Image by Pete Linforth from Pixabay

During the late nineteenth century, a strange intellectual phenomenon called  Pyramidology, found its way to both sides of the Atlantic. Pyramidology encompasses the idea that the pyramids were built to contain great mathematical, religious or astronomical secrets. Although for its advocates, Pyramidology tend to fall flat, its mysterious underpinnings throughout history make it a fascinating study.

According to writer Anki Petersson, “A key element in the study of Pyramidology is the pyramid inch. The number of inches point A is from point B, determines, according to Pyramidology, the date for biblical events and their fruition. There seems to be some disagreement, however, among historians as to who developed the pyramid inch.”

So how did this all start? It all began in 1859 when John Taylor, an eccentric British publisher produced a work entitled The Great Pyramid, Why Was It Built? And Who Built It? Taylor proposed that the architect who had planned and supervised the building of the Great Pyramid of Giza was not an Egyptian but probably an Israelite (namely the biblical patriarch Noah in some accounts) acting under Divine orders.

According to Greatdreams.com: “Although Taylor had never been to Egypt, the Great Pyramid had long interested him. What he ascertained from his study of it was that the architectural proportions of the Great Pyramid had many interesting geometric and mathematical properties. For example, Taylor discovered that the ratio of the perimeter of the base of the pyramid to twice its height gave a fairly close approximation of the number , or the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Taylor believed that this important universal constant was intentionally incorporated in the dimensions of the pyramid. The presence of the ratio was regarded as particularly amazing in view of the fact that there is no historical record of anyone having calculated an accurate value for it until many centuries after the construction of the Great Pyramid.

With this geometric proportion in mind, Taylor searched for other related properties. He noted that is approximately equal to 366/116.5. Of course, it is an irrational number and therefore cannot be precisely represented as such a fraction. Taylor, however, was intrigued by the similarity of the number 366 in the numerator of this ratio to the number of days in a year. By manipulating the number 366 and other dimensions of the pyramid, he concluded that its builders had used a unit of length which differed from the British inch by only a few thousandths of an inch. Twenty-five of these "pyramid inches" made a "pyramid cubit," and 10 million pyramid cubits approximates the length of the radius of the earth on its polar axis fairly closely. These and a series of similar calculations provided what Taylor considered to be adequate evidence that the Great Pyramid had been built as a model of the earth, to serve as a record for mankind of the important dimensions and proportions of the globe.

Taylor's ideas would probably never have become popular except for Professor C. Piazzi Smyth, a British Israelite and the Astronomer-Royal of Scotland. Not only did Smyth accept Taylor's basic assumptions, but he built on them and popularized pyramidology in Great Britain, America, and on the European continent as well. He published a number of works on the subject including Our Inheritance in the Great Pyramid (1864), Life and Work at the Great Pyramid (1867) and On the Antiquity of Intellectual Man (1868).

PD-US, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6895656

Smyth set himself the task of testing Taylor's ideas. As Taylor had done, he studied the measurements and observations made by others who had taken an interest in the pyramid. He did not allow the matter to rest there, however. Largely at his own expense, Smyth traveled to Egypt and spent considerable time in collecting vast quantities of data relating to the pyramid. As a result, he not only convinced himself of the validity of Taylor's claims, but discovered many more facts demonstrating, as he thought, the special nature of the pyramid. The number and variety of geometric, mathematical, physical, geographical and astronomical measurements made by Smyth is truly amazing. A brief description of few such characteristics of the Great Pyramid serve to indicate Smyth's perseverance, attention to detail, and imagination in searching for evidence that the pyramid was more than a mere pharaoh's tomb.

The architecture of both the exterior and the interior of the pyramid supplied Smyth with the majority of the "proofs" for his conjecture. He verified the existence of the ratio by simple trigonometry and a careful measurement of the ascending angle of one of the few remaining casing stones which had originally covered the exterior of the pyramid. He also went to great trouble to measure accurately the length of a side of the base of the pyramid. Using this length, he satisfied himself that the "pyramid inch" had indeed been the unit of length used in building the Great Pyramid, and that this and other pyramid dimensions were closely related to the length of the year in days as supposed by Taylor.

Smyth derived a complex set of numerical interrelationships between such things as the number of stones used in the construction of the inner chambers of the pyramid, the volume and shape of the stone coffer found in the King's Chamber of the pyramid, the number of faces and angles of the pyramid, and the number of courses of masonry between various chambers within the pyramid, among many other things. For some reason Smyth considered relationships of involved combinations of numbers such as 25, 50, 10, 366, and 9 as particularly significant. He felt that these numbers were included in the pyramid's dimensions as a record of the "perfect" standards of measurement that God intended man to use.

Besides linear measurements, Smyth spent much time investigating other physical properties of the pyramid such as the temperature and barometric pressure in the inner chambers and the weight and density of the stone coffer in the King's Chamber. Again, he derived supposedly important relationships between these measurements, and he concluded that perfect units of weight and temperature were embodied in these dimensions.

The pyramid was found to have interesting geographical and astronomical properties. For example, it is oriented so that its sides point almost precisely due north and south. Smyth believed that it was so constructed by intention, and that this proved that the earth's crust had not shifted significantly since the time that the pyramid was built. He also maintained that the parallel of latitude and the meridian which intersect at the Great Pyramid traverse more land area (as opposed to water) than any other parallels or meridians. Taylor's thesis that the pyramid was a model of the earth was reinforced in Smyth's mind by his verification of the fact that the distance of the earth from the sun is approximately ten raised to the ninth power multiplied by the height of the Great Pyramid. He regarded these numbers as significant, for some unknown reason. These are but a few of the hundreds of measurements and calculations that he put forward as evidence of the pyramid's special nature.

While it is doubtlessly true that the pyramid does have many of the interesting properties ascribed to it by pyramidologists, the real difficulty lies in judging what one can reasonably infer from the presence of them. For example, Taylor and Smyth were both certain that the ratio was present in the pyramid's dimensions by design, and that this indicated some special knowledge on the part of the builders of the pyramid-likely knowledge of divine origin. Yet Taylor himself was aware of the belief apparently held by Egyptians of earlier periods that the pyramid had been constructed so that the area of one of its faces would equal the square of its height. The mathematical sophistication required to achieve this is not great, and in any case a trial and error calculation would soon lead to a close approximation of this proportion. The point is this: if, in fact, the pyramid builders had intended to incorporate the above mentioned proportion, then the ratio of the perimeter of the base to twice the height would be 3.145, which differs from only in the third decimal place. This is essentially as accurate an approximation of as Smyth was able to claim from his investigation. So, the ratio could occur as a completely coincidental by-produce of a design which would not have been concerned at all with the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter. Thus the inference that the ratio must have been consciously included is unwarranted.

Many of Smyth's calculations and the inferences he based upon them seem artificial and arbitrary. What, for example, is the significance of the number 109 as used in relating the height of the pyramid to the distance of the earth from the sun? What meaning does the number ten million have, other than the fact that there are approximately ten million pyramid inches in the polar radium of the earth? The pyramid is a rich source of the kind of data Smyth worked with, and it would be surprising if he had been unable to come up with some interesting number combinations after manipulating such data.

The general philosophical problem of attaching the proper meaning to empirical evidence is very difficult. There seems to be no simple, satisfactory way to determine what criteria one should use in deciding, for instance, that certain constructed objects include particular pre-planned geometrical forms and measurements within them if historical evidence is lacking. Clearly individual notions vary greatly. John Taylor and Piazzi Smyth were utterly convinced that nearly every detail of the architecture of the Great Pyramid was included intentionally, that is, designed. On the other hand most scientists, historians, and even interested laymen are immediately convinced, upon reading Smyth's claims, that he inferred far too much from the data he gathered.

In addition, Smyth was hardly a dispassionate, objective scientist when dealing with the pyramid. His writings show that he certainly had a deep emotional commitment to demonstrating "scientifically" that the Christian religion is true, and that he saw his work with the pyramid as a means by which he could do so. Smyth also had a great antipathy towards the metric system, which he regarded as the flawed produce of the minds of atheistic French radicals. Over and over again in his book The Great Pyramid, Smyth heaps ridicule and scorn upon the metric system and its inventors for using "unnatural" standard units of measurement. For example, Smyth pointed out that the meter was devised by dividing the distance from the equator to the pole into 10 million parts, while the pyramid inch (and thus the closely related British inch) was based upon a division of the length of the radius of the earth, as discussed above. He felt that such distinctions made the British system obviously vastly superior, while many readers of his work (even among his contemporaries) regarded such comparisons as ludicrous. Again, Smyth's conviction in this matter was related to the fact that he believed that the British system reflected God's will in that the British units of measure were close to those "discovered" in the pyramid. His reasoning in this respect was quite circular and emotionally and religiously motivated.

It turns out to be more difficult to pinpoint what it is about Taylor's and Smyth's work that makes it seem so implausible than it would at first appear to be. This is perhaps because the underlying problems are somewhat more subtle than they seem on the surface, as in the case of determining what criteria to use in judging how a thing has been designed.”

The spread of modern Pyramidology >>>

According to Anki Petersson:

Madame Helena Blavatsky, (1831-1891), a leader in Theosophy, a mixture of Eastern philosophy and Occultism,  gave Pyramidology a ritualistic flavor. According to Madame Blavatsky,  “ … the interior of the pyramid was used for the performance of sacred rituals connected with the Egyptian Book of the Dead, and most theosophists today assume there are vast mysteries of some sort connected with the stone monument that are known only to initiates."

Charles Taze Russell, founder of the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (Jehovah’s Witnesses), published his book The Divine Plan of the Ages in 1886. Each copy had a large fold-out diagram dissecting a pyramid and explaining the biblical events it prophesied. These events stretched from the Genesis flood to the post-millennial reign of Christ. In speaking about this pyramid chart, the 1907 edition states, "As the frontispieces of this volume we give a chart representing the plan of God for the world's salvation. By it we have sought to aid the mind, through the eye, in understanding something of the progressive character of God's plan, and the progressive steps which must be taken by all who ever attain the complete `change' from the human to the divine nature."

Charles Taze Russel's Grave Marker - Cbaile19, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_Taze_Russell_Pyramid,_United_Cemeteries,_2015-06-08,_03.jpg

 >>>If you question a contemporary Jehovah Witness about this piece of history many will vehemently deny it as being “made up” by detractors. It was in fact part of required study which was later dispensed.<<<

Known as the Sleeping Prophet, Edgar Cayce, (1877-1945), announced startling information to his followers while in his trances. Believing in both Pyramidology and reincarnation, Edgar Cayce, during his trance readings, said the Great Pyramid is 10,000 years old and was built by a consortium of Egyptians, Atlanteans, and itinerant Caucasians from southwest Russia. The consortium was led by Hermes, an Egyptian high priest named Ra Ta (a past incarnation of Cayce), and an adviser named Isis. The pyramid served as a storage place for all the human history and prophecies up to the year 1998 (the time of the Second Coming of Christ, according to Cayce), recording in the languages of mathematics, geometry, and astronomy. Cayce said it also was an initiation temple where, thousands of years later, Jesus was initiated during his "missing years" as preparation for his public career.