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Afterlives of the Great Pyramid

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Afterlives of the Great Pyramid Afterlives of the Great Pyramid by Daniel J. Boorstin During the 1970s, Time and Esquire ran articles about the "healing energy" of pyramid power. A Nobel Prize-winning physicist bombarded the Great Pyramid at Giza with cosmic rays to discover its secrets. New Age devotees erected small pyramids in which to meditate and make love. Was this only one more passing fad? Perhaps not. Daniel Boorstin reveals that many respected figures in Western history-including Sir Isaac Newton and Napoleon Bonaparte-have been intrigued by the Egyptian pyramids. Their attempts to unravel the "mystery" of the Great Pyramid is the story of Enlightenment rationality gone astray, a tale of how easily the scientific mentality can slip into mystical speculations. WQ SUMMER 1992 130 any that revealed his destiny, Seventeen years later, while a prisoner on St. Helena, he was tempted to reveal this ex- perience to Emmanuel Las Cases, to whom he was dictat- ing his memoirs, but he stopped abruptly, saying, "What's the use? You'd never believe me." Awe of the Great Pyramid led Napoleon's savants to measure and describe the monument with unprece- dented accuracy, providing solid data for generations of scientific fantasy. Retreating from Egypt, Napoleon left his scientists and artists to com- plete their work. They were captured by the British, who chivalrously allowed them to return to France with their notes and drawings. Their Napoleon's general staff reach the Great Pyramid at sunrise. The achievement, the first de- etchine comes from the Navoleonic expedition's archaeological tailed survey of the monu- surveyof the pyramids, published in 21 volumes. ments of Egypt, was also the first modern archaeological survey. Their nine large folio volumes of text and 12 vol- umes of plates, the Descriu- tion de l'~&pte(1808-25) w& he grandeur of the Great Pyr- a monument in itself, described by admir- amid at Giza challenged the ers as "the most immortal conception and young Napoleon's imperial glorious performance of a book ever real- imagination. When the ambi- ized by man." One of Napoleon's officers tious 29-year-old general led found near Rosetta, at a branch of the Nile his ill-starred expedition to Delta, an unimpressive three-foot diorite EgyptT in 1798, he visited Giza where he was slab. A quarter-century later, this stone- awed by what he saw. Some of his officers carved in hieroglyphics, cursive Egyptian, climbed all 450 feet to the top of the Great and Greek-provided the key for the preco- Pyramid, but Napoleon remained below, cious Jean-Francois Champollion's deci- drawing and calculating. We still have his phering of the hieroglyphic language used sketches of the Giza pyramids and his notes. by the ancient Egyptians. "The only true Napoleon reportedly informed his generals, conquests," Napoleon once remarked with after their descent, that the three pyramids uncharacteristic humility, "are those gained contained enough stone to build a wall 10 by knowledge over ignorance." Despite the feet high and one foot wide around all of hasty retreat of his armies from Egypt, it France. Recalling Alexander the Great be- was the site of one of Napoleon's more en- fore him, Napoleon asked to be left alone in during conquests. the King's Chamber inside the Great Pyra- mid. On coming out he was said to be pale, he creators of the pyramids unwit- as though he had witnessed a mysterious tingly created the speculative sci- vision. Napoleon never told what he had T ence-and art-of Pyramidology. seen, but he repeatedly hinted at an epiph- Since the Great Pyramid bore no .inscrip- WQ SUMMER 1992 PYRAMIDOLOGY tion revealing its meaning, archaeologists confirm the Biblical narrative-suggested have sought other clues. The cryptic lan- another source for the data he needed. guage of numbers has proved seductive. Newton found encouragement in the Could not the message of the Great Pyra- work of a mathematician-traveler named mid be carried by its dimensions? Even be- John Greaves (1602-1652). To find the pre- fore there was a modern science of Egyp- cise dimensions of the Earth, Greaves had tology, this hope enticed generations of gone to Egypt in 1638, seeking clues in the earnest European scholars to Giza. The Great Pyramid. An enlightened suspicion famous English astronomer and pioneer of then current among the learned held that Egyptian metrology, Charles Piazzi Smyth the sciences did not all begin with the an- (1 819-1900), explained: cient Greeks. In particular, it was believed that the Greeks had learned their geometry [Tlhe Great Pyramid was never even re- from the Egyptians. Pythagoras himself was motely understood. [But] it is able reputed to have said that the Greek units of nevertheless to explain its grand, even measure had come from Egypt. And was it Messianic, mission, most unmistakably. not plausible that the Egyptians used their Not, indeed, in the usual manner of less grandest and most durable monument- ancient monuments, by the use of any the Great Pyramid-to embody and per- written language, whether hieroglyphic petuate their standard of measure? or vulgar, but by the aid of the mathemat- ical and physical science of modern times applied to show the significance re- his devious line of reasoning led siding in the exact amount of its ancient Greaves, the brilliant young Oxford length, breadth, and angles; a means T mathematician, to Egypt and into most efficacious both for preventing the the Great Pyramid. With his measuring in- parable being read too soon in the history struments, "creeping like a serpent" down of an, at first, unlearned world; but for the Pyramid's Descending Passage, he fired insuring its being correctly read, and by his pistols to clear away the cloud of bats, all nations, when the fullness of prophetic some a foot in length. He finally reached time, in a science age, has at last arrived. the Grand Gallery and the King's Chamber, where he examined the empty granite cof- If the power of a work of creation is re- fer, taking measurements as he went. Re- vealed in its iridescence-its capacity to in- turned to England, Greaves became the spire meanings unimagined by its cre- Savilian Professor of Astronomy at Oxford. ators-then the Great Pyramid has few Assembling his data in a little book, the peers. Pyramidographia, he attracted the attention These speculative fantasies have en- of the scientific community. Sir William listed some of the best scientific minds of Harvey, renowned for his theories of res- the English-speaking world, beginning with piration, was pdedthat Greaves had not Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727). His dem- found any ventilating conduits for the Pyra- onstration of his theory of gravitation in mid's interior chambers. The energetic Sir Book I11 of his Principia depended on the Isaac Newton then came up with his own shape and dimensions of the Earth. When Dissertation upon the Sacred Cubit of the the classic figures for the Earth's circumfer- Jews and the Cubits of several Nations: in ence provided by the Greek astronomer which, from the Dimensions of the greatest and geographer Eratosthenes (third cen- Pyramid, as taken by Mr. John Greaves, the tury B.c.) did not fit Newton's propositions, ancient Cubit of Memphis is determined. In he looked for something better. Newton's this treatise, Newton displayed a dual inter- Biblical piety-reflected in his thousands of est-Biblical and scientific. Definition of manuscript pages of theological specula- the ancient cubits would clarify the Bible's tion and his New System of Cosmology to obscure and mystical passages. For exam- Daniel J. Boorstin is Librarian of Congress Emeritus and a former Wilson Center trustee. His many books include the three-volume series The Americans (1958, 1965, 1973), The Discoverers (1983), and the forthcoming The Creators, to be published by Random House in September. Copyright 0 1992 by Daniel J. Boorstin. SUMMER 1992 132 PYRAMIDOLOGY pie, it might help define the dimensions of much alive. New schools of Pyramidology the Temple of Solomon, which symbolized were sparked by the 175 savants who came the heavenly reality. to the pyramids with Napoleon in 1798. Newton's scientific purpose would also Aided by a large crew of the Ottoman be served, because a precise ancient Egyp- Turks, the savants cleared away debris at tian cubit would help mark the length of corners of the Great Pyramid. At last they the "stade" or "stadium." Ancient authors exposed the rectangular sockets, 10 by 12 had suggested a connection between the feet, hollowed into the base rock and level "stade" and a geographical degree of the with each other, on which the original cor- Earth's surface. According to Aristotle, the nerstones of the structure had been laid. most ancient measure of the Earth's cir- This made possible newly accurate mea- cumference-by Thales (640?-546 B.c.) and surements of the apothem (the sloping sur- Anaximander (61 1-547 B.c.)-was 400,000 face) and the circumference at the base. "stades." Newton suspected that this figure, Edm6-Francois Jomard, one of the Sketches, calculations, and notes that Napoleon made of the Great Pyramid in 1798. older than Eratosthenes's, was truer and younger and more energetic of Napoleon's that the stadium unit might somehow be savants, was tantalized, then obsessed, by embodied in the Great Pyramid. the secret message of the stones. He did Newton never succeeded in finding some measuring on his own. To determine what he was looking for in the Great Pyra- the height, he climbed to the summit.
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