Read The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids Online
Authors: Scott Creighton
Tags: #Ancient Mysteries
The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids (5 page)
2
In the Footsteps of the Ancients
Know ye that in the pyramid I builded are the KEYS that shall show ye the WAY into life; aye, draw ye a line from the great image, I builded, to the apex of the pyramid, built as a gateway. Draw ye another opposite in the same angle and direction, dig ye and find that which I have hidden. There shall ye find the underground entrance, to the secrets hidden before ye were men.
DOREAL,
THE EMERALD TABLETS
OF THOTH-THE-ATLANTEAN
As noon approached it was much hotter, approaching 35°C. My taxi driver had finally dropped me off on the sand-blown asphalt road near to the now disused and somewhat dilapidated amphitheater just to the west of G2, the pyramid attributed to Khafre. And, I have to say, it was with some considerable anxiety and trepidation that I watched him turn and drive away, vanishing into the horizon in a haze of shimmering heat, leaving me alone in an area of the plateau that very few ever visited these days. I could have been dropped off farther along the desert road, nearer to my destination, but I wanted the opportunity to capture the giant pyramids from a perspective that few ever enjoyed. Without doubt, it was going to be a long, arduous, and extremely uncomfortable trek back. I just hoped at that point that it would all be worth the effort.
Having rubbed some more sunblock onto my arms and neck, I took a few tentative paces in the direction of the derelict amphitheater. Throughout the 1990s this open-air theater that seated around four thousand people had been the centerpiece of a grand light and sound show that featured Verdi’s
Aida,
an opera based on a tale first penned in 1869 by pioneering French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette. The opera portrayed the tragic story of a love triangle between an Ethiopian princess/slave girl (Aida), an Egyptian military commander, and the pharaoh’s daughter. With the giant pyramids of Giza bringing such an appropriate and imposing backdrop, there could be no greater or more fitting setting on Earth for such a production.
But now, standing here under a scorching sun on a dusty and deserted road with only the giant, brooding pyramids for company, the distant echoes of such pomp and splendor seemed light-years away, and the once vibrant amphitheater that played host to those annual operatic triumphs had now decayed into silent ruin, the encroaching desert sands slowly but ever so steadily burying what little remained, just as in Verdi’s opera, in which the slave girl Aida, having been lowered into a stone vault with her lover, was buried alive, her life finally extinguished by rising, suffocating sands—a most befitting allegory to the scene that lay before me now.
But time was of the essence. There was a lot to be done, and wandering around the derelict amphitheater was serving only as a distraction. As I turned back toward the road a car appeared out of the haze, flashing by in a blur, followed soon after by a busload of waving, cheering tourists, obviously heading to the viewpoint about a half mile farther down the winding, desert road. They must have wondered what on Earth someone was doing wandering around such a remote part of the plateau in such incredible heat, heading southwest, away from the pyramids, toward the edge of the desert.
I took out a map, found a flat rock, and spread it open, then pored over it for a minute or so, checking my route. I had already marked the location of the amphitheater, my starting point, with a red marker. From here I would have to walk about two miles along the desert road to my next reference point far to the southwest of the pyramid field, and from there just over 1,600 feet due west. Unfortunately my budget could not stretch to the luxury of employing GPS to find this remote and obscure desert location, so I would simply have to find it the good old-fashioned way, using map, compass, pedometer, and fishing line. In my bag I had a reel of fishing line premeasured at 1,606 feet in length—the precise distance I needed to travel due west to my “X” location, my destination and journey’s end. The pedometer had been precalibrated to my walking pace, which was fine on a straight and level road, but farther on, in the undulating and rough terrain at the edge of the desert, it would not be nearly so accurate, hence the precisely measured length of fishing line.
Having quenched my thirst, I set off once more, following the desert road in a southwesterly direction, edging gradually deeper into the desert. Skirting past the gap between the pyramids of Khafre (G2) and Menkaure (G3), I could see, far in the distance, a slow-moving camel train followed in quick succession by three or four riders on horseback, galloping at pace across the billowing desert sands. Even though they were far in the distance, it was good to see them; it didn’t seem so lonely out here. Occasionally a helicopter would swoop overhead, seemingly from out of nowhere, circling the pyramids before heading back to the helipad to the northwest of Khafre’s Pyramid.
What was not so welcome were the occasional Antiquities Guards, patrolling the area on camel and armed to the teeth with semiautomatic firearms. I had seen a couple of them patrolling the area south of Menkaure’s Pyramid just before being dropped off from my taxi. They weren’t guys to take lightly, and I hoped that I wouldn’t come across any on my journey. I could just imagine the scenario:
“What are you doing out here? Where are you going?”
I would smile politely and say, “Oh, I’m just on my way to search for the legendary chamber of Osiris.” Or something to that effect.
Either way, I didn’t imagine such a scenario would end well. The guard would most likely think that I was a few sandwiches short of a full hamper and should be turned around for my own safety or, alternatively, would begin asking for all manner of official documents such as search permits from the Supreme Council of Antiquities, university affiliation papers, and the like—of which I had absolutely none. And without such official documentation, no one is permitted to search for anything in Egypt, and consequently I would most likely be unceremoniously marched out of the area and probably slapped with a permanent ban. So, for sure, it was important that I should stay alert and try as best as I possibly could to minimize the possibility of any such encounters with officialdom.
As I continued along the desert road toward my destination, I turned back every so often to take a well-deserved view of the great triangular structures that were slowly but ever so surely shrinking away in the distance behind me. It was at that moment that I saw just how the ancient architects of these remarkable monuments had presented to us as big a clue as they possibly could in order to indicate to us the means of discovering the precise whereabouts of the legendary chamber of Osiris. There it was, in front of me, as clear as day and in plain sight—the simple
triangle.
Standing there on that quiet desert road, taking in that grand vista, it all seemed so mundanely obvious—and so very simple. The Three Brothers pointing the way.
But it hadn’t always been so. My instinct told me that the concavities of G1 and G3 held the key (the keys of Thoth) to this puzzle, but still I was unable to find the lock. The concavities of G1 and G3 effectively divided the triangular faces of these two pyramids into two smaller triangles, so it seemed to me that the solution lay somewhere in the use of the simple triangle. This shape is ubiquitous at Giza and, as explained in chapter 1, is
especially
highlighted to us in the Great Pyramid’s concave sides during the equinoxes, when the larger triangle of the pyramid face is bisected by shades of light into two smaller triangles. Why demonstrate the triangle being bisected? Had this been done to somehow demonstrate some universal truth, to present a clue of some kind?
I knew that before modern satellite technology, triangulation was the means used by land surveyors to determine an unknown point from the angles of two known points. Could the ancient architects have perhaps built some form of triangulation into the Giza pyramids that could act in some way to allow the pyramids to “point” to a secret location? If so, then how might this have been done?
Long before embarking upon my Giza adventure I had spent many months on my home computer drawing all manner of lines from all manner of significant points on a survey drawing of Giza. It eventually became apparent to me that such an exercise was entirely futile. There were simply too many possibilities pointing to too many different potential locations. If the pyramids had been designed in some way to triangulate to a particular unknown point, then it stood to reason that the rationale employed by the designers would ensure that any such triangulation technique could result in only
one
possible unique location being identified. But how could the three pyramids be used collectively to indicate just
one
unique geographical location? Once again I was stumped.
But it often seems to be the case that just when you think your mind has hit a stone wall, that is exactly the tonic it needs, for in hitting that wall it completely cleared my mind of the cluttered debris of redundant ideas and dead ends that had been rattling around for months, allowing me to start again from scratch. However, one thought remained very firmly fixed in my mind: the words of Djeda—“found by three”; these words were never far from my thoughts. “Found by three.” The three Giza pyramids seemed the
obvious
“three,” but could there be something else, some other fairly obvious “three” that related to triangles that I was not seeing?
THE PENNY DROPS
Up until that moment I had never been a great believer in serendipity, but as I grappled with this seemingly insoluble problem of finding a means by which all three Giza pyramids could collectively be used in a unique manner to somehow indicate a single geographical location, my young son asked me a completely innocuous and random question about triangles for a school math project on which he was working. He wanted to know how to find the center of a triangle. The question was simple enough, and at first there was no spark, no blinding light, no great epiphany. That would happen some minutes after his simple question had time enough to percolate through the filters of my mental reasoning.
I began by explaining to my son that, unlike a circle or a square, a triangle can actually have many
different
“centers.” Today we know of 5,389 different ways to plot unique points (centers) within any particular triangle, but in the ancient world only the three simplest triangle centers were known.
Eureka!
My moment of epiphany had arrived.
There it was; in the ancient world only the
three
simplest triangle centers were known! Finally, the light was switched on.
THE TRIPLE CENTROID
The idea was simple enough. Each of the three main pyramids at Giza might represent one of the three triangle centers that were known in the ancient world—three triangle centers that today we know as
incenter, barycenter,
and
circumcenter
(figures 2.1, 2.2, and 2.3).
1.
The Incenter
This point requires a circle to be inscribed within the triangle whereby the perimeter of the circle touches all three sides of the triangle. The center of the inscribed circle is then plotted, and this point becomes the triangle’s incenter centroid.
Figure 2.1. The incenter centroid
2.
The Barycenter
This point requires a line to be drawn from each of the triangle’s vertices to the midpoint of the opposite parallel. The intersection where the lines meet is plotted, and this point becomes the triangle’s barycenter centroid.
Figure 2.2. The barycenter centroid
3.
The Circumcenter
This point requires a circle to be circumscribed around the triangle in such a way that its perimeter touches all three vertices of the triangle. The center of the circumscribed circle is then plotted, and this point becomes the triangle’s circumcenter centroid.
Figure 2.3. The circumcenter centroid
As stated earlier, each and every triangle can contain
all
of these different “centers” at the same time. But depending on the particular shape and orientation of the triangle, the different centers will fall at different relative positions within the triangle (sometimes even
outside
the triangle). In this regard we can consider the three centers of the three pyramids as each belonging to one of the three most ancient triangle centers, and together they could be used to reverse-engineer the unique triangle that contained these three centers; that is, we could use this understanding of the three triangle centers known in the ancient world and determine the unique triangle that matched the particular configuration of the three pyramid centers.
Reverse-engineering this unique triangle was not as easy a task as I had at first imagined, and it involved countless hours in front of a computer screen testing different-shaped triangles, trying to find a unique triangle whose three inherent centers (incenter, circumcenter, and barycenter) matched the relative disposition of the three pyramid centers. Finally, after many nights falling asleep at my computer desk, I eventually
found a triangle (figure 2.4) whose three latent triangle centers
(incenter, circumcenter, and barycenter) matched the relative disposition
of the three centers of the Giza pyramids.
Figure 2.4. The Giza triple centroid triangle
What is also interesting about this triple-centroid construction is that
the cardinally aligned “cross” of the incenter and circumcenter triangles
naturally aligns with the lines of the concavities of G1 and G3 and seems
to offer an explanation as to why G2 was entirely devoid of these concavities
because, being the barycenter of the reverse-engineered Giza triangle,
there would be no circle and therefore no cardinally aligned cross to indicate
the circle’s center. As such, it rather seemed to me, at that point, that
the architect of these pyramids had perhaps placed the concavities into G1
and G3 so as to present a subtle hint (the cardinally aligned cross of the
concavities alluding to the center of a circle) toward their latent triangle
centers in order that these might be used later by someone to reconstruct
or reverse-engineer this unique, grand triangle over a plan of the Giza pyramids.
And if we consider the two lines that converge at the apex location,
we find that both these lines are oriented generally northeast and southwest
and have the same angle (figure 2.5)—just as the Emerald Tablets of Thoth indicate to us. These “tablets,” which form part of the
Corpus Hermetica
, comprise ancient wisdom texts believed to have been written by the ancient Egyptian god, Thoth the Atlantean, before the Flood.
Figure 2.5. The Great Giza Triangle has two sides at the same
angle: 34°.
So here we have two lines drawn toward the same direction of the Giza plateau and at the same angle—but to what end? What exactly would be the point of such a hidden, grand triangle? Well, not to place too fine a point on it, but the point is the triangle’s
apex
—its endpoint! This unique triangle actually acts like an arrowhead or pointer that targets a very specific location to the southwest of the Giza plateau on the edge of the desert—the very place I was now headed.
As the Emerald Tablets foretold, “Dig ye and find that which I have hidden. There shall ye find the underground entrance to the secrets hidden before ye were men.”
1
Having identified the apex location of the grand triangle on a map of Giza—an apparently inconsequential area to the southwest of the Giza pyramid field—I knew at once that I simply had to get myself to that location. I knew not, of course, what I would find if and when I ever got there, but it seemed to me, based on the legends of the secret chamber, that it would be “found by three.” And the unique nature of the Great Giza Triangle, which itself was “found by three” (i.e., the three pyramid centers corresponding to the three triangle centroids), would be as good a place as any to begin such a search.
But my trip to this remote location in the Egyptian desert would also become something of a pilgrimage, a journey to pay homage to the remarkable builders of these truly awe-inspiring structures. To that end I had taken with me a small pyramid made of Scottish granite—small enough to sit in the palm of my hand. At the apex location I would place my small granite “gift to Osiris” and, in homage, would speak a few words from the “Hymn to Osiris.” This hymn contains the most complete account of the Osiris myth ever recorded by the ancient Egyptians, recounting his death at the hands of his treacherous brother Seth and his resurrection and vindication as the true ruler. In reciting these immortal words I felt as though I would be following in the steps of the ancient Egyptians who venerated this god of rebirth and regeneration; I would also be acknowledging and honoring the tremendous achievement of this ancient people who, by their blood, sweat, and tears, ensured their own (and our) future. And by placing my small pyramid offering at the precise spot the geometry of these great monuments “point” us to, it may also serve as a message to someone who, perhaps ten thousand years from now when our civilization has perhaps been decimated and lost, might understand the same geometry, seek out this very spot, and find this small pyramid that would tell them something of our own civilization.