The Giza Power Plant Read online

  Dear Chris,

  You are a voice in the wilderness. I just finished reading your article about stone working techniques in ancient Egypt. I am a stonemason by trade and in 1991 the PBS series NOVA invited me to go to Egypt to experiment with building a pyramid; I quickly got bored with working the soft limestone and started to ponder the granite work. Here in Massachusetts, my specialty is working in granite (see my web page: http://tiac.net/u­sers/rhopkins ).

  When I was asked by the Egyptologists how the ancients could have produced this work with mere copper tools, I told them they were crazy and that they were using at least state-of-art techniques. [At] first glance I tend to agree with you about the ultrasonic core hole drilling. I do enough core hole drilling to know that the embedded scrape marks would not be the result of ordinary core drilling. . . . I would love to explore this technique further with you and perhaps do a presentation in our next film about Egypt. . . .

  Sincerely,

  Roger Hopkins

  In my subsequent communications with Hopkins, I found him to be very honest and straightforward regarding the techniques used by the ancients. His account of the building of the NOVA pyramid was much the same as that reported by Mark Lehner. He asked my permission to pursue the ultrasonic drilling aspects, as it was my idea, and I told him the more the merrier. The more people who are looking into how the ancient Egyptians accomplished their prodigious feats the better chance we have of determining the truth. Moreover, like any good businessman, Hopkins sees the potential for applying this technology in his own work.

  My last e-mail from Hopkins informed me that he had contacted people at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology about pursuing this theory, had received promising feedback, and he would keep me informed. So the chapter on the ultrasonic drilling of Egyptian granite is at an end, even as this theory faces a new beginning.

  Chapter Five

  AMAZING DISCOVERY AT GIZA

  In February 1995, I joined Graham Hancock and Robert Bauval in Cairo to participate in a documentary. While there, I came across and measured some artifacts produced by the ancient pyramid builders that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that highly advanced and sophisticated tools and methods were employed by this ancient civilization. Two of the artifacts in question are well-known; another is not, but it is more accessible, since it is lying out in the open, partly buried in the sand of the Giza Plateau. For this trip to Egypt I had taken along some instruments with which I had planned to inspect features I had identified during my 1986 trip. The instruments were:

  A "parallel"—a flat ground piece of steel about six-inches long and one-quarter-inch thick. The edges are ground flat within .0002 inch.

  An Interapid indicator (known as a clock gauge by my British compatriots).

  A wire contour gauge—a device once used, before the advent of computer numerical controlled machining, by die-makers to form around shapes.

  Hard forming wax.

  I had taken along the contour gauge to check the inside of the mouth of the Southern Shaft inside the King's Chamber, for reasons to be discussed in a forthcoming chapter. Unfortunately, I found out after getting there that things had changed since my last visit. In 1993, a fan was installed inside this opening and, therefore, it was inaccessible to me and I was unable to check it. I had taken the parallel for quick checking of the surface of granite artifacts to determine their precision. The indicator was to be attached to the parallel for further inspection of suitable artifacts. Though the indicator did not survive the rigors of international travel, the instruments with which I was left were adequate for me to form a conclusion about the precision to which the ancient Egyptians were working.

  Finding the King's Chamber in the Great Pyramid crowded with tourists, and not having the access I wanted to the Southern Shaft, I headed over to the Second Pyramid to inspect the "sarcophagus" there. Petrie had remarked that this granite box, like the one inside the King's Chamber, would had to have been installed in the bedrock chamber from above, before the chamber was roofed over and the pyramid finished, as it was too large to fit through the entrance passage. He supported his conclusion by pointing out that the bedrock chamber had gabled limestone beams that were put in place after the box was installed. Petrie's measurements of the passage were 41.08 to 41.62 inches wide by 47.13 to 47.44 inches high, and his dimensions of the box were 103.68 inches outside length, 41.97 inches outside width, 38.12 inches outside height; 84.73 inches inside length, 26.69 inches inside width, and 29.59 inches inside depth.1 I.E.S. Edwards gave the angle of the entrance passage as 25°55'.depth.2 Petrie may have been correct in his assumptions, depending on how the smaller sloping passage is vertically oriented with the larger horizontal passage. Petrie was comparing the width of the box to the width of the passage, and obviously it will not fit. However, the box will fit into the smaller entrance passage if it is turned on its side. The only question not answered is whether there is enough room for it to tilt where the sloping passage meets the horizontal passage. It is unfortunate these questions were not on my mind at the time I was inside the pyramid, but my mission, at that time, involved other aspects of the ancient pyramid builders' work.

  Crouching through the entrance passage and into the bedrock chamber, I climbed inside the box and—with a flashlight and the parallel—was astounded to find the surface on the inside of the box perfectly smooth and perfectly flat. Placing the edge of the parallel against the surface I shone my flashlight behind it. No light came through the interface. No matter where I moved the parallel—vertically, horizontally, sliding it along as one would a gauge on a precision surface plate—I could not detect any deviation from a perfectly flat surface.

  A group of Spanish tourists found my activity extremely interesting, and they gathered around me as I animatedly demonstrated my discovery while exclaiming into my tape recorder, "Space-age precision!" The tour guides were becoming quite animated, too. I sensed that they probably did not think it was appropriate for a live foreigner to be where they believed a dead Egyptian should go, so I respectfully removed myself from the sarcophagus and continued my examination visually from the outside of the box.

  There were more features of this artifact that I wanted to inspect, of course, but I did not have the freedom to do so. The corner radii on the inside appeared to be uniform all around, with no variation of precision of the surface to the tangency point. I was tempted to take a wax impression, but the hovering guides expecting bribes (baksheesh) inhibited this activity. (I was on a very tight budget.)

  My mind was racing as I lowered myself into the narrow confines of the entrance shaft and climbed to the outside of the pyramid. The inside of a huge granite box had been finished off to an accuracy that modern manufacturers reserve for precision surface plates. How did the ancient Egyptians achieve this? And why did they do it? Why did they find that box so important that they would go to such trouble? It would be impossible to do that kind of work on the inside of an object by hand. Even with modern machinery it would be a very difficult and complicated task! Another point to consider was that the box, and the one in the King's Chamber inside the Great Pyramid, did not have to be made out of one piece if the only purpose it served was to house a dead body. There is evidence in the Cairo Museum proving that the ancient Egyptians also constructed sarcophagi out of five pieces and a lid. So why did they find it necessary to create each of these two boxes out of single blocks, which required the extra planning and effort to lower them into their chambers rather than drag them through the passages?

  Petrie stated that the mean variation of the dimensions of the box in the Second Pyramid was .04 inch. Not knowing where the variation he measured was, I am not going to make any strong assertions except to say that it is possible to have an object with geometry that varies in length, width, and height and still maintain perfectly flat surfaces. Surface plates are ground and lapped to within .0001 to .0003 inch, depending on the grade of the specific surface plate; however, the thickness may
vary more than the .04 inch that Petrie noted on that sarcophagus. A surface plate, though, is a single surface and would represent only one outside surface of a box. Moreover, the equipment used to rough and finish the inside of a box would be vastly different than that used on the outside. It would be much more problematic to grind and lap the inside of a box to the accuracy I had observed which would result in a precise and flat surface to the point where the flat surface meets the corner radius. The physical and technical problems associated with such a task are not easy to solve. One could use drills to rough the inside out, but when it comes to finishing a box of this size with an inside depth of 29.59 inches, while maintaining a corner radius of less than one-half inch, one would have to overcome some significant challenges.

  While being extremely impressed with this artifact, I was even more impressed with other artifacts found at another site in the rock tunnels at the temple of Serapeum at Saqqara, the site of the Step Pyramid and Zoser's Tomb. I had followed Hancock and Bauval on their trip to this site for a filming on February 24, 1995. We were in the stifling atmosphere of the tunnels, where the dust kicked up by tourists lay heavily in the still air. These tunnels contain twenty-one huge granite and basalt boxes. Each box weighs an estimated sixty-five tons, and, together with the huge lid that sits on top of it, the total weight of each assembly is around one hundred tons. Just inside the entrance of the tunnels was an unfinished lid, and beyond this lid, barely fitting within the confines of one of the tunnels, was a granite box that also had been rough hewn.

  The granite boxes were approximately 13-feet long, 7-1/2-feet wide, and 11-feet high. They were installed in "crypts" that were cut out of the limestone bedrock at staggered intervals along the tunnels. The floors of the crypts were about four feet below the tunnel floor, and the boxes were set into recesses in the center. Bauval had commented earlier about the engineering aspects of installing such huge boxes within a confined space where the last crypt was located near the end of the tunnel. With no room for the hundreds of slaves pulling on ropes to position these boxes, how were they moved into place?

  While Hancock and Bauval were filming, I jumped down into a crypt and placed my parallel against the outside surface of the box. It was perfectly flat. I shone the flashlight and found no deviation from a perfectly flat surface. I clambered through a broken-out edge into the inside of another giant box and, again, I was astonished to find it astoundingly flat. I looked for errors and could not find any. I wished at that time that I had the proper equipment to scan the entire surface and ascertain the full scope of the work. Nonetheless, I was perfectly happy to use my flashlight and straightedge and stand in awe of this incredibly precise and incredibly huge artifact. Checking the lid and the surface on which it sat, I found them both to be perfectly flat. It occurred to me that this gave the manufacturers of this piece a perfect seal—two perfectly flat surfaces pressed together, with the weight of one pushing out the air between the two surfaces. The technical difficulties in finishing the inside of that piece made the sarcophagus in Khafra's Pyramid seem simple in comparison. Canadian researcher Robert McKenty was accompanying me at this time. He saw the significance of the discovery and was filming with his camera. At that moment I knew how Howard Carter must have felt when he discovered Tutankhamen's tomb.

  The dust-filled atmosphere in the tunnels made breathing uncomfortable. I could only imagine what it would be like if I were a craftsman finishing off a piece of granite in that tunnel; regardless of the method I used, it would be unhealthy work. Surely it would have been better to finish the work in the open air? I was so astonished by this find that it did not occur to me until later that the builders of these relics, for some esoteric reason, intended for them to be ultra precise. They had gone to the trouble to take the unfinished product into the tunnel and finish it underground for a good reason. It is the logical thing to do if you require a high degree of precision in the piece that you are working. To finish it with such precision at a site that maintained a different atmosphere and a different temperature, such as in the open under the hot sun, would mean that when it was finally installed in the cool, cavelike temperatures of the tunnel, the workpiece would lose precision. The granite would give up its heat, and in doing so change its shape through contraction. The solution then as now, of course, was to prepare precision objects in a location that had the same heat and humidity in which they were going to be housed.

  This discovery, and the realization of its critical importance to the artisans that built it, went beyond my wildest dreams of discoveries to be made in Egypt. For a man of my inclination, this was better than King Tut's tomb. The Egyptians' intentions with respect to precision are perfectly clear, but to what end? Further studies of these artifacts should include thorough mapping and inspection with the following tools:

  A laser for checking surface flatness—typically used for aligning precision machine beds.

  An ultrasonic thickness gauge—to check the thickness of the walls to determine their consistency to uniform thickness.

  An optical flat with monochromatic light source—to determine if the surfaces really are finished to optical precision.

  I have contacted four precision granite manufacturers in the United States and not one can do this kind of work. In correspondence with Eric Leither of Tru-Stone Corp., I discussed the technical feasibility of creating several Egyptian artifacts, including the giant granite boxes found in the bedrock tunnels at the temple of Serapeum at Saqqara (see Figure 23). He responded as follows:

  Dear Christopher,

  First I would like to thank you for providing me with all the fascinating information. Most people never get the opportunity to take part in something like this. You mentioned to me that the box was derived from one solid block of granite. A piece of granite of that size is estimated to weigh 200,000pounds if it was Sierra White granite which weighs approximately 175 lb. per cubic foot. If a piece of that size was available, the cost would be enormous. Just the raw piece of rock would cost somewhere in the area of $115,000.00. This price does not include cutting the block to size or any freight charges. The next obvious problem would be the transportation. There would be many special permits issued by the D.O.T. and would cost thousands of dollars. From the information that I gathered from your fax, the Egyptians moved this piece of granite nearly 500 miles. That is an incredible achievement for a society that existed hundreds of years ago.

  Eric went on to say that his company did not have the equipment or capabilities to produce the boxes in this manner. He said that they would create the boxes in five pieces, ship them to the customer, and bolt them together on site.

  FIGURE 23. Granite Box in the Rock Tunnels at Saqqara

  Another artifact I inspected was a piece of granite that I, quite literally, stumbled across while strolling around the Giza Plateau later that day. I concluded, after doing a preliminary check of this piece, that the ancient pyramid builders had to have used a machine with three axes of movement (X-Y-Z) to guide the tool in three-dimensional space to create it. This artifact is very precise, even though it is a complex, contoured shape. Flat surfaces, having a simple geometry, can justifiably be explained as having been created by simple methods. This piece, though, because of its shape, drives us beyond the question, "What tools were used to cut it?" to a more far-reaching question, "What guided the cutting tool?" To properly address this question and be comfortable with the answer, it is helpful for us to have a working knowledge of contour machining.

  Many of the artifacts that modern civilization creates would be impossible to produce using simple handwork. We are surrounded by artifacts that are the result of men and women employing their minds to create tools that overcome physical limitations. We have developed machine tools to create the dies that produce the aesthetic contours on the cars that we drive, the radios we listen to, and the appliances we use. To create the dies to produce these items, a cutting tool has to accurately follow a predetermined contoured path in three d
imensions. The development of computer software has allowed some applications to move in three dimensions, while simultaneously using three or more axes of movement. The Egyptian artifact that I was looking at required a minimum of three axes of motion to machine it. When the machine-tool industry was relatively young, techniques were employed where the final shape was finished by hand, using templates as a guide. Today, with the use of precision computer numerical control machines, there is little call for handwork. A little polishing to remove unwanted tool marks may be the only handwork required. To know that an artifact has been produced on such a machine, therefore, one would expect to see a precise surface with indications of tool marks that show the path of the tool. This is what I found on the Giza Plateau, lying out in the open south of the Great Pyramid about one hundred yards east of Khafre's Pyramid (see Figure 24).

  There are so many rocks of all shapes and sizes lying around this area that to the untrained eye these could easily be overlooked. To a trained eye, they may attract some cursory attention and a brief muse. I was fortunate that they both caught my attention and that I had some tools with which to inspect them. There were two pieces lying close together, one larger than the other. They had originally been one piece and had been broken. I found I needed every tool I had brought with me to inspect it. I was most interested in the accuracy of the contour and its symmetry.

  What we have is an object that, three dimensionally as one piece, could be compared in shape to a small sofa. The seat is a contour that blends into the walls of the arms and the back. I checked the contour using the profile gauge along three axes of its length, starting at the blend radius near the back and ending near the tangency point, which blended smoothly where the contour radius meets the front. The wire radius gauge was not the best way to determine the accuracy of this piece. When adjusting the wires at one position on the block and moving to another position, the gauge could be reseated on the contour, but questions could be raised as to whether the hand that positioned it compensated for some inaccuracy in the contour. However, placing the parallel at several axial positions on the contour, I found the surface of this artifact to be extremely precise. At one point near a crack in the piece, there was light showing through, but the rest of the piece allowed very little to show.