Deluge of Noah

Published August 28, 2021

The Deluge or Noah’s Flood are the commonly used terms when referring to the biblical flood of Genesis. It might perhaps be more accurate to use the plural, as there is evidence of several large-scale catastrophic inundations within the human memory. The Noachian deluge has been the subject of continuous debates: was it real or pure fantasy, was it local, regional or global and is the Ark to be found on Mt. Ararat?

Reginald Fessenden controversially noted in his The Deluged Civilization of the Caucasus Isthmus ^[1012] that “the traditions were collected, tabulated and compared. This developed the fact that there were only five traditions of an inundation of more than local character.”

1. The Greek tradition; of Deucalion; the Aegean, 100 to 250 miles southwest of the Black Sea.

2. The Egyptian-Phoenician; of Atlantis and the Greeks; the western and northeastern shores of the Black Sea.

3. The Cimmerian; of the Crimea; the north shore of the Black Sea.

4. The Hebrew-Babylonian; of Noah and Atra-Hasis; the southeast shore of the Black Sea.

5. The Phrygian; of Noe; the south shore of the Black Sea.

The Flood of Noah is an echo of the Babylonian Gilgamesh epic, which in turn has a resonance with the deluge story of Manu in Indian mythology. If all three relate to the same event it would be of great interest to discover if there was an even earlier shared origin.

Noah is the hero of the Deluge story in Genesis. He was also an accomplished shipbuilder and viticulturist. According to some he was also an Atlantean! Cosmas Indicopleustes a 6th century AD theologian and geographer from Alexandria wrote of Atlantis as a large island in the western ocean. He also added a twist to the tale by recording an ancient tradition that Noah had resided on Atlantis! More recently, Frank Joseph ^[108.85] has endorsed this daft idea.

Interestingly, so many of the deluge stories include a scenario where the ’hero’ is warned of impending doom. To me, this would make sense that where a landbridge was threatened by gradually rising waters on one side, simple observation would have provided adequate time to warn those at risk on the other side.

Another identification, by Robert Bowie Johnson Jr., is that Noah is Nereus in Greek mythology and widely depicted in Greek art^(c). Confusingly, it has also been suggested^(a) that Enoch, usually accepted as the grandfather of Noah, was the same person.

According to Plato, Atlantis was destroyed by the gods as a punishment for their wickedness, while the same reason is given in the Bible for the obliteration of Noah’s people. Coincidentally, both Atlantis and Noah’s homeland, which was probably located in Mesopotamia, were destroyed by water leading to the not unreasonable suggestion that the two stories are related.

While the biblical account of the Deluge does not stand up to detailed scrutiny^(j), the global ubiquity of Flood stories is seldom adequately explained. Some possibilities that occur to me are related to the ending of the last Ice Age, which had watery consequences around the world. While the rising sea level took place in fits and starts, there were more dramatic events during this period such as the huge meltwater lake discharges and Heinrich Events that occurred across North America and Eurasia. The effect in the southern hemisphere was less spectacular. Survivors would have been forced to migrate in all directions, bringing their account of these floods with them. Another explanation, but in my view, a more likely cause of global floods would have been a close encounter with a large extraterrestrial body, an idea promoted by various researchers such as Emilio Spedicato.

Apart from the story of the actual flood, global or otherwise, the detailed biblical account of the building of the Ark along with the gathering of the animals and the voyage itself does not hold water (sorry)^(y). Some decades ago, Roger A. Moore offered a forensic study of the account, which, is still impressive^(x).

In March 2019, a paper by Roger M. Pearlman put forward another radical idea, namely, that Göbekli Tepe had been founded by Noah (Noach) and his sons^(u).

A more light-hearted look at the story of Noah is also worth a read⁽ⁿ⁾.

Every aspect of Noah’s Deluge story in the Bible has been a source of controversy for centuries. From the nature and cause of the Flood itself, as well as the building of the Ark and its final resting place and of course the date of the event.

Some years ago, Pastor Bertrand L. Comparet (1901-1983), a staunch racist^(w), denied that the Flood of Noah had been a global event^(v).

2018 began with matters hitting rock-bottom when an English-language newspaper offered the following headline^(l)“Turkish academic claims Prophet Noah used a cell phone to call his son before the flood.” Unsurprisingly, Jason Colavito has covered this story with an interesting blog^(m).

DATE

Plato’s Atlantis story contains a curious reference in Timaeus (23a-c) to a series of floods that occurred in the Eastern Mediterranean^(ah) since the Atlantean war, namely, those of Ogyges, Deucalion and Dardanus. If based on historical fact, on its own, the Biblical Flood or the breach of a landbridge cannot explain this succession of inundations but suggests that there could be a much more complex story, still to be revealed, which was spread over millennia.

Anastasios Stamou presented a paper ^[750.183] to the 2008 Atlantis Conference in which he reviewed the evidence relating to three floods that befell ancient Greece and alluded to by Plato. Drawing on ancient Greek texts including the Parian Marble, he places these events in chronological order beginning with the flood of Ogyges, then Deucalion’s and finally that of Dardanos.

Three very ancient global floods are proposed by Marin, Minella & Schievenin in The Three Ages of Atlantis ^[972] and date them to 10,500, 9600 and 6700 BCE.

Stamou accepts that conventional wisdom has it that these flood events occurred in the 2nd millennium BC and based his paper on that assumption. However, he expressed serious doubts about this dating suggesting a much earlier date for some inundations and promising a future paper dealing with this revision.

Stephen Oppenheimer mentions ^[0004] three sudden ice melts, 14,000, 11,500 and 8,000 years ago that would have had a global effect. It should be considered that the second date is close to Plato’s apparent date for the destruction of Atlantis.

Since writing, as we know it, did not develop until long after de-glaciation, it is virtually impossible to precisely identify the date, location or extent of any of the early myths relating to these possible de-glaciation inundations.

In an August 2017 paper, on the Migration & Diffusion website(s), Stuart L. Harris put forward his reasons for dating the Flood of Noah to 3161 BC and the Exodus Flood to 1445 BC.

Similarly, Gérard Gertoux places the Deluge circa 3200 BC in a lengthy paper^(z), in which he also controversially touches on subjects such as radiocarbon dating, the age of the patriarchs, the Ice Ages, evolution and more.

China has its own ‘Great Flood’ tradition, which in the August 2016 edition of Science journal had its reality given strong support in a paper^(bi) by a mainly Chinese team of researchers, who date the event to 1920 BC.

Recent years have seen the above-mentioned flooding of the Black Sea or even more controversially, the flooding of the desiccated Mediterranean basins, following the breaching of a suggested landbridge at Gibraltar, proposed as possible sources of the story of Noah in the Bible. These inundations are dated to around 5600 BC and their memory should have survived in the traditions and mythologies of the region. In addition to that, the Persian Gulf is also accepted by many to have been dry during the last Ice Age but also began to flood around 5000 BC. In Northern Europe, the Baltic Sea and the Celtic Shelf both suffered post-glacial inundations, while around the same time in the South China Sea the enormous Sunda Shelf suffered extensive flooding.

The flooding of the Celtic Shelf along with parts of southwest Britain and southeast Ireland is the subject of a 2016, thought-provoking book ^[1166] by Philip Runggaldier

On a more controversial level, Donald Patten and Samuel Windsor presented evidence ^[0277] for a series of close encounters between Mars and the Earth during the 1st millennium BC. David Rohl, the Egyptologist, dates Noah’s Flood to 3114 BC ^[0229] and links it with the climatic consequences of a major catastrophe in the Aleutian Islands.

Alexander and Edith Tollman linked the Noachian Deluge with the consequences of a cometary impact in 7552 BC. On the other hand, G.F. Dodwell the Australian astronomer, after studying ancient gnomons, concluded that it was a worldwide catastrophe in 2345 BC that altered the Earth’s tilt, leading to the Deluge. This is comparable with the 1696 claim by William Whiston that the earth had an encounter with a comet in 2346 BC, which caused the Flood of Noah. Emilio Spedicato advocates 3161 BC as the date of the biblical Deluge(ac), which has also been endorsed by Stuart L. Harris^(ad).

In a paper^(r) revised in 2017, Barry Warmkessel noted that theologians and historians have attempted dating Noah’s Flood event, both recently and as far back as the time of Christ. The following are just a few of the results from these attempts:

JOSEPHUS GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3148 BC)
HALES GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3155 BC)
SEPTUAGINT GREAT FLOOD DATE: (3246 BC)
SAMARITAN PENTATEUCH GREAT FLOOD DATE: (2998 BC)

Therefore. theologically at least, it seems quite reasonable (to Warmkessel) that Noah’s Flood occurred between 3000 and 3250 BC and the Ark would have been built slightly before that time.

When Ryan & Pitman^(ae) published their 1997 theory that around 5600 BC, the Black Sea had been flooded by water from the Aegean breaching the Bosporus, it did not take long before it was speculated that the event was reflected in the story of Noah’s Deluge. With little delay, strong objections to the idea were raised by many others^(af)(bz)*.

T.R.Holme has an interesting article^(ax)on the flooding of the Black Sea and the migration from the region that resulted. He also links that event with the work of the late Marija Gimbutas (1921-1994).

Nick Thom, an engineering lecturer at Nottingham University has written The Great Flood ^[776] which gives an overview of many Flood myths, but more importantly, he identifies the emptying of glacial Lake Agassiz around 6250 BC as the mechanism that caused a tilting of the Earth, which in turn generated a global deluge remembered by the survivors in myth and later recorded in scriptures. This is also fully outlined in a lengthy entitled, A Re-interpretation of the 8.2ky BP Event^(ag). Also relevant to our subject is his claim that the flow of water was from the Black Sea into the Aegean rather than the other way around!

The most radical date for the Flood of Noah comes from Rich McQuillen who in a 2022 paper “links the flood of Noah to the flood of Ahmose and Atrahasis, and shows it to be a real flood caused by Santorini”!^(bv)

THE CAUSE

Jeffrey Goodman, the controversial author of Psychic Archaeology ^[781], maintains that “Noah’s Flood was, in reality, a tsunami caused by a comet” and supports this contention with a retranslation of Genesis 7:11 ^(ar).

Kirk Kirchev in a recent (April 2018) two-part article^(bb) “offers a unifying scientific hypothesis that connects diverse ancient flood myths with mainstream scientific fact.” and concluded that “If my calculations and assumptions are correct, an object of around 900 km in diameter passing the earth at an altitude of less than 1000 kilometres (621.37 miles) (of average, rocky density) would be large and heavy enough to create a strong localized tidal uplift in the oceans beneath its flight path (approximately 50 times the current tidal amplitude). That is large enough to destroy most of humankind, and a large portion of the fauna, but small enough to not cause a major extinction event or to disturb earth’s orbital path and rotation.”

Immanuel Velikovsky’s controversial cosmological ideas suggest that our Earth had at one point been a satellite of Saturn! In his unpublished book, In the Beginning ^(bk), he proposed that “The conflict between the larger planets resulted in long-stretched filaments ejected by a disturbed Saturn to cross the Earth’s orbit. The hydrogen of the planet combined with the oxygen of the terrestrial atmosphere in electrical discharges and turned into water” and so generated the Deluge!

In 1993, Alexander Tollman and his wife Edith published, Und die Sintflut gab es doch. Vom Mythos zur historischen Wahrheit, “which claimed that Noah’s flood was the consequence of a bolide impact about 9500 years ago, and supported the claim through geology (impact craters, iridium, shatter cones, stress lamination of minerals, radiocarbon dating, dendrochronology, a peak of acid in the Greenland ice) and legends and folk traditions.”^(bj) Christian O’Brien has endorsed the Tollmans’ ideas^(bl).

Aloys Eiling (1952- ) a German researcher has offered a variation on the close encounter theory, suggesting that the Deluge was one of the consequences of the capture of our Moon that took place when our planet was already populated – somewhere between 40,000 and 13,000 BC. He notes^(bn) that “the capture of the Moon caused worse than a flood; it changed the geography of the world. Earth’s surface was devastated, millions died, and life in total was brought to the brink of extinction. In the collective memory of mankind, the event indelibly remained in the myths about a Deluge.”

Nevertheless, there is one rather disturbing element to be found alongside some of the flood myths, namely that the deluge event was concurrent with the sun seemingly standing still and in some cases, it is recorded that the Moon also appeared to stop^(o)(av)! One explanation on offer is that it is a reference to an eclipse^(aw). This might be acceptable if it was compatible with other myths from different parts of the world, which does not appear to be the case. Furthermore, it does not explain the association of the stopping of the sun with the global deluge. A very close encounter between the Earth and another large celestial body might.

As I see it, we are left with the two popular explanations for the global flood myths, either a close encounter with an extraterrestrial body that created a megatsunami that was on such a scale that it swept around the globe, perhaps many times before dissipating or the melting of the Ice Age glaciers produced the cyclical bursting of ice-dams and landbridges and the inundation of vast areas of low-lying land. I’m inclined to believe that the balance of probabilities favours the latter explanation, although I find it difficult to accept that gradual deglaciation would or could have generated floods that ‘covered mountains’ (Gen. vii.19)!

Other floods may have been caused by tsunamis resulting from underwater earthquakes and/or storegga. Quite recently it was discovered^(bh)that around 6000 BC, a calamitous tsunami was generated in the Mediterranean when Mt. Etna in Sicily sent approximately 6 cubic miles of rock and rubble crashing into the sea. One could be forgiven for speculating that this event may have triggered the flooding of the Black Sea, which is dated to this same period.

GLOBAL or LOCAL

The scientific case against a global deluge is presented in a paper by Lorence G. Collins^(bt), who also published a study of Genesis 7:11, which in describing the Deluge notes “on the same day all the fountains of the great deep burst open, and the floodgates of the sky were opened.”

In 2013, Geologist David R. Montgomery, a professor at the University of Washington, authored The Rocks Don’t Lie ^[2029] which offered a fresh open-minded look at Noah’s Flood and how it is viewed today by both science and religion. He concluded – “Like most geologists, I had come to see Noah’s Flood as a fairy tale—an ancient attempt to explain the mystery of how marine fossils ended up in rocks high in the mountains. Now I’ve come to see the story of Noah’s Flood like so many other flood stories—as rooted in truth.”

“It appears that humanity’s rich legacy of flood stories reflects a variety of ancient disasters. The global pattern of tsunamis, glacial outburst floods and catastrophic flooding of lowlands like Mesopotamia or the Black Sea basin, fits rather well the global distribution and details of flood stories.”

So Montgomery considers the source of Noah’s Flood to have been a local event such as the flooding of the Black Sea region and refers to Angelos Galanopoulos who similarly associated the tsunamis generated by the mid-second millennium BC eruption of Thera (Santorini) with the Flood of Deucalion. Montgomery’s views were given further exposure on the LiveScience website^(bx).

A decade later (May 2023), the Greek Reporter website re-examined the possible extent of Noah’s Flood^(by).

THE ARK

An interesting overview of traditional as well as modern thinking regarding the possible historical reality behind the Deluge of Genesis is presented^(ai) by Robert Squillace on the New York University website.

On January 1st 2010 it was revealed^(b) that a 3,700-year-old Babylonian tablet which, unlike the biblical record, describes an ark made of reeds, 70 metres in width and round in shape^(aj)(ak). This would have been recorded a thousand years before the Genesis story was written down. Understandably, this has caused the knickers of some fundamentalist Christians to become seriously twisted! The discovery has now been expanded on by a cuneiform specialist at the British Museum, Irving Finkel, in The Ark before Noah ^[0995]. Jason Colavito offers an interesting review of the book^(d).

Even more radical is the result of a high-tech study of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls which suggest that Noah’s Ark was pyramidal in shape^(al)! Commenting on this report, Jason Colavito has pointed out that the concept of a pyramid-shaped ark is not new^(am).

There is an unexpectedly large number of books written over the last century on the subject of Noah’s Ark that is listed on a specialist website^(e). One such offering, resurrected by Jason Colavito^(f), provides some comic relief with the claim in 1922 by C. E. Getsinger, who wrote that Noah’s Ark was the Great Pyramid!^(g) Even earlier, John Taylor (1781-1864) claimed ^[1451]that Noah had built the Great Pyramid! Nevertheless, a recently deciphered fragment of the Dead Sea Scrolls has suggested that the Ark was shaped like a pyramid!^(h)(i)

>>Even more radical is the result of a high-tech study of fragments of the Dead Sea Scrolls which suggest that Noah’s Ark was pyramidal in shape^(al)(h)(i)! Haaretz reported that the new reading of the fragments has changed our understanding about Noah’s Ark. Thanks to the high-resolution imagery, a word following the phrase “the ark’s tallness” had previously been illegible. However, the new scans showed that the correct words is ne’esefet, meaning “gathered,” which according to researcher Dr. Alexey Yuditsky, means that the ark’s ribs were gathered together at the top in the shape of a pyramid. Dr Yuditsky said that the Septuagint, a Greek translation of the Bible dating to the third century BC, used a Greek verb with a similar meaning to describe the Ark. Moreover, medieval authors like Maimonides suggested that the ark’s roof was pointed.

Commenting on this report, Jason Colavito has pointed out that the concept of a pyramid-shaped ark is not new(am)citing the work of Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378-1455), who was actually depicting a widespread Jewish and early Christian belief about the Ark. Origen, in Genesis Homily 2, Philo in Questions and Answers on Genesis 2.5, and Clement in Stromata 6.11 all claimed that the Ark was pyramidal in shape. They derived this from the account in Genesis, which claimed that the Ark is 300 by 50 cubits at the base, but rose to a window embedded in a peak but one cubit square. They concluded, therefore, that the ship must be pyramidal to fit those measurements.<<

Barry Warmkessel also entered the fray with the suggestion that aliens had been involved in the design and construction of the Ark^(r)!He believes “that it was NOT built by humans ~5200 years ago. It offers details of alien engineering principles involving the Golden Ratio. Its metallurgy shows ironwork not even possible until ~3200 years ago as well as the presence of other metals (e.g. titanium and aluminum) that would have been difficult to fabricate even in the early twentieth century. The Book of Noah explicitly specifies that “angels” (with extensive metallurgical skills) built the Ark. They were likely the Nommos, an amphibian species reportedly from the Sirius star system. They left mankind with cuneiform writing and the wheeled vehicle(alien technology of that day). They offered us astronomical knowledge of their own and our solar system (including Vulcan) and evidence of a past major comet/meteorite Earth impact. Finally, they appear to have left repositories of technologies far more advanced than our own.Their story tells of an alien species’ attempt to save a deceitful mankind from an approaching comet impact catastrophe that caused Noah’s Great Flood.”

Nevertheless, Warmkessel’s idea certainly competes with the suggestion of Xavier Séguin that the ‘Ark’ of Noah had been an Earth satellite^(aa)!

Even more radical is the claim by Hebrew scholar Richard Seary that the Ark never actually existed, but that conventionally accepted understanding of the Genesis text is the result of some incorrect translations^(aq). One example is that there is no such material as gopher wood and that the word ‘gofer’ means lava!

A life-sized replica of Noah’s Ark was due to cross the Atlantic Ocean from Holland in the summer of 2016(an). It was built over four years by a carpenter, Johan Huibers, completing it in 2012. It is 410 feet long, 95 feet wide and 75 feet tall. It weighs 2,500 tons and is said to hold more than 5,000 people at any one time. However, there is no provision for live animals! The replica was sold to Aad Peters, a Dutch artist, who in 2019 brought it to Ipswich in Britain. Unfortunately, it has been impounded by the authorities there as it lacks the appropriate paperwork to permit it to leave. There are also serious concerns regarding its seaworthiness and it is also clocking up port fees of £500 a day^(ao)(ap).

Michael Hearns, an Irish researcher, has just published (Aug.2023), an interesting article on the Ancient Origins website recounting the many anomalies in the biblical story of the Ark^(bw).

UBIQUITY OF FLOOD MYTHS

Flood myths are found throughout the world and for centuries were seen as confirmation of the reality and universality of the Biblical Flood of Noah. However, when it was discovered that the Earth had endured a series of Ice Ages and that following each of these, the melting ice caps led to worldwide inundations with consequent immortalisation of these events through locally developed myths, it led to speculation that Noah’s Flood may have been just a regional but a catastrophic event. It is also probable that separate regional inundations would have occurred as deglaciation continued at the end of the last ice age, so when recounted through mythology many centuries later they may appear to refer to a single global event.

The competing concepts of global deluge versus local inundations are discussed in a brief paper^(bc) by L. James Gibson, who concluded that “these local floods do not explain important features of the biblical flood.”

Nevertheless, megafloods are not necessarily only caused by tsunamis and melting glaciers. “A 43-day storm that began in December 1861 put central and southern California underwater for up to six months” a catastrophic event that is now generally forgotten. An extensive 2013 article^(bd) in Scientific American has full details.

These ancient flood stories are to be found to contain content with a remarkable similarity of detail. It is worth pointing out that none of these legends ever recount the ‘hero’ of their particular tale returning to his former home. One simple explanation for this might be that the original homelands no longer existed. This would not normally be the case if the floods in question were tidal, storm-driven or even giant tsunamis. However, if the inundations were the result of rising sea levels, resulting from the melting of Ice Age glaciers, we could expect two principal effects. The first would have been the gradual submergence of all low-lying flood plains that are now identified as continental shelves. Two of the best known of these would be the Sunda Shelf (Sundaland) and the area stretching from the west coast of mainland Europe across the North Sea encompassing the British Isles and into the Atlantic beyond Ireland. The second effect would have been the dramatic inundation of valleys and basins protected by low landbridges or dams. Again, we have examples, some debatable, such as the Baltic, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Black Sea, the Mediterranean and perhaps the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and the Sea of Japan.

An extensive and more general collection of Flood myths can be found on the internet(be). A USGS list of the world’s greatest floods, ancient and recent, is available as a pdf file^(bf). Similarly, a website by Mark Isaak offers an extensive overview of flood myths around the world, although the site does not appear to have been updated for some years^(bg).

Despite the existence of these huge collections of worldwide flood myths^(ay) there appears to be one glaring omission, from all such databases, namely a contribution from Egypt where, inexplicably, there is no such deluge tradition apart from the predictable annual flooding of the Nile. However, there is the Egyptian story of Hathor/Sekhmet^(az)(ba) who flooded the land with blood, which some may interpret as a mythological code for water!

The flooding of all these worldwide locations would have occurred quite slowly over an extended period following the last Ice Age, possibly providing the basis for the widespread existence of these flood myths. However, it could not explain the biblical claim that the flood covered mountains.

Dhani Irwanto, author of Atlantis: The Lost City in Java Sea ^[1093], offers a number of interesting articles on his website including an extensive overview of the ubiquity of Deluge stories, concluding with the following comment “Thus, Noah and the waters of the great Flood are not only recalled in the ancient traditions of all nations, but their names have also become incorporated in many and varied ways into the very languages of his descendants. The trails are tenuous and often almost obliterated so that some of the inferred connections are speculative and possibly mistaken, but the correlations are too numerous to be only coincidental, thus adding yet one more evidence for the historicity of the Great Flood.^(bs)“

Many Atlantologists have sought to link the Deluge with the inundation of Atlantis. As early as 1915, Garrett Serviss put forward the possibility that a lost continent in the Arctic Ocean, containing Atlantis, was destroyed and that this cataclysm also generated Noah’s Flood^(ca).

Egerton Sykes was a keen supporter of the idea of a connection between the destruction and Noah’s Deluge. Joseph S. Ellul has interpreted the biblical story to support the idea of a landbridge at Gibraltar, which eventually collapsed when the waters of the Atlantic rose after the last Ice Age. Ellul maintains that Genesis 7:11 ‘All the springs of the Great Deep broke through’ is a reference to the percolation of the Atlantic waters, through the Gibraltar dam, which eventually led to its collapse as the sea level rose or was shattered by seismic or tectonic movements. I find it hard to accept this, because the pressure that is exerted by the Atlantic, would have rapidly changed any such seepage into a major breach and the subsequent collapse of the dam. Gerhard F. Hasel, Professor of Old Testament and Biblical Theology offers a more conventional interpretation of “the fountains of the great deep” in a paper with the same name^(ab).

MT. ARARAT

Nevertheless, 2017 finished with renewed interest in Noah’s Ark being generated by media reports^(k) of statements emanating from The Geoscience Research Institute, which is sponsored by the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which claims that a 2010 expedition to Mount Ararat in Turkey, carbon-dated timbers found there to 4,800 years ago.

A sceptical 2019 article has looked critically at many aspects of the story of the Ark, including the most commonly offered Turkish site as the resting place of the Ark – “One of the most famous supposedly-Noah’s-ark sites is the admittedly very boat-looking Durupinar site in the Mount Tendurek area in Turkey. According to Atlas Obscura, the site was exposed in the late 1940s after a series of earthquakes and storms.”^(an)

The late David Allen Deal was another investigator to propose the Ararat region as the landing place of the Ark, with Mt. Judi (Judi Dagh) as the specific location^(o). A more recent article supports his ideas^(p). David Rohl has also been drawn to Mt. Judi as a probable contender^(bu). The precise location of the biblical Ararat is a matter of continuing and intense debate^(q).

The UK’s Daily Mail added that talking after the initial claims in 2010, Mike Pitt, a British archaeologist, said the evangelical explorers had yet to produce compelling evidence. He said: ‘If there had been a flood capable of lifting a huge ship 2.5 miles [4km] up the side of a mountain 4,800 years ago, I think there would be substantial geological evidence for this flood around the world. And there isn’t.’

In his 2020 book, Apocalypse ^[1874], Dr Sean Welsh agreed that Noah’s Ark finally rested on Mt. Ararat, but took everyone by surprise by claiming that it was not Ararat in Turkey but Ararat mountain on Crimea’s Kerch Peninsula! Welsh does not explain where Shinar was in relation to his Ararat. Conventional wisdom locates it in southern Mesopotamia, placing them around 2,500 km apart.

Eberhard Zangger has drawn attention to the fact that originally ararat would have been written without vowels – RRT. While the vowel ‘a’ was usually inserted to fill the gaps, Zangger as shown that RRT is read in Assyrian texts as Urartu,the name of an ancient state in what is now Armenia near Lake Van ^[484.215].

Angelo Palegro was an Italian researcher who spent 35 years seeking Noah’s Ark on Mount Ararat (Mount Agiri) on the Turkish-Iranian border^(bq). Unfortunately, in 2021 he fell ill while in Turkey and died on August 15th, aged 86, and in accordance with his wishes was buried on the slopes of Mt. Ararat^(bp).

However, a more valuable offering was a paper^(ab) delivered in 2008 to the Sixth International Conference on Creationism in Pittsburgh, PA by Anne Habermehl. She finished her contribution, Review of the Search for Noah’s Ark, with the following conclusions;

“(1) It would appear that the Ark cannot have landed on Mount Ararat, because scientists have shown that this mountain did not exist until some time after the Flood had ended. (Also, the area that Mount Ararat occupies was probably not yet included in Urartu at that time.)

(2) In light of historical and geographical considerations, Mount Cudi near Cizre, Turkey, is the most likely place where the Ark landed.

(3) It seems doubtful that anyone has actually seen the Ark anywhere in modern times. The alleged sightings all seem to evaporate on careful examination.

(4) It is unlikely that very much of the Ark exists today; it is probable that over the millennia it has decayed, and various scavengers have taken most of it away.

(5) Because of 14C dating problems, it may not be possible to prove that any given samples are or are not the right age to have come from the Ark.

(6) More archaeological work needs to be done if we are ever to reasonably prove the Ark’s landing spot anywhere.

(7) It is probable that no matter what is found in any location, there are those who will remain unconvinced.

(8) Interest in finding the Ark is unabated, and the Ark search will go on.

At the end of the day, we have to face the reality that it may be difficult, or even impossible, ever to prove where the Ark landed. This author would have liked to end on an optimistic note for the soon recovery of a largely intact, proven Ark, but this seems unlikely; and this paper therefore ends, in the words of T. S. Eliot (1925): “Not with a bang but a whimper.”

In 2021, author S.H. Scholar in a short book entitled Heavenly Flood ^[^1891] modestly claimed to have “uncovered history’s greatest secret – the influence of ancient astrology on the development of Noah’s Ark and the Great Flood Tale.” John McHugh has also offered a comparable zodiacal link with the biblical Deluge story in The Celestial Code of Scripture ^[^1892] which has been critiqued by Gary D. Thompson^(bm).

Eugenio Ralbadisole who advocates India as the home of Atlantis also locates the landing place of Noah’s Ark in the same region. Based on texts in the Vedas where “we read that a man after a catastrophic flood arrived with his ship full of animals in a village called Naubandhana. A location with similar names can be found near “Barda Hills” in Gujarat.” ^(bo)

^{(a) The First Eden (archive.org)}

^(b) http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2010/jan/01/noahs-ark-was-circular

^(c) http://njbiblescience.org/presentations/Greek%20Mythology%20and%20Genesis.pdf

^(d) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/1/post/2014/05/on-irving-finkels-the-ark-before-noah.html

^(e) http://www.throneofgod.com/SBG/sbg.htm

^(f) https://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/wednesday-roundup-templar-carvings-masonic-pyramids-and-a-bizarre-claim-about-noahs-ark

^(g) The Thomson Review, Thomson, Illinois, July 19th, 1922 – p.3,

⁽ⁱ⁾ http://www.worldreligionnews.com/religion-news/christianity/was-noahs-ark-shaped-like-a-pyramid-digitized-dead-sea-scrolls-reveal-new-secrets

^(j)Noah’s Ark & The Biblical Flood: Reality Or Nonsense? | Society for Scientific Exploration (archive.org)

^(k) http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-5020131/Experts-claim-Noah-s-Ark-Mount-Ararat.html

^(m)http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/turkish-chemist-claims-noah-had-nuclear-powered-ark-called-son-on-cellphone

⁽ⁿ⁾ https://web.archive.org/web/20190926154926/http://www.jokesoftheday.net/joke-NOAH-S-ARK-2017/2017050249

^(o) https://noahsfloodnoahsark.wordpress.com/category/chapter-13-discovery-of-lost-ancient-city/

^(p) http://www.ancient-origins.net/human-origins-religions/evidence-noah-s-ark-landed-mountain-17-miles-south-ararat-009725

^(q) https://web.archive.org/web/20190128072213/http://compmyth.org/journal/index.php/cm/article/view/15

^(r) Archive 3514

^(s) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=540

^(t) The First Eden – Part One (archive.org)

^(u)https://www.academia.edu/38664571/Gobekli_Tepe_founded_by_Noah_and_sons

^(v) https://israelect.com/ChurchOfTrueIsrael/comparet/comp19.html

^(w)https://web.archive.org/web/20200608082026/https://truth-over-tradition.com/2018/12/26/god-is-racist-and-you-should-be-too/

^(x) https://ncse.ngo/impossible-voyage-noahs-ark

^(y) https://www.grunge.com/145325/the-untold-truth-of-noahs-ark/

^(z) https://www.academia.edu/17026643/Noah_and_the_Deluge_Chronological_Historical_and_Archaeological_Evidence

^(aa) https://eden-saga.com/en/looking-noahs-ark.html

^(ab)https://www.academia.edu/39177466/A_Review_of_the_Search_for_Noahs_Ark

^(ac) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=498

^(ad) http://www.migration-diffusion.info/article.php?id=540

^(ae) https://www.researchgate.net/publication/222471228_An_Abrupt_Drowning_of_the_Black_Sea_Shelf

^(af) https://barryhisblog.blogspot.com/p/why-black-sea-is-not-site-of-noahs-flood.html

^(ag)https://www.researchgate.net/publication/304674803_A_Re-interpretation_of_the_82ky_BP_Event

^(ah) https://web.archive.org/web/20200216200648/http://www.ancient-wisdom.com/mythologyhome.htm

^(ai) Untitled Document (archive.org) (link broken)

^(aj) https://web.archive.org/web/20170102033030/http://www.isciencetimes.com/articles/6746/20140128/noahs-ark-round-mesopotamia-flood-cuneiform-instructions-mathematically-accurate.htm

^(ak)https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/01/noahs-ark-round/283335/

^(al) https://www.ancient-origins.net/news-history-archaeology/dead-seas-scrolls-reveal-noahs-ark-was-shaped-pyramid-006204 *

^(am) http://www.jasoncolavito.com/blog/fringe-writers-shocked-by-text-from-dead-sea-scrolls-claiming-noahs-ark-was-pyramid-shaped

^(an) https://www.grunge.com/145325/the-untold-truth-of-noahs-ark/

^(an) http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/life-sized-noahs-ark-to-sail_us_571f99cbe4b0b49df6a91ffc

^(ao)https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johan%27s_Ark

^(ap)Noah’s Ark Replica Faces Biblical Fines For Return Voyage To Holland! | Ancient Origins (ancient-origins.net)

^(aq)Fortean Times, April 2014, p.55

^(bl) Giant Comet Launched Noah’s Ark (goldenageproject.org.uk)

^(ar) http://www.newscientificevidenceforgod.com/2011/03/noahs-flood-was-really-tsunami-caused.html

^(as)https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/

^(at)http://religiondocbox.com/Judaism/67170515-A-r-t-i-c-l-e-s-the-fountains-of-the-great-deep-gerhard-f-hasel-associate-professor-of-old-testament-biblical-theology-andrews-university.html

^(av) https://biblehub.com/joshua/10-13.htm

^(aw)https://www.timesofisrael.com/3224-years-later-scientists-see-first-ever-recorded-eclipse-in-joshuas-battle/

^(ax) http://www.geocities.ws/gardenofdanu/the_great_deluge.htm

^(ay) https://web.archive.org/web/20200922201924/http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

^(az) A Drunk, Bloodthirsty Goddess: The Flood Myth Of Egypt – Parallel Myths (wordpress.com)

^(ba)https://digitalcommons.georgiasouthern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1443&context=honors-theses

^(bb) http://www.ancient-origins.net/history-important-events/did-astronomical-body-fly-earth-and-produce-floods-myths-12000-years-ago-021883

^(bc) https://www.grisda.org/origins-52053

^(bd) https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/atmospheric-rivers-california-megaflood-lessons-from-forgotten-catastrophe/

^(be) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

^(bf) http://pubs.usgs.gov/circ/2004/circ1254/pdf/circ1254.pdf

^(bg) http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flood-myths.html

^(bh) Towering Ancient Tsunami Devastated the Mediterranean | Live Science

^(bi) http://science.sciencemag.org/content/353/6299/579

^(bj) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Tollmann

^(bk) http://varchive.org/itb/hydrox.htm

^(bl)Giant Comet Launched Noah’s Ark (goldenageproject.org.uk)

^(bm)Critique of John McHugh’s Astronomical Interpretation of Noah’s Flood (westnet.com.au) (Link Broken)

^(bn)https://grahamhancock.com/eilinga2/

^(bo) City of Atlantis – Atlantide (archive.org)

^(bp) Italian researcher buried in Turkey after decades… | Rudaw.net

^(bq) Studies by Palego (noahsark.it)

^(bs) Great Flood and the Repopulation of Man | Atlantis in the Java Sea (atlantisjavasea.com)

^(bt) https://ncse.ngo/yes-noahs-flood-may-have-happened-not-over-whole-earth

^(bu) https://davidrohl.blogspot.com/2012/03/

^(bv)(99+) A Simple Chronology for Biblical Archaeology | Rich McQuillen – Academia.edu

^(bw) Stairway To Heaven In Noah’s Ark | Ancient Origins Members Site (ancient-origins.net)

^(bx) Did Noah’s flood really happen? | Live Science

^(by) https://greekreporter.com/2023/05/15/noah-flood/

^(bz) https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2003-jan-19-adfg-noah-story.html

^(ca) https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn83045389/1915-01-03/ed-1/seq-46/

* See Atlantis Vol.6, Nos.1,2&3, May, July & September 1953

Tagged 2008 Atlantis Conference, Aad Peters, Alexander Tollmann, Aloys Eiling, Anastasios Stamou, Angelo Palegro, Angelos Galanopoulos, Anne Habermehl., Ark, Baltic Sea, Barry Warmkessel, Bertrand L. Comparet, Black Sea, C.E. Getsinger, Caribbean, Celtic Shelf, China, Christian O'Brien, comet, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Dardanus, David Allen Deal, David R. Montgomery, David Rohl, Deluge, Deucalion, Donald W. Patten, earthquakes, Eberhard Zangger, Egerton Sykes, Egypt, Emilio Spedicato, Enoch, Eugenio B. Ralbadisole, Frank Joseph, G.F. Dodwell, Genesis, Gilgamesh, gnomons, Gobekli Tepe, Greek mythology, Ice Ages, India, Irving Finkel, Jason Colavito, Jeffrey Goodman, Johan Huibers, Joseph S. Ellul, Kerch Peninsula, Kirk Kirchev, L.James Gibson, Lake Van, landbridges, Lorence G. Collins, Lorenzo Ghiberti, Manu, Marin Minella & Schievenin, Mesopotamia, Michael Hearns, Migration & Diffusion, Mike Pitt, moon, Mt. Ararat, Mt. Judi, Nereus, Nick Thom, Noah, North Sea, Ogyges, Parian Marble, Patriarchs, Persian Gulf, Philip Runggaldier, radiocarbon dating, Red Sea, Reginald Fessenden, Richard Seary, Robert Bowie Johnson Jr, Robert Squillace, Roger A. Moore, Roger M. Pearlman, Ryan & Pitman, Samuel R. Windsor, Saturn, Sean Welsh, Sicily, Sirius, Star of David, Stephen Oppenheimer, storegga, Stuart L. Harris, Sundaland, T.R.Holme, Thera, Thomas J.Krupa, tsunamis, Uruartu, William Whiston, Xavier Séguin

Pyramids *

Published April 5, 2021

Pyramids are designed and built to be very stable structures. They were first encountered in Mesopotamia in the fourth millennium BC, known as ziggurats. Unfortunately, they were built of sun-dried mud bricks and so, over time have crumbled. These early pyramids were stepped with between two and seven tiers. Their function was ceremonial.

In August 2023, the first pyramid ever identified in the Central Asian Steppes was reported. This stepped (no pun intended) feature has been dated to the 2nd millennium BC and situated near the city of Karganda in Kazakhstan. There is also evidence of a horse cult associated with the site^(fz).

Pyramids around the World

Pyramidal structures are now to be found around the globe; whether this is a consequence of diffusion or independent design is uncertain, possibly both. For Ignatius Donnelly, the pyramids of Egypt and Central America were the results of a shared heritage originating in Atlantis. However, the millennia that separate their construction in the two regions would seem to militate against this idea. Nevertheless, in 1967 Egerton Sykes published a paper supporting diffusionism with particular reference to pyramid building on both sides of the Atlantic^(fk).

Although most pyramids are four-sided, round pyramids, although fewer in number, have been identified in various parts of the world^(fm).

The Mayan pyramid at Mirador in Northern Guatemala was thought to be the largest by volume in the world, at 2.8 million cubic metres, however, the Great Pyramid of Cholula is 4.45 million cubic metres^(au)(bq). This is now rivalled by the Mayan pyramid at Toniná, Chiapas^(bd). The Great Giza Pyramid is 2.5 million cubic metres in volume.

Even more spectacular was the 1996 discovery of pyramids on the southern Atlantic coast of Brazil dated as early as 3000 BC, predating the earliest Egyptian Pyramids by a few hundred years. However, two sites in Peru, Caral, and Sechin Bajo have claimed pyramid complexes with dates of 3500 BC^(j). Very ancient pyramids have also been claimed for Crimea^(af).

What is arguably the greatest concentration of pyramids in the world is to be found in the Lambayeque Valley of northern Peru, numbering 250, built of mud brick, and dated to circa 750-1100 AD. The late Philip Coppens referred to the valley in his book, The New Pyramid Age ^[0759] and it was also the subject of a BBC documentary^(an).

Apart from Meso-America, pyramids have also been discovered as far apart as the Canaries ^(dx), Sicily^(ga), Sardinia and Mauritius^(k) as well as Ukraine^(dw), and China^(cp). Russia is claimed to have pyramids in the far east near Vladivostok^(fc) and the Kola Peninsula^(dc) in the west near Finland! A website by Gabriele Lukacs, dedicated to possible European pyramids is now available^(g). The remains of three pyramids have also been identified on the Greek Peloponnese, one of which has been dated to 2720 BC ± 580 years. ^(dr)(ds)

In 2005, an ongoing debate was ignited when the Bosnian-American ‘archaeologist’ Semir Osmanagic announced that he had identified a gigantic manmade pyramid beside Visoko, 30km north of Sarajevo. Highly publicised excavations began in 2006. Readers should be aware that Osmanagic has expressed ^[0519] rather bizarre notions including a belief that the Maya were descendants of the Atlanteans who in turn arrived on Earth from the Pleiades!

Osmanagic has also published a fully illustrated paper on the Koh Ker pyramid in Northern Cambodia, which he claims to act as an energy amplifier^(eb).

A French commentator, Douglas Moonstone, disagreed with Osmanagic’s suggested origin for the Atlanteans suggesting instead that they came from the constellation of Orion and that the “Neanderthals fled their bases on another near planet, probably a planet of Sirius B and a planet of Alnitak, as we have seen in previous volumes, and they have saved Hopis, Sapiens, in a space station in orbit.”^(cc)

On one side, we had Philip Coppens offering support for Osmanagic^(cl), while on the other, an on-site investigation by Robert Schoch concluded that the Visoko ‘pyramid’ was probably not man-made!^(cm).

Osmanagic updated his claims in December 2011^(o) and as recently as August 2016, He was still offering a spirited defence of his views^(bi).

Gigantic pyramids have also been proposed for Germany by K. Walter Haug^(ab). and demonstrated on his heavily illustrated website^(aj).

Maxim Yakovenko was the founder of the world-pyramids.com website^(bf). in 2008. It has a range of interesting articles that relate to pyramids around the globe. Unfortunately, the news section does not appear to have been updated over the past two years.

A recent (2010) site, lists^(h). the eight largest pyramids in the world. Also, a wide range of free papers, in pdf format, relating to the Giza Pyramids is available online^(l).

Perhaps even more dramatic is a recent claim^(q) of a pyramid older and larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza, known as Mount Sadahurip in Garut, West Java, Indonesia. However, the proliferation of step pyramids is not very well known, but Dhani Irwanto has, at least, partially redressed this in a 2019 article on his website^(ey).

July 2012 saw Linda Moulton Howe publish^(r) a two-part illustrated article about an anomalous feature in Alaska which has been identified as a buried pyramid larger than the Great Pyramid at Giza. This feature was first identified twenty years ago, but the story appears to have been suppressed, according to a retired U.S. Counter-intelligence officer who contacted Howe. A comparable claim has also been made for pyramids in Antarctica and later shown to be a hoax^(w).

Now for some further light relief, earlier in 2012, a nonsensical report^(s) of an underwater glass pyramid in the Bermuda Triangle emerged. I’m sure it will be soon followed by a sighting of Elvis creating crop circles in Antarctica.

In September 2013, it was reported^(y) that “researchers have discovered an underwater pyramid 60 meters high with an 8000 meters square base near the Bank De João de Castro, between the islands of Terceira and São Miguel” in the Azores. Shortly afterwards the Portuguese Navy denied the existence of any such structure.^(aa) This claim has now spawned its own website^(ad).

However, in August 2013, the Portuguese American Journal reported that the many step-pyramids on Pico, one of the Azores, are clear evidence of extensive human activity in the archipelago long before the arrival of the Portuguese^(fw). As a consequence, some have suggested that the seafaring ability of these pyramid builders to reach the Azores from Europe opens the possibility that they went further and reached America!

Even more ridiculous was a report in the UK’s Daily Star which claimed that an underwater pyramid estimated to be between 3.5 and 11 miles across had been spotted on Google Earth, situated off the coast of Mexico in the Pacific^(cd).

Finally, it appears that to satisfy the public interest in pyramids the meaning of the term itself has been extended to include a range of natural features as well as man-made structures. Robert Schoch is happy to see Newgrange as a type of pyramid, others see Silbury Hill as a pyramid^(e). while some writers apply the term to mountains as is the case with Jeff Nisbet^(f). who sees ‘pyramids’ in Scotland. Nisbet attempts to justify his view with a very unconvincing suggested link between ancient Egypt and Scotland incorporating freemasonry and Princess Scota^(bh). Similar stories are widespread in Ireland where Scota is allegedly buried in Kerry in Gleann Scoithin, now known as Foley’s Glen. Scotia was another ancient name for Ireland. Andrew Power expands on the Scota story in his Ireland: Land of the Pharaohs ^[1026] as well as Ralph Ellis ^[1684] and Loraine Evans ^[1781].

This claim of an Egyptian link with Ireland has been recently repeated by Steve Preston in his Egyptians in Ireland ^[1183]. David Halpin, an Irish writer from Carlow, has also written a three-part paper on the connections between Egypt with Ireland^(av).

Pyramids of Egypt

The actual number of Egyptian pyramids recorded is variously cited as 118 or as many as 138. However, the greatest number of pyramids is to be found in Sudan, with around twice as many as Egypt, but are far less spectacular^(df).

August 2012 brought a report^(u) that two possible new Egyptian pyramid complexes have been discovered using Google Earth. However, subsequent inspection on the ground showed them to be less interesting^(v).

Egypt’s oldest pyramid is generally accepted as that of King Djoser (2687-2668 BC), a six-stepped structure at Saqqara^(dh).

Giza

For anyone coming to the subjects of the pyramids and Sphinx at Giza for the first time should begin by reading Giza The Truth ^[^1690]by Ian Lawton and Chris Ogilvie-Herald, which offers a unique overview of the place, the personalities and the politics involved in the 3 square kilometres of this amazing site.

Jason Colavito noted ^[1876.8] that with a height of 455 feet (139 metres) it was “the tallest building on Earth until it was finall surpassed in 1311” by Britain’s Lincoln Cathedral.

A site providing a wonderful 360º view of the Giza Plateau is now available^(m). while another site offers a remarkable panoramic aerial view⁽t).

Another site offers a remarkable collection of old images of the pyramids dating back to the mid-nineteenth century^(be). Also in the 19th century, a book by Dr Everett W. Fish can give modern readers a flavour of ideas regarding the pyramids to be found in the 1880s^(du).

In May 2024, a paper by Eman Ghoneim et al, published in the journal Communications Earth and Environment announced that “The largest pyramid field in Egypt is clustered along a narrow desert strip, yet no convincing explanation as to why these pyramids are concentrated in this specific locality has been given so far. Here we use radar satellite imagery, in conjunction with geophysical data and deep soil coring, to investigate the subsurface structure and sedimentology in the Nile Valley next to these pyramids. We identify segments of a major extinct Nile branch, which we name The Ahramat Branch, running at the foothills of the Western Desert Plateau, where the majority of the pyramids lie. Many of the pyramids, dating to the Old and Middle Kingdoms, have causeways that lead to the branch and terminate with Valley Temples which may have acted as river harbors along it in the past. We suggest that The Ahramat Branch played a role in the monuments’ construction and that it was simultaneously active and used as a transportation waterway for workmen and building materials to the pyramids’ sites.”^(gc).

Wim Verhart has written a paper in which he argues the pyramids on the Giza Plateau were designed with an overall mathematical plan in mind^(dz).

Another matter that has caused continual controversy is the layout of the three Giza pyramids. Robert Bauval is probably best known as the original promoter of the Orion Correlation Theory, which claims that the layout of the three principal Giza pyramids mirrors ‘Orion’s Belt’ in that constellation. This received widespread coverage when it was outlined in The Orion Mystery ^[1707]. written by Bauval and Adrian Gilbert and in Keeper of Genesis ^[1050]. written with Graham Hancock, published two years later. In fact, Bauval first published his theory in 1989 in Discussions in Egyptology^(cw).

In a paper^(ft) published on Graham Hancock’s website in 2022, Freddy Silva proposed an additional OCT – in Scotland. He suggested that the Pyramids of Giza, and by extension, Orion’s Belt matched the layout of the three stone circles of Stenness, Brodgar and Bookan. In the same paper, he goes further identifying other megalithic monuments in Scotland with counterparts in Sardinia and Armenia!

However, Andrew Collins has disputed the OCT and has instead offered evidence that the alignment of the three principal Giza pyramids matches more closely the ‘wing’ stars of the Cygnus constellation than the ‘belt’ of Orion!^(dg).

Early 2020 brought a claim by amateur historian Matt Sibson that there had been a fourth large pyramid at Giza. His contention is based on a sketch by a Danish sea captain, Frederik Ludvig Norden, in 1737, that appears to show this fourth edifice. The only explanation offered for its disappearance is that it was dismantled in the 1700s to build the city of Cairo! I would have thought that considering the effort required to dismantle a pyramid from the top down would have been much greater than quarrying new blocks. The larger pyramid blocks would need to be cut anyway. Then you would expect that at least the base or its location would still be identifiable today! This is just another incredible attention-seeking effort by Sibson^(eo).

Manu Seyfzadeh wrote a lengthy paper^(di). on the orientation of one particular minor stepped pyramid on Elephantine Island on the Nile. He concluded that it was associated with Sirius, which was so important to the ancient Egyptians as the heliacal rising of Sirius coincided with the summer solstice which heralded the next flooding of the Nile.

While the theory of Bauval & Gilbert is very well known, a more elaborate claim was proposed by Scott Creighton in his The Giza Oracle ^[1817], in which he suggests that 11 pyramids in the Giza complex along “with the Great Sphinx forms a grand ‘Precession Wheel’, indicating key dates from humankind’s remote past – and indeed, its future”!^(cy)

Hans Jelitto has put forward the idea that the three pyramids of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure at Giza were intended to represent the three inner planets of our Solar System, Mercury, Venus and Earth^(fl)!

John Patrick Hill, an independent researcher, claims that “Barringer Crater, Stonehenge and Giza are all related to one another.” He tells us that the distance between the outside corners of the main Giza pyramids is 0.72 miles which is the exact diameter of the Barringer Crater! As Michael Caine would say “Not many people know that” ^(dv). Hill had this paper published on the Academia.edu website, but it has now been removed. I have saved a copy, without images, as Archive 6555. He has also managed to produce a paper^(fu) combining catastrophism and Roman Catholicism!!!

Further alignment claims and debate relating to two shafts that some believe were originally directed at particular stars^(cx).

Age of the Egyptian Pyramids

The Pyramids of Egypt are generally accepted today to have been constructed in the third millennium BC in the period 2700 – 2150 BC. However, some investigators have inferred much greater antiquity for some of these remarkable structures particularly the Great Pyramid (G.P.) at Giza. They believe that pushing back the date for the construction of the Great Pyramid and/or Sphinx endorses the possibility that Plato’s early date of 9600 BC for the Atlantean War is factual.

Jason Colavito ^[1876.95] has noted that some of the Muslim scholars of the Middle Ages attributed an early date to the construction of the pyramids, possibly before Noah’s Deluge!

Hossam Aboulfotouh calculated the date of the building of the Great Pyramid at Giza as 3055 BC, which he claims was also the time of the Deluge or what he refers to as the “tsunami of the Mediterranean”.^(da)(db)

Perhaps related to the Deluge is the claim from archaeologist Sherif el Morsi that he has evidence that indicates that the Great Pyramid had been covered by seawater^(em)(en).

David Rohl in his introduction to Andrew Collins‘ Gateway to Atlantis ^[072] refers to the work of Egyptologist Kate Spence who “demonstrated that the north alignment of all the Old Kingdom pyramids shifted through time in the relative position of the circumpolar stars. This tracking of the north celestial pole (relative to the stars) plots the known wobble in the earth’s axis of rotation (referred to as precession), which can be dated using astronomical retrocalculations.” Spence concluded that the Great Pyramid had been built c.2470 BC^(ej). Archaeastronomer Giulio Magli has taken issues with some of Spence’s claims^(ek).

Ralph Ellis, a British researcher, has investigated the erosion to be seen at Giza, Meidum, and Dashur and concluded ^[0517] that there is evidence for 8000 BC or an even earlier date for the construction of these structures^(a). Ellis also has an article on the internet outlining his evidence for an earlier date for the construction of the Great Pyramid. More recently Robert Schoch announced the discovery of evidence of erosion INSIDE the Great Pyramid suggesting that a more ancient core had been exposed to the elements for a long period before being built upon to give us the structure we have today.

Edgar Cayce ‘revealed’ in 1932 that the Great Pyramid was built over a hundred years from 10,490 to 10,390 BC^(ap). At the other end of the time spectrum, Huang Heqing, a professor in the Department of Art & Archaeology at Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, amused the world with the claim that the Egyptian pyramids were built in the 19th century, he goes further and maintains “that all the achievements of ancient Western cultures were fabricated in the nineteenth century”, including the Parthenon, the Temple of Zeus in Athens and the ruins of Persepolis in Iran^(cu).

The late Joseph Jochmans related ^[0518] how it was recorded that the outer casing stones showed water marks halfway up the height of the Pyramid before the Arabs removed them. Geologists have found evidence of a final catastrophic flooding event in Egypt circa 10,000 BC. Furthermore, radiocarbon dating of organic inclusions in a fourteen-foot layer of silt around the base of the Great Pyramid offered a date of around 9600 BC.

This suggested extended age for the pyramids has been incorporated into the argument to prove the possible existence of other advanced ancient civilisations that were concurrent with the 9600 BC date given by Solon for the antiquity of Atlantis.

Understandably, these revolutionary ideas have been met with fierce opposition by established archaeologists. This is a debate that will run for some time yet.

The earliest historical references to the pyramids can be found in early Egyptian and Greek documents^(ch). However, the oldest known papyri, discovered at the Egyptian site of Wadi el-Jarf offer evidence supporting a date of about 2500 BC for the construction of the Great Pyramid, which reinforces conventional dating theories. One of the documents, written by Merer an overseer, records details of the construction of the final stages of the G.P.^(ce). This, of course, seriously undermines the extended antiquity of the pyramids by proponents such as Graham Hancock.

Zecharia Sitchin, the controversial ‘alternative’ historian, entered the fray in 1980, with the claim that the only concrete evidence that the Great Pyramid had been built by Khufu, was an inscription forged by Colonel Richard Howard-Vyse^(d). (see below). Philip Coppens has also written an article^(cq). about Sitchin’s claim. The Howard-Vyse forgery debate has been stirred up again by a researcher, Scott Creighton, who produced copies of Howard-Vyse’s papers to support the claim of fraud^(ah). If true, this would lend some support to a redating of the structure.

He expanded on this in The Great Pyramid Hoax [2088] and in a 2024 article on Graham Hancock’s website^(gb). Creighton concluded that “Here in 2024, many years after this investigation first began, supporting evidence of the Vyse Hoax Hypothesis continues to surface and has been doing so now for several decades. All of which is indicative that the hoax hypothesis is more likely to be true than false. If the opposite were the case i.e. the painted markings were authentic, then it is unlikely that so many anomalies would have been uncovered, nor that they would continue to be uncovered decades later.”

2014 began with a report that two Germans, Dominique Goerlitz and Stefan Erdmann, had chiselled off part of the ‘Vyse’ cartouche from inside the Great Pyramid, which led to an international incident. They claim that the objective of their foolhardy act was to demonstrate that the Pyramid is older than generally accepted and was a remnant of the Atlantean empire^(z). A March 2015 statement issued by Dr Goerlitz offers a quite different view of the episode^(ei). I have published an English translation as Archive 6944. The initial claim seems to have originated with Zahi Hawass in an attack on Robert Bauval^(fn).

At the opposite end of the speculation spectrum is a recent book by Emmet Sweeney, The Pyramid Age ^[0520], in which he claims that the pyramids were in fact far more recent and bravely suggests a date of around 800 BC for their construction. In this regard, it is to be recorded that the Bible makes not the vaguest reference to one of the greatest wonders of the ancient world. It has been erroneously stated that Herodotus, a prolific recorder of trivia who claims to have travelled as far south as Elephantine, failed to mention the pyramids. This is not true, as can be seen in Book II of his Histories 124-134. However, it is possible that it was meant to say that Herodotus did not refer to the Sphinx! It has been claimed that he was describing the pyramids at Dashur and not Giza^(ao)!

In May 2013, Peter James, a Welsh structural engineer, who has spent many years repairing Egypt’s pyramids, published a new theory on why the building of pyramids ceased^(x). Regarding the construction methods used, he says, from what he has seen working deep inside the pyramids^(gg), he believes they were built from the inside out, with large stones on the outside and small material inside – a bit like a modern builder would construct a stone wall^(gf). He published his conclusions in a 2018 book Saving Pyramids ^[2096].

The Pyramid Builders

For a long time, it was thought that the pyramids had been built by slaves, possibly Israelites. Recent years have seen this idea debunked^(at)(fd). and reinforced by papyri put on display for the first time in July 2016, which indicates that the pyramid builders were paid and were not slaves (or extraterrestrials)^(be)(dy). However, a 2017 paper by Damien Mackey has reverted to claiming that the Jews were slaves who contributed to the building of the pyramids^(fs).

A more sober review of the development of pyramid building and the technology involved was offered by Owen Jarus in June 2016^(bo).

Unfortunately, there are some commentators such as von Däniken ^[^1333.95], who have attributed the construction of the Great Pyramid to extraterrestrials, who cannot accept that the Egyptians built the pyramids, in desperation have interpreted the existence of the pyramids as ‘evidence’ of extraterrestrial visitations!^(ae).

One such proponent is Peter Lemesurier who identifies the Elohim of the Old Testament as the designers of the GP and that they came from the star Sirius ^[1798]. He claims that they left prophetic messages in the structure of the GP for humanity.

Many and varied are the claims regarding the pyramid builders and their methods, including that they were built by refugees from Atlantis^(bl). In October 2017 Gerry Cannon & Malcolm Hutton claimed ^(bx). that the Great Pyramid was built by an advanced civilisation, which may have been Atlantis! Graham Hancock holds similar views.

Gernot L. Geise offers the following comment, “In order not to have to trouble some extraterrestrials for the construction of the pyramids, an early human high culture can certainly be assumed. The available periods of time for the development of such cultures are completely sufficient after Cremo & Thompson proved that “modern man” is already millions of years older than conventional science would have us believe.

The pyramids of Giza present me with the following picture: The builders of the pyramids – whoever they were, wherever they got their knowledge from and wherever they came from – possessed a high level of technology that was far superior to ours today. This is an inevitable fact, because the pyramids prove it: we cannot (yet) rebuild them with our current technology. However, Pharaoh Cheops (if he existed) would probably have laughed out loud if he had been told at the time that future archaeologists would have interpreted his little temples around the pyramid as a sign that he had built the gigantic structure…”^(fj)

Even more entertaining is a claim by two Irishmen, Francis J. and Francis P. Ward, that druids from Ireland, which they consider to have been Atlantis, built the pyramids at Giza!^(bt)

Rico Paganini is the creator of the Giza Legacy website that offers some interesting titbits of background information relating to the Giza structures^(eg). Much of the content consists of excerpts from his book of the same name. However, when he came to discuss a possible Atlantean connection he completely fell off the cliff of reality as the excerpt below reveals!

“According to the ancient tales, the Atlanteans lived according to the role model of the Lemurians. There were three Atlantean cycles or three periods when civilization flourished in the Atlantic era. People there are said to have had mental skills including telepathy (which remained active among the Aborigines in Australia until the 20th century), telekinesis, teleportation and similar powers. This made them seem like gods to other cultures to the east and west of Atlantis. The Atlanteans were technically adept and built megalithic structures, such as the great pyramids in Giza. However, in the later period the people in Atlantis had begun to place their own wills above that of their kings, and priests and even above the will of the gods, until, as happened before when Lemuria flourished, they were attacked from outer space.” Consequently, I suggest that you treat anything that he has written with great caution.

The Great Pyramid Building Methods

It has been suggested that the course of the Nile was different at the time of the pyramid building, which together with canals enabled the building materials to be brought closer to the Giza Plateau, saving time and effort^(fh).

The idea that a gently sloping ramp was used has been a popular idea for a long time, but weaknesses in the concept were soon apparent. For example, the material required to build some of the proposed ramps, with the required incline, would have been greater than the pyramid itself. Franz Löhner developed what he calls a ‘rope roll’ to demonstrate that simple technology available to the Egyptians could have been used to lift the pyramid’s blocks into place. Löhner has worked in a quarry and consequently has an intimate knowledge of the practicalities involved. He has co-authored a book (German only) [1590], with Dr Heribert Illig which expands on his idea, and has developed an interesting website^(cg), in English and German, with further information.

The most persistent question relating to the pyramids and in fact all megalithic structures is “how did they manage to build them using such large heavy rocks and blocks”? Many ingenious solutions are on offer but perhaps the most remarkable is that proposed by W. T. Wallington who has demonstrated⁽ⁿ⁾ that using basic materials, which were available to the Egyptians, one individual can manipulate a 4500kg stone block. His website includes a remarkable video clip of his method. A review^(bu) of this video is worth a read. More recently a collaboration between Matter Design and CEMEX Global R&D has demonstrated that irregularly shaped cement objects weighing many tons can be moved easily by hand, suggesting that the manpower required to build many ancient monuments was far less than is generally assumed today. The conclusion is that technique is the key to how many of the ‘impossible’ structures of the past were constructed^(ci). Ashley Cowie has written an article in which he looks at how these techniques may have been applied to the construction of the megalithic walls of Cuzco in Peru, the ancient capital of the Inca^(cj). Cowie also holds that a huge earthquake caused a major change in Inca construction methods^(ck).

Two suggestions that still have considerable support are that (A) many of the stone blocks were ‘cast’ in situ as proposed by Joseph Davidovits^(bm) and (B) that an internal ramp within the pyramid was used as claimed by Jean-Pierre Houdin^(bn).

Antoine Gigal has drawn attention to another proposal of some years ago from Hasan Sayid Ahmed, who claims that the ascending and descending passages were used as ramps^(el).

In 2006, Dr Michel Barsoum of Drexel University of Philadelphia claimed to have proof that the Egyptians had used lime-based cement in the building of the pyramids^(cz).

What may be relevant was what was found at Giza^(bk) and described as ‘melted limestone’, which led Robert Schoch to consider it the result of a ‘plasma event’.

Margaret Morris offers a comprehensive account of the features of the Great Pyramid and possible construction methods on her website^(bb) and in three books ^{[683][1200][1201]}. Morris is a supporter of Joseph Davidovits who proposed the controversial idea that the building blocks of the Pyramid were cast in situ.

In 2007, petrographer, Dipayan Jana, refuted Davidovits’ theory and as far as I’m aware, no rebuttal has been forthcoming from either Davidovits or Morris. Later in 2008, Ioannis Liritzis and his team also challenged the theory of Davidovits, when they pointed out that the material used to build Egypt’s most famous monuments “contain hundreds of thousands of marine fossils” that are distributed throughout the rock in a manner compatible with natural rock^(dd).

However, it struck me that if Davidovits was correct, this ‘rock’ might instead be some of his liquid geopolymer that had been spilt and hardened in the sun!

In 2019, Fehmi Krasniqi produced a three-and-a-half-hour video^(cv) on the building of the Egyptian pyramids, primarily based on Davidovits’ claim that the Egyptians used a form of concrete to make the building blocks in situ. However, Krasniqi ventures beyond Egypt, suggesting that the ancient Egyptians travelled to America, stopping off for supplies in Atlantis, now the Azores.

Davidovits has also gone beyond Egypt for evidence of artificial stone being used to create some ancient monuments, in Tiwanaku, Puma Punku and Easter Island^(ff). While it is beyond my competence to argue with Davidovits’ chemistry, there are a number of details that still trouble me. In Egypt, the proposal that pyramid blocks were cast rather than carved, there are no images in any of the tombs and temples portraying such a practice. Secondly, casting implies the use of moulds, of which no remains have been found and finally a study of the Great Pyramid reveals that the blocks are of many different sizes, which would require a multiplicity of different moulds in a country where timber is in very short supply.

The catchpenny.org website agrees that “the theory is very nice and well-described. Unfortunately, it totally ignores a huge body of evidence. Davidovits works hard to explain away the existing quarries, the abundance of tools found during the Third and Fourth Dynasties, and the decrease in pyramid quality after the Fourth Dynasty.” ^(dq)

A 2014 study^(ag) revealed that the Egyptians were able to move the pyramid building blocks over wet sand. “By using the right quantity of water they could halve the number of workers needed.” This is comparable with the documented method employed by the Chinese to transport 200/300-ton blocks used in the construction of their ‘Forbidden City’^(ai). In October 2018 it was revealed that the remains of a ramp flanked by two staircases with postholes were discovered at an ancient quarry at Hatnub in Egypt’s Eastern Desert. “Using a sled which carried a stone block and was attached with ropes to these wooden posts, ancient Egyptians were able to pull up the alabaster blocks out of the quarry on very steep slopes of 20 percent or more.”^(cf). While this may explain how blocks could have been moved, with relative ease, to pyramid-building sites, it does not tell us how the pyramids were actually constructed.

Mario Pincherle in his book, La Grande Piramide ^[1835], offers a radical explanation of how the Egyptians raised the huge granite slabs used to roof the King’s Chamber and the relieving chambers above it. Pincherle studied Herodotus’ references to the pyramids (Book 2.124-125) and concluded that an ingenious process of wetting and then drying wooden blocks, slowly forced the slabs up the slope of the Great Gallery^(dk).

Twenty years ago Chris Dunn wrote an interesting article for Atlantis Rising magazine(es) in which he discussed the possible reasons for constructing the relieving chambers in the manner that the Egyptians did, concluding that they did so because the granite beams above the King’s chamber were an essential and integral part of making this pyramid machine……hum!!!! Subsequent editions of AR brought further comments from readers on the subject^(et).

In an article^(ew) by Steven Mehler, he wrote that “Chris Dunn suggests that there is evidence that the Great Pyramid may have experienced a cataclysmic event, an explosion, some time in its distant past which ended its role as an active power plant, a machine, which Dunn proposes was its primary function. I further advanced Dunn’s hypothesis of an explosion in the pyramid in my book, The Land of Osiris.”

Australian Paul Hai has now offered an ingenious suggestion for the construction of the pyramids using an unusual pulley system. He arrived at this theory based on components that are still available and decoding of chapter one of the Old Testament Book of Ezekiel combined with some comments from Herodotus. He offers all this in an extensive and fully illustrated website^(fg) as well as a book Raising Stone 1 [1941].

By way of complete contrast is the opinion of Gernot L. Geise, who, as a guest author offered a controversial paper on the Atlantisforschung.de website with the self-explanatory title of ‘The Giza pyramids were not built by ancient Egyptians’^(dl). He maintains that the Egyptians lacked the technology to build the pyramids, but instead, were constructed by a much older and more advanced civilisation.

Naturally. there are those among us, who will never be happy with conventional explanations and the mystery of the Egyptian pyramid-building methods has provided an ideal opportunity to serve up exotic solutions. One of the most commonly offered is that some form of levitation was employed; a claim usually based on an account by Al-Masudi, who reported that a ‘magic papyrus’ was used^(dn). Others have claimed the use of sound to achieve levitation. However, although this is theoretically possible it has been shown to be impractical^(do). This idea of acoustics being used in some obscure manner was introduced in a theory that claimed the use of ‘tuning forks’^(fr).

Nick Redfern, best known for his books on UFOs, alien abductions and conspiracy theories, has now published How Antigravity Built the Pyramids^[2061], a title that tells you all you need to know^(fy).

[I should mention that William Bramley also published a book entitled The Gods of Eden in 1989 ^[^1942]+]

Lawton & Ogilvie-Herald discuss the possible use of sonic levitation in the building of the pyramids in Giza the Truth ^[1690.203]. However, They were at the receiving end of criticism from the late John Anthony West in 2000, when West published an article in Atlantis Rising magazine that ended with a scornful “The point is that the facile assurances given by Ogilvie-Herald/Lawton endorsing the orthodox view are illegitimate, their exclusion of contrary, genuinely informed opinion is typical of their selective bogus scholarship, and their long-winded acoustic levitation hypothesis is pure speculation and self-contradictory besides. We still don’t know how the pyramids were built/ Period. Full stop.”^(er)

Alan Alford discussed the acoustics of the Great Pyramid in Pyramid of Secrets ^[010] and in a paper in Atlantis Rising magazine #50^(ez).

Nevertheless, a paper entitled ORMUS and Pyramids by Barry Carter refers extensively to the work of Dr Philip Callahan (see: Smutny, Pavel | (atlantipedia.ie) who has associated paramagnetism and the Great Pyramid^(dt).

Mike Molyneaux offers a study of the building techniques of the ancient Egyptians and their application to the construction of the pyramids and the raising of obelisks^(dp).

In a paper by Domenic A. Narducci III entitled In Control of the Pyramids in which he outlines the need for Geometric Control (GC) that must have been employed in the building of the pyramids. He defines GC as “a system of procedures that establishes and then maintains the geometry of a structure during the course of the construction process.” He offers a detailed description of the procedures used by the Egyptians^(ec).

Great Pyramid’s Function

Edward Malkowski supports^(ax) the ideas of Edward Kunkel^(ay) and John Cadman^(az), who believed that the Great Pyramid was designed to function as a water pump. However, Malkowski goes further, suggesting that this pump was used to generate subtle electrical fields that were used to assist plant growth, which seems unnecessary, considering the fertility of the Nile Valley was renewed naturally by the annual flooding of the river.

Frank Joseph also referred to Kunkel’s theories in an Atlantis Rising article in edition #56^(fa). Two issues later, Joseph returned to this idea of the Great Pyramid having an electrical function. The title of the article was Atlantis and the Great Pyramid, so to justify the inclusion of Atlantis he added The citadel of Atlantis, where the holy-of-holies was enshrined, as defined by Plato, was the same diameter (seven hundred fifty-eight feet) as the base side of the Great Pyramid. This revelation becomes clear only after the dimensions of the citadel, as given in Greek stadia for Plato’s account, are transposed into an original Egyptian unit of measurement, known as the aroura.” His fertile imagination did not bring him to explain what the other two huge pyramids at Giza were for!^(fb)

A somewhat different association of the pyramids with hydraulics was outlined in a study published in PLOS One in August 2024 in which it was proposed “that ancient people may have relied on water to build the Step Pyramid of Djoser in Saqqara, Egypt. They suspect a hydraulic system may have helped lift stones from the center of the pyramid” ^(ge).

The American scientist Philip Callahan, like Malkowski, proposed that the electromagnetic properties of the pyramid were used to enhance agricultural production and added “I am firmly convinced that the pyramids, both Egyptian and Central American, were huge antigravity structures for levitating the priests. The pyramid acted like a huge “enlarger-type” condensing lens which concentrated the cosmic energy into the hollow resonant stone tower, which in turn was filled with the IR-paramagnetic, organic breath of chanting priests.”^(fv)

Hermann Waldhauser has also proposed that a hydraulic system was used in the Great Pyramid as explained in a series of articles by Stefan Erdmann^(fi).

Steven Myers has written two books^(ba) on the subject of ancient Egyptian hydraulics.

In 2001, Joseph P. Farrell published The Giza Death Star ^[1917*], in which he claimed that the Great Pyramid had been designed as a weapon of mass destruction! His website has a number of papers relating to the pyramids^(eu).

In 2009, Dean Talboys published his theory^(co). which suggests that the remarkable internal features of the GP, including the King’s Chamber and the Grand Gallery, were part of a device that used seawater to generate enough torque to drive an electric dynamo. Talboys suddenly ends his dissertation with the unexpected admission that “we are still left with the problem of what to do with the electricity it generates we could, at least, be a little closer to understanding why someone went to all that trouble”!

Nearly half a century ago, Kurt Mendelssohn (1906-1980), a physics professor put forward the idea in The Riddle of the Pyramids ^[1885] that “what mattered was not the pyramid – it was the building of it. The pyramid does not represent an aim in itself but the means to achieve an aim: the creation of a new form of society. These huge heaps of stone mark the place where man invented the state.”

Many and varied are the theories that have been put forward regarding the intended function of the Great Pyramid. A most recent (Jan.2021) has been offered by Konstantin Borisov, who suggested that the purpose of the Great Pyramid of Giza was to emit free electrons to the Ionosphere, to create light on the planet! This capability was enhanced by Giza’s location near the maximum geographical centre of Earth and the use of nummulitic limestone in the construction of the Great Pyramid! Further details are revealed in an article published on the Ancient Origins website^(ct).

Donald E. Jennings has speculated that the Great Pyramid and its polished, and possibly painted casing stones, could have sent sunlight from the pyramids to other important locations.^(dj)Today, only remnants of the original layer of casing stones remain. This is often explained as the result of being removed to be used as a building material for the expanding nearby Cairo. Another explanation on offer is that the casing stones were shed by earthquakes. Some years ago, Will Hart published an article in Atlantis Rising #42-43^(ex) in which he questioned both of these theories.

2014 also saw the publication of Pyramid Gravity Force^(ac) by John Shaughnessy in which he claims that “The pyramids were built to prevent and/or control tectonic plate movement, volcanic activity, tidal waves, major earthquakes, land movements and the magnetic field movements on Earth.” I suggest that all the Amazon reviews be read before purchasing.

It was recently revealed^(ar). that, Ben Carson, a former Republican candidate for the US presidency, once proposed to an assembly of students at Andrews University that the Egyptian pyramids were built to store grain! This idea has been traced back to the sixth century when there was a belief that the pyramids had been the granaries of Joseph, as Julius Honorius (Cosmographia, c. 500 CE), Antoninus of Piacenza (Itinerary 43, c. 570 CE), and Geoffrey of Tours (History of the Franks 1.10, 594 CE), among others, all testify! This theory was later popularized by works such as ‘The Book of John Mandeville’, a hugely popular 14th-century travelogue.”^(bs). Jason Colavito has pointed out ^[1876.63]that this silly idea was debunked in 1646 by Professor John Greaves.

In early 2021, Konstantin Borisov published his hi-tech explanation for the purpose of the GP which he proposed “was to emit free electrons to the Ionosphere, to create light on the planet . The hydrogen gas produced in the subterranean chamber was used as a source of electrons needed for the process.” ^(ef).

John DeSalvo has gathered a collection of old theories, many dating from the 19th century, regarding the purpose of the pyramids. They range from interesting to amusing^(fo).

Perfection of the Great Pyramid!

Among the numerous mysteries related to the Great Pyramid is the fact that each side of the structure is actually slightly concave, making it the only known eight-sided pyramid (pedants would probably claim nine sides, including the base). This feature was first photographed in 1940^(al). Jean-Paul Bauval has written a paper on this concavity, arguing that it was a design feature and not a construction error. He goes further and proposes “that the geometry generated by the concavity on the overall shape of the monument shows a clear relationship, whether intended or by accident, between the Egyptian Royal Cubit (RC) to the meter unit (m). Finally, this geometrical design has the peculiarity of creating a ‘virtual space’ at the top of the monument on which might have been placed a spherical object”^(cr).

The assumed accuracy of the orientation and dimensions of the Great Pyramid was recently called into question by Mark Lehner and Glen Dash^(bj).

Apart from the disputed question of the age of the Great Pyramid, its very structure has prompted its own share of debate with persistent claims that its location, dimensions, and orientation have significance in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, and geography. Lists of these connections are available online^(p).

A June 2016 report revealed^(bc). that the builders of the Great Pyramid had made a very minor miscalculation resulting in the west side being around 5 inches longer than the east side. The research team, led by Dash and Lehner, also noted that the pyramid is not oriented as precisely with the cardinal points as we have been led to believe since “The pyramid’s north-south axis (or meridian) runs 3 minutes 54 seconds west of due north while its east-west axis runs 3 minutes 51 seconds north of due east, he told Live Science. The east-west axis also runs through the center of a temple built on the east side of the pyramid. These measurements mean that the Great Pyramid is oriented just slightly away from the cardinal directions, the degree of error from north-south and east-west being almost the same.” However, these very minor defects cannot detract in any way from the magnificence of the structure constructed so long ago.

In a 2018 paper^(ca), Glen Dash returned to the very slight misalignment of the Great Pyramid with the cardinal points.“The builders of the Great Pyramid of Khufu aligned the great monument to the cardinal points with an accuracy of better than four minutes of arc or one-fifteenth of one degree.” Dash claims that the engineers who designed the plans for the Great Pyramid used the fall equinox to seamlessly align this pyramid to the cardinal points. “He also claims that all three major Giza pyramids exhibit the same degree of error in that they are rotated slightly counter-clockwise from the cardinal points.”^(fe). In fact, all three of the largest Egyptian pyramids – two at Giza and one at Dahshur – are remarkably aligned, in a way you wouldn’t expect to see from an era without drones, blueprints, and computers.

Manfred Greifzu has also written a fairly forensic study of the orientation of the Giza pyramids for the atlantisforschung.de website^(dm).

November 2017 began with an exciting claim published in Nature magazine^(bv). that a huge cavity had been identified above the Grand Gallery in the Great Pyramid of Giza. This discovery was made using non-invasive technology, which suggests that physical verification will require some degree of interference with the structure of the pyramid, which may not be allowed by the Egyptian authorities. The initial announcement was quickly followed by a refutation of the claim of a void over the Grand Gallery by Zahi Hawass^(bw). Nevertheless, further investigation now (2019) seems to have confirmed the existence of this void^(cn).

Not long after, it was reported in the UK’s Daily Mail that an Italian archaeoastronomer, Giulio Magli, believes that the void at the centre of the Great Pyramid houses a throne made from meteorites, used to help the pharaoh in the afterlife^(bz). Magli has previously received public notice with a paper that explored the possibility that Göbekli Tepe had been constructed to “celebrate and successively follow the appearance of a new, extremely brilliant star in the southern skies: Sirius.”^(ca).

Moving forward to March 2023 we had the dramatic announcement that a 30 feet-long and over 6-foot wide corridor had been identified inside the north side of the Great Pyramid. This was the result of investigations by the ‘Scanpyramids‘ project carried out since 2016^(fp)^(fq).

Recent images showing the top of the Great Pyramid taken by a drone show the top layer of the structure to be far from perfection and if anything somewhat loosely positioned^(gd). A comment on the Quora website noted that at present “the pyramid ends with a platform of approximately 11 m on each side. At Pliny’s time this platform measured 4.88 m on each side, a value confirmed by Lambert (1630) at 4.80. It is certain that the Great Pyramid was never finished at the tip and surmounted by a peak similar to those of Sesostris and the Ammenemes of the 12th dynasty. It was a solar temple and as such it had to be surmounted by a small obelisk or perhaps, a sphere.”

PYRAMIDIOCY

In 2020, some notes of Isaac Newton’s from the 1680s were auctioned, which revealed Newton’s interest in the pyramids. It seems that “Newton was trying to uncover the unit of measurement used by those constructing the pyramids. He thought it was likely that the ancient Egyptians had been able to measure the Earth and that, by unlocking the cubit of the Great Pyramid, he too would be able to measure the circumference of the Earth.” ^(cs).

The pseudoscience of pyramidology took off in the 19th century, with a range of outlandish claims^(aq), based on external and/or internal dimensions of the Great Pyramid, supporting anything from the British Israelites or the early Jehovah’s Witnesses to being a source of divine prophecy!

In the 20th century, Adam Rutherford, a British Israelite, founded The Institute of Pyrmidology in 1940. Between 1957 and 1974, Rutherford published a set of four books on the subject, although a fifth volume was planned [1772]. When Adam died, his son James took over the Institute, but following his death in a car accident, the Institute ended.

Also in the mid-20th century, we had crazy pyramid ideas being offered by John O. Kinnaman including a report that “Dr Kinnaman said that during their 1924 investigation of the Great Pyramid they (Kinnaman & Petrie) located a hidden vault which contained amazing technical objects, including what appeared to be an anti-gravity machine or parts of such a machine, and thousands of crystal prisms which they speculated may all have been brought from Atlantis.”^(ed). Unsurprisingly, no evidence was produced.

Richard W. Noone is the author of 5/5/2000: The Ultimate Disaster which seems to have achieved near cult status. J. Douglas Kenyon wrote a favourable review of Noone and his book in Issue 14 (1999) of Atlantis Rising magazine (AR). Noone published a further article in AR #22 supporting his doomsday claim^(eq).

“Noone studied the mysterious mathematics of the Great Pyramid and calculated its cosmic calendar. He concluded that the end of history was pinpointed on May 5, 2000, and he correlated the doomsday date to a cataclysmic melting of the polar ice caps.” However, when Noone’s date for the promised catastrophe passed without any major event occurring, comments became more critical^(ep).

Nevertheless, pyramidology was given a new twist in November 2015 when a Spanish architect, Miquel Pérez-Sánchez, added the old alphanumeric system of gematria to the mix and claimed that he had identified the name ‘Atlantis’ when ‘translating’ some of the dimensions in the structure of the Great Pyramid^(by). Scott Onstott is also a modern advocate of the existence of Mathematical Encoding in the Great Pyramid.^(as)

Graham Hancock has also promoted the idea of a relationship between the Great Pyramid and the dimensions of the Earth. His ideas were challenged in a two-part critique by Thomas W. Schroeder^(gh)(gi).

For those interested in the possible significance of numbers and the Great Pyramid, there are three related papers available on Keith M. Hunter’s website^(aw). However, readers should be aware that “fringe pyramidologists persist in their claims despite a 1992 effort to debunk them by Dutch astrophysicist Cornelis de Jager, who demonstrated the dimensions of any object can be manipulated to yield a desired outcome; he derived the speed of light and the distance between the Earth and Sun from his measurements of a bicycle.”^(fx)

Ralph Ellis, mentioned above, is a controversial English revisionist of biblical and ancient Egyptian history, who bravely argues^(b) that Mount Sinai, of Ten Commandments fame, was in fact the Great Pyramid of Giza ^[656]! John Taylor (1781-1864) claimed in 1859 that Noah was the builder of the Great Pyramid ^[1451]. Even more imaginative was the claim by C.E. Getsinger in the 1920s that Noah’s Ark was in fact the Great Pyramid^(bp)!

^[1942]⁺ https://www.academia.edu/27402718/Bramley_William_The_Gods_of_Eden

^(a) Archive2925

^(b)Archive 2926

^(d) Archive 2494

^(e) http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=207802

^(f) Jeff Nisbet’s Mythomorph — Myth, History, and the Quest for Truth (archive.org)

^(g) EUROPEAN-PYRAMIDS – AMAZING DISCOVERIES IN EUROPE (archive.org)

^(h) http://www.touropia.com/largest-pyramids-in-the-world/

⁽ⁱ⁾ http://www.independent.co.uk/news/worlds-oldest-pyramids-are-discovered-1353095.html

^(j) Archive 2138

^(k) http://www.gigalresearch.com/uk/pyramides-maurice.php

^(l)(99+) (PDF) dating civilizations Jonathan Gray | NoStarPanel TruthSeeker – Academia.edu