Fingerprints of the Gods

by Graham Hancock

  the diagonals running from the pyramid’s apex to its north-eastern and

  north-western corners were extended (forming lines on the map running

  north-east and northwest until they reached the Mediterranean), the

  triangle thus formed would neatly encapsulate the entire Delta area.3

  Let us now return to our map, which also incorporates a triangle

  representing the Delta. Its other main components are the three parallel

  meridians. The eastern meridian is at longitude 32° 38’ east—the official

  eastern border of Ancient Egypt from the beginning of dynastic times.

  The western meridian is at longitude 29° 50’ east, the official western

  border of ancient Egypt. The central meridian is at longitude 31° 14’ east,

  exactly midway between the other two (1° 24’ away from each).4

  What we now have is a representation of a strip on the surface of planet

  earth that is exactly 2° 48’ wide. How long is this strip? Ancient Egypt’s

  ‘official’ northern and southern borders (which bore no more relationship

  to settlement patterns than the official eastern and western boundaries)

  are marked by the horizontal lines at the top and bottom of the map and

  are located respectively at 31° 06’ north and 24° 06’ north.5 The northern

  border, 31° 06’ north, joins the two outer ends of the estuary of the Nile.

  The southern border, 24° 06’ N, marks the precise latitude of the island

  1 Collins English Dictionary, p. 608.

  2 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 38. Much of the material in this chapter is based

  directly on the work of Peter Tompkins and of Professor Livio Catullo Stecchini.

  3 Ibid., p. 46.

  4 Ibid., p. 181.

  5 Ibid., p. 299.

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  of Elephantine at Aswan (Seyne) where an important astronomical and

  solar observatory was located throughout known Egyptian history.6 It

  seems, that this archaic land, sacred since time began—the creation and

  habitation of the gods—was originally conceived of as a geometric

  construct exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length.

  Within this construct, the Great Pyramid appears to have been carefully

  sited as a geodetic marker for the apex of the Delta. The latter, which we

  have indicated on our map, is located at 30° 06’ N 31° 14’ E—a point in

  the middle of the Nile at the northern edge of modern Cairo. Meanwhile

  the pyramid stands at latitude of 30°N (corrected for atmospheric

  refraction) and at longitude 31° 09’ E, an error of just a few minutes of

  terrestrial arc to the south and west. This ‘error’, however, does not

  appear to have resulted from sloppiness or inaccuracy on the part of the

  pyramid builders. On the contrary, a close look at the topography of the

  area suggests that the explanation should be sought in the need to find a

  site suitable for all the astronomical observations that had to be taken for

  accurate setting-out, and with a sufficiently stable geological structure on

  which to park, for ever, a six-million-ton monument almost 500 feet high

  with a footprint of over thirteen acres.

  The Giza plateau fits the bill on all counts: close to the apex of the

  Delta, elevated above the Valley of the Nile, and equipped with an

  excellent foundation of solid limestone bedrock.

  Doing things by degrees

  We were driving north from Luxor to Giza in the back of Mohamed

  Walilli’s Peugeot 504—a journey of just over 4 degrees of longitude, i.e.,

  from 25° 42’ N, to the 30th parallel. Between Asiut and El Minya, a

  corridor of conflict in recent months between Islamic extremists and

  Egyptian government forces, we were provided with an armed escort of

  soldiers, one of whom wore plain clothes and sat in the passenger seat

  beside Mohamed fondling an automatic pistol. The others, about a dozen

  men armed with AK47 assault rifles, were distributed equally between

  two pick-up trucks which sandwiched us front and rear.

  ‘Dangerous people live here,’ Mohamed had confided out of the corner

  of his mouth when we had been stopped at a road-block in Asiut and

  ordered to wait for our escort. Now, although obviously rattled at being

  obliged to match the high speed of the escorting vehicles, he seemed to

  relish the kudos of being part of an impressive convoy, lights flashing

  and sirens wailing, weaving in and out of the slower traffic on the main

  highway from upper to lower Egypt.

  I looked out of the car window for a while at the unchanging spectacle

  of the Nile, at its fertile green banks and the red haze of the deserts a few

  6 Ibid., pp. 179-81.

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  miles away to east and west. This was Egypt, the real organic Egypt of

  today and yesterday, which overlapped (but spread out far beyond) the

  strange ‘official’ Egypt of the map described, a rectangular fiction exactly

  seven terrestrial degrees in length.

  In the nineteenth century the renowned Egyptologist Ludwig Borchardt

  expressed what is still the conventional wisdom of his colleagues when

  he remarked, ‘One must absolutely exclude the possibility that the

  ancients may have measured by degrees.’7 This was a judgement that

  seemed increasingly unlikely to be tenable. Whoever they may have been,

  it was obvious that the original planners and architects of the Giza

  necropolis had belonged to a civilization which knew the earth to be a

  sphere, knew its dimensions almost as well as we do ourselves, and had

  divided it into 360 degrees, just as we do today.

  The proof of this lay in the creation of a symbolic official ‘country’

  exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length, and in the admirably geodetic

  location and orientation to the cardinal points of the Great Pyramid.

  Equally persuasive was the fact, already touched on in Chapter Twentythree, that the perimeter of the pyramid’s base stood in the relationship

  2 pi to its height and that the entire monument seemed to have been

  designed to serve as a map-projection— on a scale of 1:43,200—of the

  northern hemisphere of our planet:

  The Great Pyramid was a projection on four triangular surfaces. The apex

  represented the pole and the perimeter represented the equator. This is the

  reason why the perimeter is in relation 2 pi to the height.8

  The Pyramid/Earth ratio

  We have demonstrated the use of pi in the Pyramid9 and need not go into

  this matter again; besides, the existence of the pi relationship, though

  interpreted as accidental by orthodox scholars, is not contested by

  them.10 But are we seriously supposed to accept that the monument could

  also be a representation of the northern hemisphere of the earth

  projected on flat surfaces at a scale of 1:43,200? Let us remind ourselves

  of the figures.

  According to the best modern estimates, based on satellite

  observations, the equatorial circumference of the earth is 24,902.45

  miles and its polar radius is 3949.921 miles.11 The perimeter of the Great

  Pyramid’s base is 3023.16 feet and its height is 481.3949 feet.12 The

  7 Cited in Ibid., p. 333.

  8 See C
hapter Twenty-three, and Stecchini in Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 378.

  9 See Chapter Twenty-three.

  10 Accepted, for example, by Edwards, Petrie, Baines and Malek, and so on.

  11 Encyclopaedia Britannica, 1991, 27:530.

  12 The Pyramids of Egypt, p. 87.

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  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

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  precession of the equinoxes, and which have become embedded in

  archaic myths all around the world. As the reader can confirm by glancing

  back at Part V the basic numerals of the Pyramid/Earth ratio crop up

  again and again in those myths, sometimes directly as 43,200 sometimes

  as 432, as 4320, as 432,000, as 4,320,000, and so on.

  What we appear to be confronted by are two remarkable propositions,

  back-to-back, as though designed to reinforce one another. It is surely

  remarkable enough that the Great Pyramid should be able to function as

  an accurate scale-model of the northern hemisphere of planet earth. But

  it is even more remarkable that the scale involved should incorporate

  numbers relating precisely to one of the key planetary mechanisms of the

  earth. This is the fixed and apparently eternal precession of its axis of

  rotation around the pole of the ecliptic, a phenomenon which causes the

  vernal point to migrate around the band of the zodiac at the rate of one

  degree every 72 years, and 30 degrees (one complete zodiacal

  constellation) every 2160 years. Precession through two zodiacal

  constellations, or 60 degrees along the ecliptic, takes 4320 years.13

  The constant repetition of these precessional numbers in ancient myths

  could, perhaps, be a coincidence. Viewed in isolation, the appearance of

  the precessional number 43,200 in the pyramid/earth ratio might also be

  a coincidence (although the odds against this must be astronomical). But

  when we find precessional numbers in both these very different media—

  the ancient myths and the ancient monument—it really does strain

  credulity to suppose that coincidence is all that is involved here.

  Moreover, just as the Teutonic myth of Valhalla’s walls leads us to the

  precessional number 432,000 by inviting us to calculate the warriors who

  ‘go to war with the Wolf (500 plus 40 multiplied by 800, as saw in

  Chapter Thirty-three), so the Great Pyramid leads us to the precessional

  number 43,200 by demonstrating through the pi relationship that it

  might be a scale-model part of the earth and then by inviting us to

  calculate that scale.

  Matching fingerprints?

  At El Minya our escort vehicles left us, though the plain-clothes soldier in

  the front seat stayed with us until Cairo. We paused for a late lunch of

  bread and felafel in a boisterous, noisy village, then motored north again.

  Throughout all this, my thoughts remained focused on the Great

  Pyramid. Obviously it was not an accident that so immense and

  conspicuous a structure should occupy a key geographic and geodetic

  location in a part of the world that appeared, bizarrely, to have been

  conceived of and ‘geometrized’ as a rectangular, symbolic construct

  exactly seven terrestrial degrees in length. But it was the pyramid’s other

  13 See Part V.

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  function as a three-dimensional map projection of the northern

  hemisphere that particularly interested me because it suggested a

  ‘match’ with the ancient but advanced maps of the world described in

  Part I. Those maps, which made use of spherical trigonometry and a

  range of sophisticated projections, had been claimed by Professor

  Charles Hapgood to provide tangible, documentary evidence that an

  advanced civilization with a comprehensive knowledge of the globe must

  have flourished during the last Ice Age. Now here was the Great Pyramid

  proving to have a cartographic function vis-à-vis the northern hemisphere

  and also incorporating a sophisticated projection. As one expert

  explained:

  Each flat face of the Pyramid was designe
d to represent one curved quarter of the

  northern hemisphere, or spherical quadrant of 90 degrees. To project a spherical

  quadrant on to a flat triangle correctly, the arc, or base, of the quadrant must be

  the same length as the base of the triangle, and both must have the same height.

  This happens to be the case only with a cross-section or meridian bisection of the

  Great Pyramid, whose slope angle gives the pi relation between height and base

  ...14

  Was it possible that surviving copies and compilations of ancient maps—

  like the Piri Reis Map, for example—might in some cases go back to

  source documents produced by the same culture that skillfully

  incorporated its knowledge of the globe into the dimensions of the Great

  Pyramid (and indeed into the carefully geometrized dimensions of

  Ancient Egypt itself)?

  I could hardly forget that Charles Hapgood and his team had spent

  months trying to work out where the original projection of the Piri Reis

  Map had been centred. The answer they finally obtained was Egypt and

  specifically Seyne (Aswan) in upper Egypt15—where, as we have seen, an

  important astronomical observatory was situated at latitude 24° 06’ N,

  the official southern border.

  Needless to say, precise astronomical observations would have been

  essential for calculations of the circumference of the earth and of latitude

  positions.16 But for how long before the historical period had the Ancient

  Egyptians and their ancestors been making such observations? And had

  they indeed learned this skill, as they stated forthrightly in their

  traditions, from the gods who had once walked among them?

  Navigators in the Boat of Millions of Years

  The god believed by the Ancient Egyptians to have taught the principles

  of astronomy to their ancestors was Thoth: ‘He who reckons in heaven,

  14 Secrets of the Great Pyramid, p. 189.

  15 Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings, p. 17ff.

  16 See, for example, The Shape of the World, p. 23.

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  the counter of the stars, the enumerator of the earth and of what is

  therein, and the measurer of the earth.’17

  Normally depicted as a man wearing an ibis mask, Thoth was a leading

  member of the elite company of First Time deities who dominated

  religious life in Ancient Egypt from the beginning to the end of its