

  The central idea conveyed throughout this book is the idea that the early, giant pyramids of ancient Egypt were built not as tombs to revive ancient Egyptian kings but rather as arks to revive the ancient Egyptian kingdom—the womb of the kingdom rather than the tomb of the king. In the course of the book many new ideas were introduced that sought to explain these pyramids within this controversial alternative paradigm. This chapter will serve to highlight the key aspects of this new theory regarding the ancient Egyptian pyramids.

  As stated throughout this book, it is believed by conventional Egyptology that the Egyptian pyramid was the tomb and the instrument that enabled the transfiguration of the dead king into an akh—a glorified being of light that would be effective in the afterlife. In this sense the purpose of the pyramid was to serve as the revivication machine of the king, the device that would ensure his preservation and facilitate his rebirth (revival) in the afterlife. While this religious idea may indeed have been what the ancient Egyptians eventually came to believe, we have to ask: Where did such ideas originate? What was it that prompted the ancient Egyptians to develop the religious concept of preservation leading to rebirth?

  Even although the evidence of actual human burial in these early pyramids is threadbare in the extreme, it is entirely probable that the very first Egyptian pyramids were later used for the purposes of (intrusive) burials. And it is equally likely that the pyramids of much later dynasties may well have been conceived and constructed as pharaonic tombs and instruments of transfiguration and revivication. This would have been a natural evolution of the ancient Egyptian religious beliefs with regard to the earliest pyramids and their true and original function. It remains my conviction, however, that the first sixteen pyramids built by the ancient Egyptians categorically were not conceived or built for the purposes of the entombment or revivication of ancient Egyptian kings, as espoused by Egyptologists, but rather for a much greater and far nobler purpose—as arks to help bring about the revival of the kingdom.

  As with most things religious, such ideas and practices—almost without exception—stem from some historical truth or belief, from an actual event having taken place in some remote epoch. In ancient Egypt that event would have had consequences so dire that it would have eventually threatened the very existence of the kingdom, thus it would have been deemed that the best way to ensure that the kingdom could recover from this imminent disaster was to enact a preemptive plan that involved the construction of the first pyramids.

  Confronted with such an imminent calamity the ancient Egyptians had little choice. They could do nothing and be certain that their civilization would be lost forever, or they could attempt to preserve ma’at (cosmic order), storing the “seeds of rebirth” in massively visible pyramid arks (similar to the primeval mound at the First Time of creation) in the hope that the survivors of their civilization could easily find and breach them to make use of their life-sustaining contents. In so doing, the ancient Egyptians could maintain ma’at by safeguarding the means by which the kingdom could be revived.

  And the ancient Egyptians understood, probably better than most, the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. They observed in the rising and setting sun, the rising and setting stars, and the waxing and waning of the moon the recurrent cycles of death and rebirth. The great River Nile, the lifeblood of their civilization, ebbed and flowed; their pharaohs lived, died, and were believed to be reborn among the stars in the afterlife.

  Everything in the ancient Egyptians’ worldview had its own cycle of life, death, and rebirth. What is often overlooked, however, is their belief that just like the sun, the moon, the planets, the stars, and their kings, the Earth itself also followed a cycle of life, death, and rebirth. And this cycle of the Earth is not the simple annual passing of the seasons but something much more profound: a cycle of death and rebirth of the kind that had occurred at the First Time (Zep Tepi) of creation when chaos ensued and when the Earth—in the form of the primeval mound—first arose from the primordial flood waters. As Plato wrote in his Timaeus, “Whereas just when you and other nations are beginning to be provided with letters and the other requisites of civilized life, after the usual interval, the stream from heaven, like a pestilence, comes pouring down and leaves only those of you who are destitute of letters and education, and so you have to begin all over again like children and know nothing of what happened in ancient times, either among us or among yourselves.”1

  This cycle of death and rebirth is the underlying concept that permeates through all aspects of ancient Egyptian religious thought. While Egyptologists will debate endlessly as to whether the ancient Egyptian religion was primarily stellar or solar in nature (or both), it is my belief that the overarching religious belief—the core belief—of the ancient Egyptians fundamentally concerned itself with cycles of death and rebirth, or rather, of creation, death, and revivication. But more than that, it was about meticulous, preemptive planning before death to ensure revivication and, ultimately, to preserve the cosmic order of ma’at.

  This the ancient Egyptians sought to do by building temples to their various gods, and within those temples they would make offerings and recite prayers to the various deities they believed powered all elements essential for the maintenance of the cosmic order. They did everything in their power to ensure that revivication could occur at the end of each of the various cosmic cycles, including the revivication of the Earth from a global flood they believed would one day bring about its death, a death they believed had been shown to them in the stars. To the ancient Egyptians this imminent “death” of the Earth—of their civilization—was more than just a belief; it was the word of Thoth himself, one of their oldest and wisest gods.

  Egyptologists explain the absence of any contemporary royal mummies having ever been recovered from any of the pre–Fifth Dynasty pyramids as the work of tomb robbers. At the same time, however, they are somewhat befuddled by the large amounts of wheat, barley, grape, and other types of seeds found in a number of galleries under the Step Pyramid of Djoser, as well as in other underground silos around this pyramid complex. They are further unable to easily explain the massive cache of forty thousand vases, plates, pots, and other artifacts also found under this pyramid.

  Certainly in much later tombs such as that of Tutankhamun, pots, plates, vases, seeds, and various other artifacts have been found and are believed to be for use in the king’s afterlife. But generally, the artifacts in these much later underground tombs are always of small, symbolic amounts—a few pots and vases, a handful of seeds. This is in no way comparable with the tens of thousands of vessels and massive amounts of seed that were recovered from under Djoser’s pyramid complex, which are far in excess of what one would expect for symbolic needs. Of course, most other chambers in Djoser’s pyramid (and in all pyra-mids) would have been picked clean of such recovery goods—as was the intention. However, that such a large cache was found mostly intact is exceedingly fortunate for it allows us
to glimpse the true picture and purpose of these structures as arks—the means to effect the revivication of the kingdom at the time of its “death by deluge.”

  Based on the belief in these cycles of creation followed by death, the ancient Egyptians ensured that everything was done, everything was prepared and set in its proper place beforehand in order that the desired revivication could come about for the Earth to be revived. Without these proactive and preemptive measures put in place, the revivication of the Earth could never occur and its death would be permanent. A fine example of this religious thought is exemplified by the great sun temples built all over Egypt by the later ancient Egyptians. In these great sun temples the priests would chant and recite their prayers to the sun god, counting the hours of the night, praying that their spells and incantations would appease the gods and bring forth the sun, revived and rejuvenated once again on the eastern horizon—the place of rebirth.

  Revivication—this is the central theme, the driving force that underpinned all ancient Egyptian religious thought and one that would ultimately inspire the construction of the largest monuments on Earth, monuments so great that they could forever ensure the revival, the recreation of the Earth (i.e., the Egyptian civilization) at the appointed time of its “death” from a massive deluge and devastating drought.