Showing posts with label Sphinx. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sphinx. Show all posts

Thursday, March 01, 2012

Unraveling the Age of the Pyramids and Sphinx on the Giza Plateau


Bookmark and Share

The Sphinx

By Dennis G. Balthaser
www.truthseekeratroswell.com
3-1-12
     After all these years of doing research by many scholars about the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, a definitive time line is yet to be confirmed establishing when they were built, who built them or for what purpose the were built. Unlike many other ancient structures in the world, no records have been found thus far to resolve these lingering questions.

Map
We do know that global weather has had a big part on where various civilizations lived or moved to because of such things as prolonged drought, extreme periods of moisture, etc. Egypt is of course no exception to that, since thousands of years ago Egypt for the most part was a tropical area, unlike the harsh desert terrain of today. (Ice Age map, left)

Around 12,000 BC, Earth’s sea level rose suddenly more than 60 feet in less than 200 years, a direct result of extreme glacial melting, which was the beginning of an eight-thousand-year period scientists call the end of the last Ice Age, when sea levels rose nearly 400 feet to the level they are today. About 9000 BC monsoon rains invaded Egypt, which lasted until about 3500 BC when they abruptly stopped.

A few of the theories I’ve become aware of include the most obvious one we hear about today, that the Pyramids of Giza were built for Egyptian Pharaohs, primarily of the 4th dynasty (2500 BC). The Great Pyramid was supposedly the burial tomb for Kufu to enter the afterlife, yet nothing has ever been found inside the Great Pyramid to verify that.

Sphinx water deterioration

As I’ve mentioned in previous editorials, the Sphinx has water deteriation on the back of the lion’s body, and we know there hasn’t been that amount of rainfall to cause it in Egypt for some 7000 years.

Some have said the Pyramids of Giza were built by the Israelites while in captivity in Egypt, while others refer to the great flood mentioned in the Bible, however it’s believed the deteriation would have been caused by large volumes of rainfall, not flooding. Many of the Arabs of the ninth century AD appear to have had sources of information, which led them to believe that the Great Pyramid was built before the flood, as a repository for scientific knowledge.

Still another theory was that a civilization in North Africa known as Khemtians some 10,000 years ago had contact with star people that may have been involved in the construction, or at least the method of doing the construction. For me with a civil engineering background, it’s hard to envision how the construction could have been accomplished with the tools we believe were available to them at the time, and the technology that would have been involved.

Today with the use of computers and soft ware it’s possible to track the stars of the heavens back thousands of years to determine there location on particular ancient dates. Many of those locations do in fact align with certain structures in Egypt, such as the three Pyramids of Giza being in the same alignment as the 3 stars of Orion’s belt, the fact that the Sphinx faces exactly toward the eastern sunrise at certain times of the year, and that the shafts of the Kings and Queens chamber align perfectly with certain stars, and other astronomical occurrences in the sky. As an example, during the summer solstice, (the longest day of the year), and the winter solstice, (the shortest day of the year), at Giza the sun rises about 28 degrees south of due east and 28 degrees north during those two times of the year, thus being an equinoctial marker when the Sphinx faces perfectly to the east at sunrise during the spring equinox.

Pyramid with casing stones

The technology side of how the Pyramids were built is to me, some of the most amazing information to come forward thus far. Fourteenth century Arab commentators tell us the Great Pyramid and the second one were both covered with smoothly-polished Tura limestone that glowed in the Egyptian sun, and were shaken loose by an earth quake in 1301 AD, and most then used to build mosques and temples. Only the second Pyramid still has any of the limestone casing stones at the top. Those casing stones consisted of an estimated 22 acres of 8-foot thick blocks, each weighing about 16 tons, and so closely joined that they appeared to be a single slab from top to bottom. As determined in 1881 by Sir W. M. Flinders Petrie, the mean thickness of the joints is 0.020 of an inch giving a variation of the cutting of the stone from a straight line and a true square but 0.01 of an inch on a length of 75 inches up the face.

The mathematical value of pi (3.14), was supposedly discovered by the Greeks in the 3rd century BC, however when one takes the designed height of the Great Pyramid (481.3949 feet), it bears the same relationship to its base perimeter (3023.16 feet), as does the circumference of a circle to its radius. That relationship is:

2 pi (481.3949 feet) x 2 x 3.14 = 3023.16 feet

There is also a direct relationship between the dimension of the Pyramid and the dimension of the earth using a scale of 1 : 43,200. These relationships are not speculation, but rather measurable facts.

The accuracy of the Pyramid’s base between the longest and shortest side is less than 8 inches, considering each side is 755 feet.

The Great Pyramid
The Great Pyramid

I have for years wondered about the stability of the Pyramid with the massive weight of the stones not causing it to recede into the sand. In Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval’s book, “The Message of the Sphinx”, they point out that it was not built on perfectly flat ground, as might be expected by the accuracy of the dimensions revealed, but with a massive natural mound, or hill, left exactly in the middle of the site on which the Great Pyramid was erected. The mound is estimated to be almost 30 feet high, and located dead center over the base, which probably accounts for its stability over thousands of years.

It’s now believed that the Sphinx is much older than the 4500-year age assigned to it by Egyptologists, some thinking as far back as the last Ice Age in a range of 15,000 BC and 5000 BC.

Have the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx given us some message about a past civilization that we don’t yet understand, not unlike the possibility of a message from extraterrestrials would or have given us perhaps about the future. Both seem to be a possibility. Perhaps there is a common language that all technical civilizations, no matter how old or futuristic use. That common language is science and mathematics, since the laws of nature are the same everywhere based on our limited knowledge today.

It appears the 3 Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, as well as some other monuments located on the Giza Plateau are giving us a view of the sky as much as 10,500 years ago. Carbon dating of mortar from the Great Pyramid with organic fiber obtained in 1986 was tested at Southern Methodist University, and others at laboratories in Zurich, Switzerland, revealing dates of 3809 BC to 2869 BC, some 400 years prior to the Fourth Dynasty.

Can we draw any conclusions today? Various theories must continue to be pursued and some day, hopefully the truth will be known.

Wednesday, February 02, 2011

More Theories About The Sphinx and Pyramids of Giza

Sphinx
          

     
By Dennis Balthaser
www.truthseekeratroswell.com
2-1-11

Dennis Balthaser     During my 33 years of civil engineering work with the Texas Department of Transportation, I was fortunate enough to have been involved with quality control and quality assurance of materials used to build several massive bridge structures in Texas. That background tends to be the reason I became interested in researching Underground Bases and Tunnels, and more recently the Pyramids of Giza. Area 51 and the 1947 Roswell Incident were two areas of research I had an interest in before retiring from the Texas DOT in 1996, and it’s been sometime since I addressed one of my favorite areas of research, “the pyramids of Giza.” My views about who built them haven’t changed over the years, still believing that the three pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx are much older than the Egyptian civilization, as we’re led to believe today by many Egyptologists and others.

If in fact The great pyramid of Giza was built for Khufu, a Pharaoh of the 4th dynasty about 2600 BC, why was nothing ever found inside the pyramid to indicate that he was prepared for the afterlife, as was the custom with other Pharaoh’s tombs uncovered over the years? To this date the only artifact found referring to Khufu is a 3” statute, now in the Cairo museum, that was originally found a great distance away from the pyramids in 1903. Unless some great discovery is still to be revealed inside the great pyramid referring to Khufu, I will continue to question if in fact the great pyramid was ever built for him.

I have recently come upon several new theories about how the pyramids of Giza were built, indicating that after all these years and all the research that has been done, we still don’t have any factual information on how they were built, who built them or for what purpose. Unlike everything else the Egyptian civilization did accomplish, no records have been discovered on how or who built the 3 pyramids of Giza or the Sphinx. Theories are described as, “Proposed explanations whose status is still conjectural, in contrast to well-established propositions that are regarded as reporting matters of actual facts.” Many I suppose would place UFO research into that same category as only being theories, since some have suggested that alien technology was involved in the building of the pyramids.

Researcher Stephen Mehler offers scientific evidence in his book, “The Land of Osiris”, about an advanced civilization that lived in Northern Africa some 10,000 years ago known as Khemitians. One of his sources of information came from a local known as a “keeper of wisdom”, who presented evidence that he believed the ancient Khemitians had contact, and that the existence of life on other planets and in other dimensions is a distinct reality, being part of the indigenous tradition of the Khemitian wisdom keepers. Were the pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx built with technology the Khemitians received from star people, prior to the Egyptian civilization?

The great pyramid of Giza stands over 450’ tall and contains some 2 ½ million stones weighing between 2 and 70 tons each. That does not include the polished limestone casing stones that originally covered the stones seen today. Only one of the three great pyramids of Giza still has any casing stones in place near the top, due to the Arabs removing them to build mosques and temples.

The most frequently mentioned method of building the pyramids is the use of a ramp to drag the stones to their final location, requiring 20-30 years and 20-30,000 workers to accomplish. Considering the stones had to be quarried, cut, transported up the Nile river, moved across the Giza Plateau and set, using the above information, a stone would have had to been placed every 90 seconds.

ramp to drag the stones
Another mathematical problem is the ramp itself. Knowing the height of the pyramid (450 feet) and assuming an angle of 20 degrees for the ramp, which would be a fairly steep angle, the length of a ramp would calculate to more than 1316 feet long. Additionally, assuming a conservative width of 20 feet for the ramp, and knowing the length and height, the volume of material required for such a ramp would be more than 7,000,000 cubic feet. These numbers seem like astronomical figures, since as the pyramid grew taller, the ramp would have to be lengthened and the base widened to keep it from collapsing. Since there are over 200 lifts, or steps to the top of the great pyramid, considerable time would have been lost in maintaining the ramp size for each lift. Other ramp methods have also been theorized, using internal, zigzag, or spiraling ramps. Levitation of the stones has also been mentioned.

Other ramp methods
More recently, Steven Myers, author of the book, “Lost Technologies of the Great Pyramid” has suggested that the stones were transported up the Nile on barges utilizing a series of water locks across the Giza plateau, similar to what was used to build the Erie canal in the 1800’s, due to the increase in elevation from the Nile River to the Giza plateau pyramid site. Upon arrival at the site, each layer of the pyramid was sealed and flooded, enabling the stones to be floated into position by lifting the stones on barges in switchback water locks up along the face of the emerging pyramid. Railroads today use a similar switchback concept to travel up steep grades.

When the three pyramids of Giza were built remains as much a mystery as how they were built and/or who build them. Many believe they were build before the great flood mentioned in the Bible, as one researcher has found evidence of fossils in some of the stones. I would raise the question of whether those fossils were in the stones cut from the quarries, or were they embedded after the pyramid was built due to a massive flood? In either case unlike today, Egypt was apparently subjected to a large amount of water at one time, 5-10 thousand years ago. I’m also convinced that the Sphinx shows evidence on the back portion of the lion’s body of water damage, not deteriation by wind and sand as many propose, having been covered with sand up to the neck until the 1800’s.

Although I’ve not found any direct references to the pyramids of Giza in the Bible, Biblical scholars have made other comments such as found in Isaiah 19:19-20; Joshua 22:26, Ephesians 2:20-21

The purpose of the great pyramid has been discussed by many over the years indicating it was designed as an energy machine, while others contend it was a water pump of sort. Today there is no doubt that it is a money-making generator based on the tourism industry in Egypt.

A few of the lesser-known facts about the three pyramids of Giza that I find interesting are the following:
The alignment of the three pyramids of Giza coincides with the 3 stars of Orion’s belt in the Orion Constellation.

There is believed to be a large rock outcropping directly below the pyramids which might explain why the massive weight of the pyramids has not recessed much in height over thousands of years.

The great pyramid was placed in the exact center of all the land area of the world. Lines drawn through the north-south and east-west axis of the pyramid divide equally all the earth’s terrain.

The empty coffer found in the great pyramid by the Arabs about 850 AD has the exact same inside dimensions as the “Ark of the Covenant” mentioned in the Bible. Coincidence?
Egyptologists continue to take credit for building the three pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx, however these theories and others not mentioned here need to be considered. For me the research of the pyramids and Sphinx are more important than as a tourist industry.