The Mathematics of the Great Pyramid

 

                                                                                        The Great Pyramid

      In spite of the fact that so much of the Great Pyramid is simply not there in the three dimensions, it has been reconstructed in the second dimension on paper by surveyors, architects, astronomers and mathematicians, making it the most measured building on earth.

      Outside of a general agreement that the base perimeter of the pyramid on its platform measures a half minute of equatorial latitude, and the perimeter measured from the corner sockets carved into the rock pavement below the platform measuring a half minute of equatorial longitude, everyone who measures the interior and exterior of this most precise of all buildings, comes up with a different number for every aspect measured.

      Adding fuel to this confusion, the two most respected set  of surveyed measurements, the first made in 1881 by Flinders Petrie, the father of modern Egyptology, and the second made by C.H. Cole for the Egyptian government in 1923, both list wide plus and minus margins of error in their measurements due to the difficulty in measuring the ancient monument in such a state of rubble.

      Although these differences are usually less than an inch, being in tenths, hundredths, or thousandths categories, they still pose a huge problem for the researcher who knows that numbers, like human beings, are highly complex, very particular, and that no two are the same.

      And it must be said that in spite of the high degree of truly astounding precision of workmanship in some aspects of the structure, there is also a great deal of inconsistency and poor workmanship in other aspects, making it difficult to ascertain which of the multiple measurements was the intended one.

      Complicating this issue even further is the question of what the allowable tolerances were when the Great Pyramid was transformed from a perfect two dimensional design on a drafting table into the three dimensions of granite and limestone. Due to the enormous difficulty of transferring precise measurements into stone as massive and un-wieldy as those in the Great Pyramid, not only is the pyramid that IS, not the pyramid that WAS, but the pyramid that WAS may not have been the pyramid that was designed on the drawing board,

     Since contemporary measurements only reflect what remains after centuries of wear and tear, and consequently do not necessarily represent the architect’s original intention, the only way to ascertain what the original measurements were intended to be is to try all possible numbers of geometric importance within the tolerances of existing measurements in order to see if there is a fit that dovetails with all other measurements, making a unified whole.

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