There are more than seventy Egyptian pyramids, but only three of them became the most famous. These are the tombs of the pharaohs located in Giza - the pyramids of Khafre (Khafre), Cheops (Khufu) and Mekerin (Menkaure). Most of the mysterious legends and inexplicable incidents are associated with them.
It is impossible to say with certainty that today all the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids have been solved, because their priests were very resourceful and inventive. Perhaps our researchers have yet to unravel the riddles of the Sphinx and penetrate into the very essence of Egyptian architecture, science and magic...
Secrets of the Pyramid of Khafre
The height of this structure is 136.5 meters. Its structure is relatively simple - two entrances located on the north side and two chambers. The Pyramid of Khafre was built from stone blocks of different sizes and lined with slabs of white limestone. The top of the pharaoh's tomb is made of beautiful yellow limestone.
It is not safe to try to penetrate the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids! Proof of this is the event that happened to tourists in 1984. An impressive queue stood in front of the entrance to the tunnel leading deeper into the Pyramid of Khafre. Everyone was awaiting the arrival of the group, which went to a compact room with a sarcophagus - the tomb of Pharaoh Khafre, in which the mummy of the ruler was once sealed. It is believed that this pharaoh, in addition to his pyramid, built the mysterious man-lion - the Great Sphinx.
Finally the tourists returned, but what happened to them! People were choking from coughing, staggering from weakness and nausea, their eyes were red. Later, the tourists said that they all simultaneously felt irritation in the respiratory tract, pain in the eyes, and experienced severe lacrimation. The victims were provided with medical assistance and examined, but... No abnormalities were identified. People were told that the tomb of the pharaoh was probably filled with some mysterious gas that had leaked into the tomb in an unknown way.
The tomb was closed, and a commission was urgently convened to solve this mystery of the Egyptian pyramid. Experts have put forward several working versions - the emergence of caustic gases from faults in the depths of the earth's crust, the actions of unknown attackers, and even intervention. But according to the most interesting version, one of the ancient traps equipped by the priests against robbers could be located in the tomb of the pharaoh.
Tomb of Pharaoh Mikerin
The Greeks called Khafre's son and heir Mikerin. To this ruler 
belongs to the smallest of the famous great pyramids. The original height of the structure was 66 meters, today's height is 55.5 meters. Side length is 103.4 meters. The entrance is located on the northern wall, where part of the cladding has been preserved. The tomb of Mikerin also contributed to the formation of legends about the Egyptian pyramids.
In 1837, the Mikerin pyramid was discovered by the English Colonel Howard Vance. In the golden chamber of the tomb, he discovered a sarcophagus made of basalt, as well as a wooden coffin lid carved in the shape of a human figure. This find has been dated as belonging to the era of early Christianity. The sarcophagus was never delivered to England - the ship carrying it from Egypt sank.
There is a legend that the Egyptians adopted some secrets from the Atlanteans who arrived in their country. For example, it is believed that the effect it has on the cells of a living organism depends on the mass and shape of the pyramid. The pyramid can both destroy and heal diseases. It is known that the influence of the field of the Mikerin pyramid is so great that tourists who stay in its critical zone for a long time. Some people entering the tomb of Pharaoh Mikerin faint and suddenly feel a deterioration in their health. You should not try to unravel the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids by trial and error.
Pyramid of Cheops (Khufu)
The records of the Greek historian Herodotus indicate that the tomb of Pharaoh Cheops was built over a period of more than 20 years. During this period, approximately 100,000 people were constantly employed at the construction site. The body of the legendary Cheops pyramid consists of 128 layers of stone, the outer edges of the structure were lined with snow-white limestone. It should be noted that the facing plates are fitted with such precision that it is impossible to insert even a knife blade into the gap between them.
Many researchers have tried to penetrate the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids. Egyptian archaeologist - Mohammed Zakaria Ghoneim discovered an ancient Egyptian pyramid with an alabaster sarcophagus located inside. When the excavations were coming to an end, one of the stone blocks collapsed, taking several workers with it. There was nothing in the sarcophagus raised to the surface.
The Englishman Paul Brighton, having heard that many tourists visiting the tomb of Pharaoh Cheops complained of poor health, decided to experience the influence of the pyramid for himself. The tireless researcher penetrated directly into the burial room of Cheops, which ended very badly for him. After some time, Brighton was discovered and removed from there. The Englishman was in a semi-conscious state; he later admitted that he lost consciousness from indescribable horror.
The Mystery of the Egyptian Pyramid of Tutankhamun
The autumn of 1922 forever left its mark on the history of the development of archaeological science - the English archaeologist Howard Carter discovered the pyramid of Tutankhamun. On February 16, 1923, Carter and Lord Carnarvon (the philanthropist who financed this enterprise) opened the tomb in the presence of several witnesses.
In the sarcophagus room there was a tablet containing an inscription in the ancient Egyptian language, which was deciphered later. The inscription read: “Anyone who disturbs the peace of Pharaoh will be quickly overtaken by death.” When the archaeologist deciphered the tablet, he hid it so as not to confuse his companions and workers with this warning.
Further events developed at a rapid pace. Even before the pharaoh's tomb was opened, Lord Carnarvon received a letter from Count Haymon, an English clairvoyant. In this letter, the Count warned Carnarvon that if he penetrated the secret of the Egyptian pyramid of Tutankhamun, he would suffer a disease that would lead to death. This message greatly alarmed the lord, and he decided to seek advice from the famous fortune teller named Velma. The clairvoyant repeated Count Haimon's warning almost word for word. Lord Carnarvon decided to stop the excavations, but preparations for them had already gone too far. Involuntarily, he had to challenge the mystical forces guarding the tomb of the pharaoh...
57-year-old Lord Carnarvon suddenly fell ill just six weeks later. At first, doctors believed that the disease was the result of mosquito bites. Then it turned out that the lord cut himself while shaving. But be that as it may, the lord soon died, and the cause of his death remained unclear.
This incident is not limited to the death of Lord Carnarvon. Within a year, five more members of this expedition, who penetrated the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids, die. Among them were conservationist Mace, English literature professor La Fleur, Carter's secretary Richard Bethel, and radiologist Wood. Mace died at the same hotel where Carnarvon died, also of unknown cause. Before his death, he began to complain of attacks of weakness, experienced melancholy and apathy. Over the course of several years, 22 people who were in one way or another related to the excavations and research of the pharaoh’s tomb died suddenly and quickly.
Strange but true: Lord Canterville transported on the Titanic the perfectly preserved mummy of Amenophis the Fourth, an Egyptian soothsayer who lived during the time of Amenhotep the Fourth. This mummy was removed from a small tomb above which the temple towered. Her peace was protected by those who accompanied the mummy on this journey. Under the head of the mummy there was a tablet with an inscription and an image of Osiris. The inscription read: “Wake up from the faint in which you are, and triumph over all intrigues against you.”
Why were the pyramids of Giza built?
Such majestic structures could be not only the tombs of the pharaohs. The secrets of the Egyptian pyramids have not been solved to this day. And yet there are some assumptions regarding their purpose. Pyramids can be:
- encyclopedias of knowledge, a kind of treasury of Egyptian wisdom ();
- astronomical observatories;
- barriers against sand coming from the desert;
- standards of architecture;
- alien information capsules;
- border fortresses and even a berth for Noah's ark.
And this is only a small part of the assumptions made regarding these architectural structures. As you can see, the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids have not yet been solved...
One of these unsolved mysteries- the fantastic speed of construction with which each tomb of the pharaoh was erected. Scientists calculated it based on the life expectancy of the rulers, the time of the Nile flood, and other factors. It turned out that 4 blocks were installed every minute, and 240 every hour! And this is only with the help of primitive mechanisms - levers, ropes, etc. There is even an incredible assumption that the Egyptian priests possessed the secret of overcoming the law of attraction.
Who will master all the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids? What power lies within these timeless walls? Perhaps we have yet to witness the discoveries of modern researchers. Or maybe the tomb of the pharaoh is waiting for you?
Ancient Egypt. Do we know everything about this most famous country, about its history? Let's look at this antiquity from the other side. Since the first photographs appeared, what the antiquities actually looked like at that time, because the Sphinx was then still covered in sand up to its head. Let's look at the remnants of "Hellenistic culture" in the form of "Fayum portraits" and the "Rosetta Stone" when Egypt was under the rule of ancient Rome. This culture was destroyed by Napoleon, along with the cultural heritage of the Mamluks and their power. We will also try to find out who the Hyksos are and why the Slavic haplogroup R1A is present among the Jewish people.
When the first photographs appeared, the scientific world, interested in revealing the many secrets of ancient Egypt, hastened to capture the ancient majestic monuments, sensational at that time, in photographs. Expeditions were equipped one after another, but the predecessor of these historical discoveries was Napoleon's military campaign in Egypt. What was most important for this, the destruction of the Mamluk dynasty and the overthrow of their power, the destruction of inconvenient artifacts or other reasons, we can only guess.
Of course, Egypt is full of all sorts of secrets, for example, in the photographs below, what is this, electric lighting? Scientists tried to recreate ancient lighting fixtures according to the images and, lo and behold, it all worked, it’s not for nothing that in huge dungeons there is no soot from torches and candles.
When the first photographs of Egypt appeared, the ancient monuments appeared before us not in at its best, almost everywhere there are complete ruins. Later, after the restoration, we will admire the technologies of the ancients and admire their achievements, but for now let’s see what they looked like in the beginning.
When the tombs were discovered, scientists tried to capture this sensation in photographs, here is one of the tombs with the burial of Tutankhamun and its ancient treasures.
Statues of a pharaoh guarding the sealed doors between them. On the right side there is a large funeral bouquet. In the foreground on the right is a chest, on the vaulted lid of which there are paintings depicting a lion on the hunt, the walls are decorated with battle scenes of the pharaoh’s wars against African and Asian enemies. Inside are Tutankhamun's clothes. The oblong drawer contains the king's underwear. Hathor, the cow goddess, forms one side of the royal ceremonial divan.
In the foreground on the right is a pharaoh's chair, made of solid ebony, inlaid ivory and gold. The legs of the chair are made in the shape of duck heads, and the seat is covered with animal skin. In the background there is a large wooden chest, and below it is the throne of the pharaoh, covered in gold and silver, inlaid with semi-precious stones. On the back of the throne is a tablet with the names of the pharaoh and his wife. On the left side are parts of the four royal chariots. They bear the name of Tutankhamun and the cartouche of his wife Ankhsenamun.
On each side of the vases are depicted lotuses and attached papyri, on which are inscribed symbols meaning "one hundred thousand years." These scrolls signify the unity of the “Two Lands” - Upper and Lower Egypt. Although the ointments spent 3,300 years in Tutankhamun's tomb, they retained their aroma.
The wooden statue is covered with black resin. The headdress, collar, armlets, bracelets, dresses, mace are gilded, and the sandals are made of gold. On the forehead is a cobra inlaid with bronze and gold. The eye sockets and eyebrows are golden, the eyes are made of aragonite.
In ancient Egypt, not only people, but also animals were mummified.
The favorite pets of rich Egyptians, especially the nobility and pharaohs, were obliged to serve their masters in the other world. Sacred animals were supposed to be present in the afterlife of people. A separate category consisted of animals and their parts intended for food.
Pets were killed in a non-traumatic way - x-rays showed no signs of violence on their mummies. Everyone else simply went under the knife. In total, the ancient Egyptians embalmed thousands of animals of various sizes - from geese to bulls. It is interesting that in burials there are examples of “hackwork”, when mummifiers extremely carelessly packaged pieces of meat for their high-ranking customers.
Based on the found artifacts of Egypt, entire sciences have emerged to study them. The most interesting thing for scientists was the deciphering of the Egyptian sign letter, which could not be deciphered. And then at one time there was hope that the Egyptian letter would finally be read. On June 15, 1799, an officer of the French troops P. Bouchard, during the construction of a fort near the Arab town of Rosetta, located in the western part of the Nile Delta, found a stone with writing, which was called Rosetta.
This stone was sent to the Egyptian Institute in Cairo. Since the French fleet was completely destroyed by the English fleet under the command of Admiral Nelson, as a result of which the connection between Napoleon’s troops and France was interrupted, the French command decided to leave Egypt, handing over the found ancient Egyptian monuments, including the Rosetta Stone, to the British. The latter, in turn, completed what Napoleon started - they finished off the remnants of the Egyptian nobility, the Mamluks.
The Rosetta Stone is 114.4 cm high and 72.3 cm wide. It is a fragment of a high stele. Three inscriptions are engraved on the front surface of the stone: in the upper part there is a hieroglyphic text, in the middle there is a demotic text, and at the bottom there is a text in ancient Greek. Basically, 32 lines of demotic text have been preserved. Only the last fourteen lines of the hieroglyphic text have been preserved, but they have also been broken off, all fourteen on the right side, twelve on the left. The hieroglyphic inscriptions on the stone go from right to left, as the heads of people and animals face to the right. Thus, the endings of two lines (thirteenth and fourteenth) have remained unchanged to this day, which made it possible to decipher the ancient Egyptian hieroglyphic writing.
In 2005, Macedonian scientists T. Boshevski and A. Tentov presented to the international scientific community a work that was the result of research carried out as part of the project “Deciphering the Middle Text of the Rosetta Stone,” which was carried out with the support of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts. In 2003, when starting their research, Macedonian scientists were confident that the language of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone, which they were going to study, must definitely have the characteristics of a Slavic language. Macedonian scientists decided that since Ancient Egypt was ruled for a long time by the ancient Slavic Ptolemaic dynasty, whose homeland was ancient Macedonia, then the decipherment of demotic writing must be carried out on the basis of Slavic languages.
Their hypothesis was confirmed and as a result of the research that scientists came to, the identification and sound identification of the syllabic graphemes of the average text of the Rosetta Stone, denoting 27 consonants and 5 vowels, became possible. The language of the middle text of the Rosetta Stone is Proto-Slavic.
Modern science supports the theory that two scripts - hieroglyphic and demotic - were used to write the act of state on the Rosetta Stone in one language - ancient Egyptian. That is, the same language was used to write the middle text and the text at the top of the Rosetta Stone. Macedonian scientists T. Boshevsky and A. Tentov proved that when writing the middle text of the Rosetta Stone, one of the ancient Slavic languages was used. Consequently, when deciphering hieroglyphic text, one of the Slavic languages should also be used. Below is a translation of the text, but it must be taken into account that some records are chipped off on the stone on the right and left.
Here's how the translation sounded:
1. We honor and appreciate the wounded shooters, they need to get back on their feet...
2. The very veneration of the Father and the Son has passed. There is no praise for You. We honor the sun with the gods. We bow to the wounded early, and in the afternoon...
3. And the Sun of God lives me with His rays. With His grace He satisfies the hungry. We ourselves are imbued with these praises, saving our souls. If our warriors...
4. 3000 honors these, and we will pierce in order to wash away and drive away. We pierce, not aiming at You: we pierce for the sake of particles. Her Son lives! His Name will drive away the offspring of Satan, so that with Him...
5. We will preserve Her veneration, we will preserve Her sayings in the scriptures. The Antichrist lies himself. This creature considers it alien. Destroy her! He gives this poison to those who are not his own to drink, and so we drink it!
6. They are not the snakes that were spoken of. After all, they don't belong to her. Yours, King, Who called Her the Sun, we see living faces! Yours, Who called Her Lamb.
7. There are three hundred new gods. Ours is Two. We honor the Two, we honor, we value, we reverence, we exalt, being God’s fishers. Tell everyone, tell everyone. Get people interested, talk about yours to others: “We are the sons of the King, Who Called Her the Sun”...
8. This brainchild is alien to us. Do not honor the new gods, because they are vile. Remember the covenants. Can we really be afraid of this, since we honor our own? “They are strangers to you. We see that we honor and venerate,” they will tell you...
9. Thinks: “Love me, rutens.” But I see: neither one’s own speech flows - another revered one... And we honor that one, and with this we show devotion. So that this family of hers would be tormented by spirits of evil - both. Night darkness...
10. “She doesn’t moan, but breathes. Our ruler is running behind. So we are the sheep behind him,” we say. “And we ourselves, jokingly, are prostrate. We are trying to stop the baby’s crying. A baby who has escaped torture and death itself.” It was Rus...
11. ...Her Niva. We already speak to other gods. Upper Rome, your gods are alien spirits, not kings in the Father and the Son. No one hears the words of their lips. O Lower Rome, you are the horror itself! And in it, in Rome...
12. ... Who called Her the Sun, we see countless. Let us honor, thank, and appreciate the resurrected thousands of sons for this. They did not resurrect themselves. We are only gods in it. Other faces strengthen our faith. We see it and we will see it again. Both we and the warriors...
13. "...We look at the sun. We give it to them. They are revered as saints, already during their lifetime. I will give it to him and his wife. We see the veneration of these two. But they acquired the mind of someone else, and the men of Lower Rome They worship only the revered husband. After all, they are not gods."
14. Alive, Zheno... The kings have already said: this king is outside her. She glorifies You, the Risen One. After all, these new gods are alien to her. We see You, the King, Who called Her the Sun.
As we see, this is the time of “ancient Rome”, with which they are so unhappy. Roman power in Egypt left its Hellenistic trace, these are the so-called Fayum portraits.
Hellenism was formed as a result of the campaigns of Alexander the Great to the East. The Greek states that formed after this campaign created the ground for mixing the culture of the conquerors and local peoples. This mixture of ancient tradition with the traditions of ancient Egypt, Persia, etc., is Hellenism. The Roman Empire, having conquered most of the Hellenistic states, also entered the cultural area of Hellenism. And on this basis of the synthesis of Western and Eastern traditions, the great Byzantine culture later arose.
This discovery in Egypt of half-looted burials from the period of Roman rule became a sensation of sorts. In 1887, mummies were discovered in the Fayum oasis, appearance which differed from those that had been found so far. Traditionally, Egyptian mummies were enclosed in cases or sarcophagi, which were decorated with masks that reproduced the features of the deceased. But in the Fayum burials there were no masks; instead, there were picturesque portraits of the deceased. These portraits had an indelible effect on the cultural public of the late 19th century. They continue to amaze today.
Since most of the artifacts were found precisely in the area of the Fayum oasis, the name “Fayum portraits” was assigned to them. Although later similar paintings were discovered in other regions of Egypt: in Memphis, Antinopolis, Akhmim and Thebes.
In total, more than 900 portraits have been found to date. The time of creation of these portraits of the 1st-3rd centuries AD. - the time when Egypt was conquered by the Romans. Several centuries earlier, Egypt was ruled by the Greek Ptolemaic dynasty - descendants of one of the comrades-in-arms of Alexander the Great. The ruling elite, of course, were also Greeks. Therefore, it is not surprising that simultaneously with traditional Egyptian art there existed the art of the Greek conquerors and the synthesized Hellenistic art, which absorbed both traditions.
This affected all aspects of the cultural and religious life of the ancient Egyptians of this period, including funeral rites. We have reached examples of funerary images made both in the more ancient, proper Egyptian tradition (relief funeral masks), and in the newer Greco-Roman tradition (funerary portraits).
It is well known that the ancient Egyptians attached great importance to the afterlife. And funerary images were one of the most important aspects of life beyond the grave. The ancient Egyptians believed that after the death of a person, his mystical double - Ka - is separated from the body, but he can inhabit the image of the deceased and thus receive new life. It was for this purpose that the Egyptians made various images of the deceased. It was very important that the artist achieve maximum resemblance of the image to the deceased, otherwise Ka might not recognize his portrait and would be doomed to wander.
Fayum portraits were not just an image of a person, not just a “photograph” that would convey his momentary appearance. They depicted a person “from the point of view of eternity,” the artists sought to depict not just the external appearance of the deceased, but his eternal soul (although, of course, the word “soul” in this case should be used with a certain degree of caution, because ideas about it in ancient Egyptian religion does not really coincide with Christian teaching). One way or another, the Fayum portrait is an image of an eternal, in a certain sense, immortal personality.
It is precisely this circumstance that makes the Fayum portrait similar to the icon. And just as Hellenic philosophers are sometimes called “Christians before Christ,” since ancient philosophy prepared the soil on which theology grew, so the Fayum portrait can, in a sense, be called “an icon before icon painting.”
Lately there has been a lot of literature on bookstores covering the Jewish question. The Jewish people are inextricably linked with the history of ancient Egypt; even in the Bible, a lot of time is devoted to this people. Much has been written about their character, goals, worldview, influence on the culture of other nations, economics, etc. But the question arises, why is it the Jewish issue that is being discussed, and not the Ukrainian, Georgian, Tatar or any other nationality? How are Jews different from any other nation? The fact that they are scattered, but gypsies also roam all over the world. But no one cares about the gypsy issue. To understand the question that worries many, let’s turn to primary sources that would give answers to these questions:
Where, when and how did the Jews appear? So far, the only source is the Torah (Pentateuch of Moses - Old Testament). "Slavery and the Exodus". It is known that the Jews wanted to leave Egypt, but Pharaoh persisted, and God sent ten plagues to the Egyptian people as punishment. Before the tenth plague, in the month of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, the Lord said to Moses: “Let this month be the beginning of your months” (Exodus 12:2). That is, this is the starting point for the beginning of the calculation of the Jewish people. But why not earlier? Here's why. “As established by science. In general, Jews have never been to Egypt” (V. Kandyba
"Emotional Hypnosis" p.42). What is happening, the Jews left Egypt? - Yes, they left.
Were they there? - No. To answer these two mutually exclusive questions, we need to look deep into the history of Egypt. 1700 BC Aryan warriors on horses and chariots from what is now Ukraine, Russia and the North Caucasus moved south and easily conquered Egypt. The fair-haired and blue-eyed Hyksos (as the Egyptians called them) settled the Nile Delta and built their capital, Avaris. The rulers of Southern Egypt recognized the power of the Hyksos. The Hyksos simplified Egyptian writing and helped create an alphabetic writing system. Some of the Hyksos mixed with the local population - mestizos appeared. These mestizos form the Semitic tribes.
But the Hyksos made one big mistake, for which they paid in the future - they did not eliminate the priestly class of Egypt. The priests of Egypt had enormous knowledge; they were interested not only in earthly affairs, but also in biology, astrology, sociology and even anatomy. (V. Prus "Pharaoh"). With the help of Ahmose I in 1550 BC. the priests abolished the power of the Hyksos, and they were faced with a task; what to do with them?
Egyptian priests of the cult of Amon, after analyzing the international situation, came to the conclusion that Palestine was the main transit hub of the then caravan and sea routes in the Mediterranean. Thebes and Memphis, standing apart from trade routes and related information flows, became inconvenient for the management of the Mediterranean-West Asian civilization as a whole.
For the hierarchs of the priests of Amon, who encroached on world domination, it was advisable to take possession of the main information hub. But, keeping in mind the military failures of Egypt’s many wars with Canaan, the hierarchy of Amun’s witchcraft was the first in history to develop the concept of a cold war for world domination by the method of “cultural” cooperation, in which psychological treatment of both the enemy, and most importantly, the social group, used as an instrument of aggression , which goes beyond their understanding of the world, takes precedence over the weapons of war that are understandable to most in the usual sense of the word, as a means of destroying the basis of the life of society and oppressing people. The transition to war by intangible means made aggression invisible to its victims for many centuries.
After the goals were determined, little remained. Where can I find this social group?
Luckily for the Egyptian priests, this “tool” was at hand. At that time, both pure Hyksos and mestizos lived in Egypt. It is clear that it is easier to process mestizos than pure Hyksos. These ethnic groups are being separated.
Pure Hyksos move to the upper reaches of the Nile, and mestizos to the lower reaches. After this operation, the priests Moses and Aron are introduced into the mestizos society. It is difficult for any crowd to organize itself; a shepherd is needed. After a certain time, after the ideological indoctrination of the mestizos, the exodus from Egypt takes place (About 1443-1350 BC). So that the pure Hyksos would not get in the way during the Sinai tour, they were kept for another 100 years, and then expelled from Egypt. Although the Hyksos were in Egypt for about 200 years, archaeological information about them is abundant.
According to the Bible, the Jews lived in Egypt for about 400 years from the time of Joseph until the Exodus. But it’s strange, no matter how hard archaeologists try, they don’t find traces of their presence in Egypt, and they won’t find them unless they slip in some nonsense.
Now consider the liberation from slavery and the forty-year campaign in Sinai.
When questioning Jews: “Why did Moses lead your ancestors for 40 years through the desert, which is equal in size to the Crimean Peninsula?” The answer was always of this nature: “To knock out the spirit of slavery.”
“Well, let’s say” - “And when Nebuchadnezzar captured the Jewish state and kept the Jews captive for 70 years, why didn’t they make a trip to some desert again?” The response is a shrug.
Let's go back to slavery and the Exodus. Before the exodus, Moses turned to “the children of Israel, that they should take their flocks and herds” (Exodus 12:32), “so that each one from his neighbor and each one from her neighbor should ask for silver and gold and clothing” (Exodus 11 :2). “And they (the Egyptians) gave to him (the people of Israel), and he robbed the Egyptians” (Exodus 12:34).
Yes, one can only dream of such slavery. The fact that the “sons of Israel” did not really want to leave Egypt, and that “slavery” even suited them, is noted more than once in the Bible.
“Isn’t this what we told you in Egypt, saying: leave us, let us work for the Egyptians?” (Exodus 14:12).
“Is it not enough that you brought us up from a land flowing with milk and honey to destroy us in the wilderness” (Numbers 16:13).
“Oh that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the meat pots, when we ate our fill of bread!” (Exodus 16:3).
“We remember the fish that they ate freely in Egypt, the cucumbers and melons and onions and onions and garlic” (Numbers 11:5). Those. One conclusion suggests itself. A bunch of people were fooled and lured into the desert, and you already know the rest.
Why do Jews have haplogroup R1A, after all, it belongs to the Slavic-Aryans?
Let's start with the fact that in the formed Khazar Khaganate, the Khazar Slavs and Turks adopted Judaism. From the Khazar Slavs a vast tribe of Jews was formed, which bears the name Ashkenazi. Sephardim are those Jews who came there from Persia and Babylon, but among them there is a small part of the Slavic haplogroup “I”. Haplogroup "J" among Jews is the largest, but here's what's interesting.
When the Jewish people appeared, we know well from the Bible, which is readily used by historians, archaeologists, and now geneticists. Meanwhile, the division of haplogroup J into two groups according to DNA genealogy occurred about ten thousand years ago (10,000!), i.e. when there were no traces of Jews. And, therefore, one of the two haplogroups: J1 or J2 cannot in any way be ancestral for the Jewish people. Or even both groups. Because in addition to haplogroups J1 and J2 (according to the most representative publication of DNA data (Hammer, 2009) J2 prevails over J1), Jews have a high percentage of people having haplogroups (in descending order) E (Hitler's haplogroup), G, R1b, R1a and even Siberian Q.
Therefore, the basic haplogroup of Jews could be any of several listed above (J1, J2, E; others from the list are less likely). But scientific publications stubbornly obscure this picture of the frequency of haplogroups among Jews, reducing everything either to J1 + J2, or even just to J1 alone. The rest of the haplogroups are simply not noticed. It’s difficult to call such manipulation of DNA data sleight of hand, or anything else.
DNA analyzes of the descendants of the Levites also turned out to be unexpected. Only 10% of Ashkenazi Jews had one of the haplogroups J, and the rest had Indo-European R1a (half of all Ashkenazi Levites), Western European (according to AB - the Semitic-Hurrian haplogroup of the Pelasgians) R1b, as well as E, I, N, Q, etc. Among the Sephardi Levites, the picture is different: about 40% have haplogroup J, but a measly R1a. As you can see, there are a lot of oddities in the genealogy of Jews; traditional science cannot provide convincing explanations. Science also does not like to remember the dispersion of the Jews after the destruction of the Kingdom of Israel by ancient Rome.
Well, our haplogroup R was found in Southern Siberia. It was formed from the parent haplogroup P, and (apparently) its “brother”, haplogroup Q, was also formed there. Therefore, their genomes should be very similar. Haplogroup Q largely (or noticeably) went to America and became the American Indians. Haplogroup R continued to produce new descending haplogroups - R1, R1a, R1b, which largely went to Europe many millennia ago (R1a came to Europe 8-10 thousand years ago, R1b - about 5 thousand years ago), R is noticed in particular , in the Caucasus, and in general should be scattered along the entire migration route from Southern Siberia, like haplogroups R1a and R1b, which are still found in Siberia, and among the Uyghurs, and among the Turks, and in general along the entire route up to Europe , and, of course, in Europe, where R1a occupies half of Eastern Europe, and R1b more than half of Western Europe. In other words, haplogroups R and Q diverged in diametrically opposite directions, but had very similar genomes.
What language could the Hyksos speak if not Proto-Slavic? The decipherment of the inscriptions on the Rosetta Stone also showed the origins of the Proto-Slavic language. It took Egyptian healers almost 500 years to smoothly translate their patients from Proto-Slavic into Hebrew. But the traces remained. In order to hide the truth from the Jews about their true origin, the authors of the Bible, the priests of the cult of Amon, never mention the Hyksos in the “holy” book, although the time of the Hyksos’ domination in Egypt and the “Egyptian captivity” coincide. And from the plot of Genesis it turns out that the “Jews” did not notice that for 150 years they were in captivity by the Hyksos along with the Egyptians. So there was something to hide.
Distribution of haplogroups among Jews according to FTDNA information.
Haplogroups:
J1c3d - 17.3%, most of it since formation.
- E1b1b1 - 18.2%, an ancient haplogroup and different subclades could have entered at different times. Probably most of them after the exodus from Egypt.
- J2a4 - 16.3%, most of them at the initial stage, some after the Babylonian captivity and some already in Europe.
- R1b - 14.9%, cannot be reliably established, but probably at the initial stage of formation, and some are already in Europe.
- I - 3.9%, it could be called x, Aryan, Hyperborean, Ruthenian, but the truth is kept silent.
Q1b - 3.6%, possibly after the Babylonian captivity, and possibly later from the Khazars.
J2b - 4.2%, haplogroups J1 and J2 are not exclusive to Jews. To varying degrees, they are found among many Caucasian peoples, which does not at all indicate their Jewishness; they are observed among residents of the Mediterranean, people from the Middle East, and quite a lot of it in India.
- G (G1, G2a, G2c) - 7.5%, cannot be reliably established, but probably at the initial stage of formation.
- R2 - 1.6%, probably from among European gypsies in the Middle Ages.
- R1a1 - 7.9%, possibly after the Babylonian captivity, and possibly later from the Khazars.
- T1 - 3.1%, cannot be reliably established, but probably at the initial stage of formation.
- E1(xE1b1b1) - 1.4%.
Now globalization is moving by leaps and bounds across the planet, everything will come down to building a completely new society on the whole Earth, with a single religion and a single government. Again, like in the song: “we old world we will destroy, and then...", but with one amendment. Those who have it written on their foreheads that they are the chosen ones must bring this new world on a "plate with a silver lining" to those who created them and who shepherds this flock, and the "chosen ones" themselves will go to the slaughter. It is not without reason that artifacts are destroyed, history is rewritten, libraries are burned, museums are looted, as in Egypt (Cairo) or antiquities are destroyed, as in Syria. Those who once created this history based on antiquities, now it is being destroyed.
The Egyptian pyramids, the only one of the “seven wonders of the world” that have come down to us, have not only caused surprise for many centuries, but also attracted researchers from around the world. Archaeologists, Egyptologists, mathematicians, and nowadays physicists, chemists and architects put forward various hypotheses and assumptions, trying to understand the purpose of the pyramids and explain how 5 thousand years ago builders, possessing only primitive tools and tools, were able to erect megaliths that would amaze even our contemporaries with its grandeur and precision of engineering calculations. This is what official or, in other words, orthodox Egyptology believes...
More than 90 pyramids have survived to this day. Some of them have collapsed over time, despite the fact that there is an Arabic proverb: “Everything in the world is afraid of time, and time is afraid of the pyramids!” Part of the pyramids is currently covered with sand. The pyramids are located on a rocky plateau that separates the fertile Nile Valley from the dead Libyan desert.
neither. They rise, lined up for 65 kilometers from Cairo to Fayum, as if in a huge parade square, where they are inspected daily by the Egyptian Sun God,
Scientists believe that there were significantly more pyramids in Ancient Egypt than have been discovered to date. In connection with this, in recent decades, international scientific expeditions have carried out intensive excavations, for example in the Saqqara area (south of Cairo), where the most ancient pyramid Pharaoh Djoser.
According to indirect evidence, this is where similar structures should be hidden. Back in the early 1980s, attempts were made to carry out excavations in the depths of the sand deposits, but they did not lead to anything. Success came when archaeologists decided to demolish the top of one of the sand hills. Underneath was stonework, and soon another step pyramid was discovered, made of massive monoliths. According to preliminary data, this tomb was built 4,700 years ago. It will take a lot of time to fully research it...
None of the monuments of antiquity, in all likelihood, was the subject of such reverent treatment and not one of them was heaped with so much pseudoscientific and almost mystical nonsense as about the three pyramids - Cheops (Khufu), Khafre (Khafre) and Mikerin (Menkaura).
In a burst of enthusiasm unprecedented before or since, the pharaohs of the Fourth Dynasty are believed to have built these pyramids between 2700 and 2550 BC. To implement their plans, 11 million cubic meters of stone were broken out in quarries, delivered to the construction site and laid in the bodies of the pyramids, in temples and pavements.
Granite for finishing the pyramids in Giza was transported, for example, from the Aswan region, 1000 kilometers away. Meanwhile, Egypt of the Ancient and Middle Kingdom eras did not yet know the wheel. It appeared in this country only in the 17th century before
AD, during the era of the Hyksos invasion. But the wheel would still be of little use, since under such a weight it would sink up to its hub in the soft muddy soil... ; Despite scientific research carried out for centuries, despite numerous excavations and a whole stream of highly scientific works, no one to this day knows exactly how the ancient Egyptians delivered
stone blocks from quarries to the pyramids, what methods of organizing work and geodetic techniques they used to achieve incredible accuracy in the construction of these gigantic structures.
There has been a lot of debate and is happening now about the purpose of the pyramids, but for some reason the Cheops pyramid has always served as a starting point both for numerous studies and for the formulation of various hypotheses, guesses and even fictions... This assumption, however, has certain grounds, since there is an opinion that all the other pyramids of Egypt are just an attempt to imitate it without understanding and the intention of putting any special scientific meaning into their construction.
It is strange that the Pyramid of Cheops is not mentioned in early Egyptian written sources. The first mentions of it are found among the Greeks and Romans who traveled through Egypt. However, there is an alternative point of view that there seems to be no reason to believe that this pyramid had a different purpose than the other 90 of its smaller and even very small “sisters”...
And yet, numerous circumstances make it possible to give the Cheops pyramid the “palm” among other contenders for research. First of all, it really is a “pyramid of pyramids” (or Great Pyramid). For example, it was built so carefully that the gaps between its stone blocks are no more than 5 millimeters wide; one side of the base is only 20 centimeters longer than the other - this is an error of only 0.0009%!.. Its edges are quite accurately oriented to the cardinal points, and the deviation from the true north-south direction is approximately only 5 arc minutes.
The Cheops Pyramid is built from two and a half million blocks, each weighing on average 2.5 tons (the heaviest about 15 tons); its height is 147 meters, the length of the base side is 230 meters; volume - more
2.5 million cubic meters; this structure weighs more than six million tons...
Many people came to the pyramids. You can’t count how many of them there were - conquerors and adventurers, ordinary robbers and civilized marauders who transported the treasures of ancient Egyptian culture to European museums and private collections, scientists and madmen, travelers and military intelligence officers... All of them were amazed by what they saw: both the hidden greatness and the harsh severity and silent beauty...
KHAPHREN'S PYRAMID INCIDENT
The event discussed below occurred in April 1984. As always, there were tourists at the Pyramid of Khafre - the second largest on the Giza plateau after the majestic Great Pyramid. A rather impressive queue stood at the entrance to the tunnel leading into the bowels of the pyramid. They were waiting for a group of tourists to appear from a dark passage, having previously gone to Khafre’s burial chamber - a small room with an empty sarcophagus, where once there was the mummy of the ruler, who, in addition to his pyramid, is believed to have built the Great Sphinx - the mysterious “human colva.”
And finally they appeared, but in what form! People emerged from the tunnel, choking from coughing, with red eyes, staggering from nausea and weakness. Then the tourists said that they all felt pain in the eyes, irritation in the respiratory tract, and severe lacrimation. Many later claimed that they had difficulty breathing.
They tried to provide first aid to the injured tourists, during which it turned out that the best medicine is fresh air. Nevertheless, they were subjected to a scrupulous medical examination, but no concrete results were obtained, despite numerous
tests, it didn’t work. It was announced that a mysterious gas had leaked into the pyramid through an unknown means.
The pyramid was closed to visitors, and a special commission was urgently created. She had to determine the source and chemical composition of the gas, which was believed to have neither color nor odor and spread throughout the few rooms of the pyramid. Those responsible for tourism in Egypt just shrugged their shoulders, and the local and world press once again remembered the “curse of the pharaohs,” which we will talk about a little later...
Immediately after the incident with tourists in the Pyramid of Khafre, several working hypotheses were put forward to try to explain what happened. According to one of them, gases dangerous to humans could emerge from the bowels of the earth through faults in the earth’s crust; according to another, it was caustic gases from the Cairo sewer system that somehow penetrated the pyramid; according to the third, these are the actions of a certain attacker who released an unknown gas into the premises of the pyramid and whose handkerchief with a suspiciously irritating smell was allegedly discovered...
However, the most interesting version for historians is the one that claims that the unknown gas that appeared in the pyramid is clearly artificial. In other words, that he is one of the traps that the ancient builders built on the path of the robbers who attempted to destroy the tombs of the pharaohs, their relatives, high officials and rich people in general.
This version has the right to exist. The fact is that the ancient Egyptians actually robbed their rich dead. There are a large number of papyri from the end of the New Kingdom, telling about the trials of tomb defilers, who were a constant object of desire for treasure hunters of all stripes and ranks. Judging by the testimony of the accused and witnesses, everyone was robbed - from priests and high officials to simple slaves.
Gangs of robbers literally followed on the heels of the funeral processions, hoping to profit at the expense of the pharaohs... The builders secretly took down the plans of the tombs, entered into an agreement with the guards, and sometimes with the priests. And they calmly carried the treasures outside. If it was not possible to reach an agreement, such plans were left as a legacy to the children, who later carried out what their fathers had planned.
As an example, we can recall the robbery in Giza of the tomb of Queen Hetep-Heres, the mother of Pharaoh Cheops. She was robbed almost the day after the funeral. But the dignitaries in charge of the security were afraid to tell the truth to the ruling pharaoh. They only reported that there had been an attempted robbery, but everything remained untouched. And then, in the dead of night, secretly from everyone, including the pharaoh, they moved all the valuables still remaining in the tomb to another place...
Historical facts indicate that, despite the solid walling of the tombs and all sorts of traps (“wolf pits”; labyrinths; falling boulders from above that blocked the entrances and exits; filling the buildings with tons of sand falling from above, etc.), Almost all ancient tombs were robbed...
But let’s return to our story... The Egyptian Ministry of Culture and the Department of Antiquities “liked” the version about the attacker, which they immediately adopted. True, representatives of the chemical service of the Egyptian army were also called to the area of the Pyramid of Khafre. They took air samples from all the corridors, manholes and interior spaces of the pyramid to carry out the necessary tests, but no official results were reported.
From this it was concluded that there was indeed a dangerous basin in the pyramid; but they don’t want to report this so as not to scare away visitors. Now the Pyramid of Khafre has long been “rehabilitated” and, as before, welcomes tourists. However, although small, the unresolved mystery of the Pyramid of Khafre still remains...
ASPERGILUS FLAVUS - “CURSE OF THE PHARAOHS”
For a long time, there have been legends that pharaohs take revenge on people who risked disturbing their eternal peace... These legends about the so-called curse of the pharaohs are usually associated with the famous Valley of the Kings, which is located near present-day Luxor and which the rulers of Ancient Egypt chose during the New Kingdom as his final resting place. About eighty years ago, in November 1922, a certain Howard Carter, a young and ambitious English archaeologist, excavated the tomb of Tutankhamun. He managed to open the only burial chamber in it, almost untouched by the robbers. The word “almost” is used here because next to the tomb lay three skeletons of ancient robbers who did not manage to carry away the rich booty...
Until recently, it was believed that the scientist and his titled patron Lord Carnarvon, who paid the expenses of the expedition for many years, only looked through the well at the found tomb and immediately called the Egyptian authorities. It turned out, however, that before the arrival of officials, Carter and Carnarvon managed to “add” the most valuable things to their personal collections. This belated but sensational statement was made by the former director of the American Metropolitan Museum of Art Hoving in his book “In Search of Tutankhamun” published in the late 70s of the 20th century. Its author notes that the stolen treasures were subsequently sold to American museums, whose directors diligently concealed the origin of these exhibits... But let's return to the tomb of Tutankhamun...
From below to the very top it was filled with wonderful works of art of the ancient Egyptians. With the precision of a scientist, Carter later described this historical event, each of the things found and handed over to the Egyptian authorities. But I missed two details, although they
as some witnesses claim, they are immediately noticeable. The first of them is a clay stele, or, more precisely, an inscription on it:
“Death will come on its wings to those who disturb the peace of Pharaoh.”
No less ominous was the second inscription - on the statue of the guardian angel at the entrance to the tomb:
“It is I who drives away the tomb robbers with the flames of the desert, I am the keeper of the tomb of Tutankhamun.”
And then the incomprehensible happened: within a few months, out of the twenty people present at the opening of the seals, thirteen people left for another world. And mainly under strange circumstances...
On November 26, 1922, Carter, together with Carnarvon, whose money was used to organize the excavations, opened the pharaoh’s sarcophagus, and on April 6, 1923, Lord Carnarvon died unexpectedly at the Continental Hotel, having fallen ill with a fever caused by a mosquito bite.
In the same Continental Hotel, American archaeologist Arthur Mace, who was present at the sacrament and celebration of the opening of the tomb, died of an unknown transient disease. The first victims were followed by others: Carnarvon’s wife died from an insect bite, radiologist Weed, who examined the pharaoh’s mummy right in the tomb, English writer La Fleur, conservation specialist Mace and Carter’s secretary, Richard Bethel. By 1930, of the direct participants in the excavations, only Howard Carter remained alive...
And in the early 1980s, this sad list of “victims of the tomb” was replenished. On this list were the pilot and flight engineer of the English military aircraft that carried the treasures from Tutankhamun's tomb to London in 1972. Both died of heart attacks. Other crew members were also injured: one broke his leg,
another's house burned down, the only woman on board became seriously ill, and her husband divorced her...
Soon another “victim” was found, this time on the American continent. She turned out to be San Francisco police lieutenant George Lebarche, who guarded the exhibition of Tutankhamun's treasures in 1978 when it was in the United States. His post was just opposite the golden mask of the Egyptian pharaoh. A year later, the policeman was paralyzed, and three years later, Lebarche filed a lawsuit in the San Francisco courts for damages in the amount of about 20 thousand dollars. He claimed that the cause of his illness and loss of ability to work was “the curse of the pharaoh.”
“The Egyptians believe in a curse placed by the death god Osiris on anyone who disturbs the dead,” said lawyer Lebarsha. “Was my ward another victim?” Deputy City Attorney Dan Magure called the argument “far-fetched” and postponed the hearing. Lebarsh apparently lost his claim, since a positive court decision in this case would have become a “world sensation”...
Attempts to explain the mysterious series of deaths associated with the “curse of the pharaohs” on a scientific basis have not yielded results. I also remembered, of course, that the priests supplied the tombs with various traps against those who encroached on the wealth of the deceased pharaohs. The notorious “bioenergy”, which the ancient Egyptians allegedly possessed, did not go unnoticed. But all these assumptions did not explain the main thing: what caused the death of many researchers?
Some scientists expressed the opinion that the cause of death was pathogens unknown to science, in particular viruses, which have amazing vitality. This hypothesis was remembered when a similar incident occurred in Poland.
A mysterious death befell most of the fourteen who participated in the 1973 autopsy of the tomb of the Polish king Casimir IV in the crypt of Wawel Castle.
Jagiellonian, who reigned from 1447 to 1492. The procedure was not very long, but its results were disastrous: soon after it, of those who were present in the crypt, only two remained alive. The rest died from pulmonary diseases or from general poisoning (intoxication) of the body.
The Krakow version of the “curse” prompted scientists to undertake a detailed study of the circumstances of this drama. As a result of the analysis, not only unknown bacteria were found in the sarcophagus, but also one particularly aggressive microbe, which is usually found in swampy areas and buildings rotten from moisture. This microbe was found in the tissues of the body of King Casimir IV, and later in many ancient Egyptian mummies.
Previously, scientists did not imagine that this microbe, whose Latin name is “Aspergilus flavus,” could live hundreds of years underground without access to air and retain its qualities.
The microbes in question are ubiquitous: they are in spoiled foods, in soil and in water. They do not cause much harm to humans. However, their colonies, living for hundreds of years in one place and systematically poisoning their habitat, gradually become poisonous themselves. This microbe is especially dangerous for people whose bodies are already weakened by illness...
For example, French researchers found that almost everyone who fell victim to the “curse of the pharaohs” suffered from pulmonary or bronchial diseases. Lord Carnarvon's lungs were damaged after a car accident, and so he spent the winter months in the warm and mild climate of Egypt.
Actually, Aspergillus flavus always attacks the weakest organ in the human body, and since everyone dies from different causes - hemorrhage, heart attack, cancer - no one connects the consequences with a common cause. When they tried to unravel the “curse of the pharaohs,” the mechanism of action of this microbe was not yet known. The question remains unanswered: whether the “asper-
hilus flavus” into the Jagiellonian phobnitz by accident or was it placed there intentionally.
This is the topic of special research, which could possibly confirm the hypothesis that both in Ancient Egypt and in the Jagiellonian era, there was a special method of protecting perishable remains from future robbers, who would sooner or later be punished. Some Polish researchers claim that similar methods were used, for example, in the burial of Lithuanian princes.
So, for a long time, the “curse of the pharaohs” remained an unsolved phenomenon, but then a supposed “ray of light in the dark kingdom” appeared, namely: the microbe “Aspergilus flavus”... However, several decades later it was discovered that the terrible “curse of the pharaohs” protects not only ancient tombs... It, for example, suddenly began to be felt by Soviet and now Russian soldiers and officers who had been staying for a long time in the underground bunkers of strategic missile launchers.
High temperature, headache, chills, and then loss of consciousness - in general, everything that archaeologists from “Lord Carnarvon’s team” felt before death. True, the mortality rate was not total, as in the case of the expedition of the English lord... When the unconscious attendants were raised to the surface, they were gradually cured with the help of antibiotics. But this unusual and inexplicable phenomenon gave rise to mystical fear among rocket scientists. Scientists and microbiologists came to the rescue here, establishing that the “curse of the pharaohs” manifested among the rocket scientists is a consequence of the influence of a microscopic pathogenic fungus that lives mainly in the dark...
In the early 90s of the 20th century, Seind Mohammed Sabet, a professor of medicine at Cairo University, made a discovery that to some extent sheds light on the problem of the “curse of the pharaohs.”
While accidentally walking through the Mummy Gallery in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo with a radioactivity counter, he discovered
lived that the counter began to register an increase in radiation levels. Subsequent studies of two dozen mummies confirmed that each of them was a source of radioactivity. What could this mean?..
According to Professor Sabet's assumption, the radioactive substance is contained either in the “stone heart” of the pharaoh, or in the so-called heart scarab - a small box that is necessarily present in every mummy. As an indirect confirmation of his hypothesis, Sabet refers to the fact that when he tried to examine mummies using X-rays, this did not work: the film behaved as if an intense source of radioactivity was present.
According to atomic scientist Louis Bulgarini, “the unexplained weakness and impairment of brain activity from which many pyramid researchers suffered is a consequence of exposure to radiation.” Apparently, the priests used uranium ore (which is still mined in Egypt today) to line the tombs of the pharaohs.
It turns out that the legend about the “curse of the pharaohs” has a real basis: the substance emitting deadly rays was known to the Egyptians five thousand years ago?..
“JAPANESE” MINI PYRAMID OF GIZA
To unravel the mysteries of the creation of the pyramids, Egyptologists tried many different methods. But perhaps the most unusual and expensive method was proposed in the late 1970s by the Japanese television company Nippon. In collaboration with Waseda University researchers, the company built a fourth mini-pyramid next to the three famous ones at Giza.
The purpose of this scientific experiment was supposed to be to find out how the ancient Egyptians were able to create these remarkable structures. At the same time
time in Egypt, it became known about the discovery of a group of archaeologists conducting excavations in the burial area of Pharaoh Amenemhat II. Inside his tomb, dating back to the end of the 19th century BC, they discovered... a model of a hitherto unknown pyramid with all the internal rooms and passages. This find undoubtedly helped to understand the secrets of the construction of the Egyptian pyramids and, of course, was used by Japanese specialists to implement their project.
The “Japanese” pyramid was built from granite and reached a height of about 20 meters, and its width was approximately 29 meters. The construction of the Japanese “wonder of the 20th century” took several months; several thousand people were involved in all these “events”.
During construction, following the recommendations of historians, techniques were used that were believed to have been used during the time of the pharaohs. For example, more than 70 Egyptian workers, using primitive tools, hewed stone blocks delivered from Helwan; they erected a flat sandy embankment along which these blocks were lifted up on special carts, and successively formed more and more rows of mini-pyramids, etc.
However, contrary to the intentions of Japanese scientists, they were not able to accurately follow the methods of the ancient masters at all stages of construction. Firstly, the cutting of facing slabs was carried out not with stone, but with metal tools. Secondly, at the final stage of construction it was necessary to use a crane, since the inclined plane was too steep to drag the stone blocks of the last tiers along.
Nevertheless, cameramen carefully recorded on film every stage of the construction of the mini-pyramid, details of the life of Egyptian workers, etc. It was assumed that no matter to what extent this unusual project would expand our understanding of ancient Egypt, the television films filmed here would be immersive.
fifth expensive experiment. This was especially important because, under the terms of the contract, the Nip-Pon company was obliged to dismantle the mini-pyramid immediately after filming the last frame of its construction.
The Egyptian press recognized the Japanese construction of a mini-pyramid as a failed experiment and almost immediately started talking about the notorious “curse of the pharaohs,” which allegedly affects all those who try to unravel the secrets of the ancient Egyptian pyramids and tombs. . If in the 20s and subsequent years of the 20th century, after the discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb, Egyptian newspapers reported, the “wrath” of the pharaohs turned against English archaeologists and their assistants, now the “curse” fell on Japanese specialists who built a small copy of this next to the Cheops pyramid miracle Ancient world. Thus, the construction manager was paralyzed, and two other Japanese specialists received serious head injuries under mysterious circumstances.
Cairo newspapers saw the result of the “curse of the pharaohs” in the fact that Japanese scientists and builders never completed their task: they did not answer the main questions that were put to them.
The Japanese “miracle of the 20th century” was dismantled in accordance with the agreement, and the mystery of the construction of the great pyramids remained, as before, unsolved...
WHEN AND BY WHOM WAS THE PYRAMID OF CHEOPS BUILT?
The Great Pyramid... The Pyramid of Cheops... Strange, but not a single archaeological structure in the whole world has been studied for such a long time and as scrupulously as this artificial “stone mountain”... Basically, the article answers the questions posed in the title of this subsection A. Petukhov “Pyramids - anti-nuclear shelters?”, with the main theses of which we will introduce readers.
Describing the Great Pyramid - a miracle of the Ancient World, Herodotus (5th century BC) and other travelers who visited different times in Egypt, referring to the testimony of local priests, they certainly noted that the largest stone pyramid was built in the era of the Old Kingdom on the orders of Pharaoh Cheops. This happened more than 4500 years ago. This opinion is so established in our minds that few people ask themselves the question: “Is this true? Could this particular pharaoh have built it on the day of his death?”
As Herodotus writes, 100 thousand people worked in hard labor conditions for ten years to build this pyramid-tomb, and it took ten years to build the access roads alone. According to our current understanding, all this work was 95% done manually, and the total weight of processed and laid stone blocks is 6.5 million tons! Calculations of the efficiency of using muscle power show that even a 100,000-strong army of builders could not cope with this work in 30 years...
As you can see, the mystery in this case is not so much the parameters as the timing of the construction of the pyramid.
It turns out that Cheops ruled for only 23 years... There is a problem here: he couldn’t have given the order to build his own tomb without becoming a pharaoh? If he gave the order to begin construction work on the day of his accession to the throne, then where was his mummy kept for seven years? After all, according to ancient Egyptian customs, the soul of a deceased pharaoh found peace in the afterlife only after performing the honors appropriate to his rank during the funeral process and burying the body in a pyramid specially designed for this purpose.
About 140 years ago, some Egyptological scientists expressed doubts that the Great Pyramid of Giza is related to Pharaoh Cheops: The fact is that in 1850, a stone stele was dug up near the pyramid, which, in addition to self-praise to Cheops, contained information that the Great Pyramid and
The Great Sphinx had long been in place by the time the pharaoh appeared on the historical stage...
A group of scientists immediately formed who clearly declared the stele a fake, since the information contained on it in no way fit into long-established dogmas. Moreover, about a decade and a half earlier, inscriptions were “discovered” inside the Cheops pyramid, which were interpreted as “stamps” of stonemasons, allegedly “stamped” on the stone in the 18th year of the reign of Cheops.
It is possible that to this day there would have been endless disputes over whose hieroglyphs are “more truthful” (on the stele or the blocks of the pyramid), if not for the research of the amateur historian Zecharia Sitchin. He proved that the main organizer of the falsification with “stamps” was... the English millionaire, Colonel of the colonial troops R. Howard Wiese, who was infected with the fever of archaeological discoveries.
It must be said that the forgery of “stamps” recorded in the diary entries of the colonel’s assistant secretary was very crude. For example, the inscriptions were made in “hierarchical writing”, which appeared only several centuries after the reign of Cheops; gross errors were made in them, which were not typical of the pharaoh's scribes - the most literate people of that time, and, finally, a “primary source” was established, which Howard Wiese used to apply “his hieroglyphs”.
This source turned out to be D. Wilkinson’s book “The Matter of Hieroglyphs,” which, by the way, contained all the inaccuracies and errors made by the English falsifier of history. And lastly... Howard Wiese made an inscription in the pyramid with two royal names - Khufu (Cheops) and Khnum- Khuf (grandfather of the first), from which a paradox followed: the grandfather continued the construction begun by his grandson!?
Thus, the conclusions from the studies of Z. Sitchin and other Egyptologists, associated with some features of the Great Pyramid, indicate that its binding
by the time of the reign of Pharaoh Cheops, it does not have any reliable justification.
Of undoubted interest in this regard is the message of the Arab scientist of the 9th century Abu Zeid al-Balkhi, which states that on the facing slabs of the Great Pyramid, now no longer preserved, inscriptions were extruded, from which it followed that since the construction of the giant pyramids of Giza many thousands of years have passed...
Apparently, “traces of their true creators must be sought in extremely distant prehistoric eras... Today, many scientists do not exclude the possibility that once upon a time there was a very developed civilization on Earth, which, in particular, was accessible to many achievements that seem fantastic to us today .
It is not without reason that some popular science sources connect them with the time of the existence of Plato’s legendary Atlantis (approximately 13.5 thousand years ago). Representatives of such a civilization could, for example, create “libraries” from Ica stones, and build pyramids in Giza, and even fly into near and far space...
Let's turn to the relatively recent research of the Cheops pyramid, carried out in March 1983 by robotics engineer Rudolf Gantenbrick, who sent a controlled robot into the southern shaft of the Queen's Burial Chamber. Having walked 65 meters, which was about half the distance, the robot transmitted an image of the door... This undoubtedly indicates the existence of something special there (perhaps more important than the supposed location of the pharaoh's mummy somewhere in the pyramid) and that the ancient Egyptians tried carefully cover...
Hence, the assumption naturally arises that the Great Pyramid was built for some other purpose and is not an ordinary tomb of a royal person... Another thing also became clear: the main purpose of the pyramid shafts is not ventilation at all, but orientation to a certain
named constellations, which may have been associated with the religious ideas of the Egyptians.
In 1996, the book “Secrets of the Pyramids” by Robert Bauval and Adrian Gilbert was published in Russia; and in 1997 - Graham Hancock's book “Traces of the Gods”. From these books it follows that as a result of many years of studying the Great Pyramid, the Belgian civil engineer R. Bauval (taking into account the measurements of the angles of the pyramid shafts carried out by R. Gantenbrick) made an amazing discovery in 1993.
He found that the southern shaft of the Pharaoh's Funeral Chamber is aimed at the stars of Orion's Belt, associated with the god Osiris, who brought civilization to the Nile Valley, and the shaft from the Queen's Chamber is oriented towards Sirius, the star of the goddess Isis. This situation is by no means accidental, but, apparently, is connected with the purpose of the Giza pyramids.
Bauval saw in the sky what Egyptologists, accustomed to looking only at the ground at their feet, missed, namely: the two lower stars of Orion's belt, Al-Nitak and Al-Nilam, form a perfect straight line, and his third star, Mintaka, turns out to be displaced to the left of the observer, that is, to the east. This is how the three most famous pyramids turned out to be located on the Giza plateau. Bauval discovered that on the plan of the Giza necropolis, the pyramid of Cheops corresponds to the position of Al-Nitak, the second pyramid of Khafre occupies the place of Al-Nilam, and the third pyramid of Mikerin is shifted to the east in relation to the diagonal formed by the other two.
Thus, the three pyramids of Giza are a kind of map of the three stars from Orion’s Belt, and they not only accurately display their relative positions, but also characterize their stellar magnitude by their relative sizes.
Further research showed that the Giza monuments as a whole are placed so that they form a map of the sky. But this map looks absolutely not the way it should have looked in the era of the IV dynasty (2500 BC), but the way it looked (and only that way!)
around 10,450 BC (it seems to us that more precisely - in 10,478 BC. - A.V.). In other words, this map of the sky takes into account the changes that occur as a result of precession...
Let us recall that precession is the extremely slow movement of the Earth’s rotation axis along a circular cone, the cycle of which lasts 25,980 years. It is clear that this phenomenon is hardly noticeable and can be recorded during long-term observations of stars.
Surprisingly, the “true builders” of the Giza pyramids, orienting the shafts of the burial chambers of the Queen’s Chamber and the Pharaoh’s Chamber of the Great Pyramid strictly towards certain stars, knew that these stars would certainly change their position over time, but their orientation would repeat after a certain time according to a cyclic law as a result of precession .
And the “true builders” also knew that this orientation of the mine would, as it were, “fix” some “time point” from the general time cycle... But why did they mention 10,450 (or 10,478) BC? Why exactly on this date did the “true builders” of the pyramids of Giza want to attract someone’s attention?..
R. Bauval established that the positions of the pyramids of the Giza complex always approximately reproduce the position of the stars of Orion’s Belt, but exactly corresponds to it, as Bauval said, only in one case:
“In 10,450 BC - and that’s it! -the location of the pyramids on Earth accurately reflects the location of the stars in the sky... First, completely by chance, the Milky Way as seen at Giza in 10,450 BC is accurate; secondly, to the west of the Milky Way, the three stars of Orion’s Belt were at their minimum altitude according to the precession cycle...”
Let's say a few words about a date very close to the above, namely 10,478 BC. In the book “Secrets of Atlantis”, published by the publishing house “Veche”
The reason for this was the approach of Halley’s comet to the Earth and the intense “bombardment” of the latter with fragments - the comet’s fellow travelers. So, the date 10,478 BC is also the time of the next subsequent rapprochement of the two above-mentioned celestial bodies, which apparently coincided with the lowest point of the precessional cycle of the constellation Orion.
Perhaps the “true builders” of the pyramids, who decided to create an eternal memorial in Giza in 10,478 BC, were representatives of a highly developed human civilization, which could be called... Plato’s Atlantis!
And the gap of 8,000 years between the dating of the beginning of the construction of the pyramids and, possibly, its completion is, of course, a long time. However, it is not too long for a purposeful cult, which has set as its goal to convey to its descendants information about the global cataclysm that happened on Earth about a thousand years earlier, and that the almost complete destruction of humanity is an integral part of its life on our planet, what is The event has apparently happened many times already and will probably happen again...
WHY WERE THE PYRAMIDS BUILT?
At first glance, it may seem strange to pose the question: why was it necessary to build the pyramids? Orthodox Egyptology gives an unambiguous answer to this: for the burial of the mummy of the deceased pharaoh, so that his soul would find eternal peace after death.
Yes, there is no doubt that the previously built pyramids were used by the Egyptians as tombs. But were they originally intended for this?.. And this is far from an idle question, “since they have -
There are quite good reasons, if not to refute, then at least to doubt the claims of Egyptologists...
For example, there is a fairly widespread opinion that such giants as the Great Pyramid (and others like it) served not only as tombs of the pharaohs. Many ancient authors believed that in the size, shape, and wall inscriptions of the pyramids, their builders, who had deeper knowledge of the Universe than we - people of the 21st century, tried to preserve them for future generations.
Some modern researchers agree with this point of view, who sincerely doubt that such a gigantic and complex structure like the Cheops pyramid was built only as a tomb, even if it was one of the greatest and most powerful pharaohs.
If we assume that the Great Pyramid is a tombstone, then it should contain the mummy of the pharaoh, the accompanying treasures and utensils, which the ancient Egyptians usually placed next to the deceased in the belief that they would be useful to him in the afterlife. At the same time, it is known that the first “burglar” of the Cheops pyramid, the Baghdad caliph al-Maamun, did not find anything like that in it. However, as noted above, it is unclear whether all the premises of the pyramid are known today...
The mysticism of the pyramids for many centuries was fueled, as it was believed until recently, by the unbridled imagination of Herodotus, who was “guilty” of spreading the legend that the Pyramid of Cheops was erected over an underground lake, in the middle of which there is an island where the pharaoh and his countless treasures are buried . By the way, in the last years of the 20th century, Russian builder A.A. Vasiliev put forward a hypothesis that confirms... the correctness of Herodotus.
At the end of November 1986, an article by N. Bondrovsky and S. Kashnitsky “The Last Riddle of the Sphinx” was published in Moskovsky Komsomolets, which talks about
hypothesis of A.A. Vasilyeva. This researcher suggested that the Cheops pyramid was not built at all as Herodotus says (from hundreds of thousands of individual blocks), but is essentially a built-up rock.
A. Vasiliev reconstructed the technology of constructing the pyramid, from which it followed that, in addition to the long-known galleries, there should have been a hidden tunnel in the pyramid. It is he who, as the author of the hypothesis believed, could lead researchers to the tomb of the pharaoh and his treasures. A. Vasiliev proposed testing his hypothesis and pointed out several “distinctive points” in the pyramid, the study of which could confirm it (the hypothesis).
So, Nikolai Bondrovsky decided to solve the “Vasiliev problem” during his trip to Egypt. It should be noted that Bondrovsky was very lucky in this regard, since, thanks to the support of the Egyptian authorities, he “found himself in the pyramid not as a tourist, but as a researcher.” He calmly photographed everything and visited places where “mere mortals” were not allowed anywhere near.
Bondrovsky, unfortunately, was unable to either confirm or refute our compatriot’s hypothesis. It turned out that Vasilyev was wrong in some of his assumptions. Some “points” proposed for verification simply turned out to be inaccessible. But it was confirmed that “the passages in the pyramid were made in the rocky ground.” True, it turned out to be impossible to determine to what height this is true. In addition, Bondrovsky “was able to see the block that, according to Vasiliev’s version, blocks the entrance to the secret gallery. This is an amazing discovery!”...
In an interview with S. Arsenyeva (“If the Sphinx laughs..,” “Moskovsky Komsomolets” dated December 16, 1994) to her question: “Why haven’t you organized a serious expedition yet?” N. Bondrovsky answered:
“Having devoted several years to this problem, I realized that attempts of this kind are ineffective. Funny, know
Many are of the opinion that the Egyptian pyramids stand in the desert. Dig for your health... Nothing like that!
The pyramids are located on the outskirts of Cairo, in a residential area called Giza. The Pyramid of Cheops... is guarded more closely than our mausoleum. And I don’t have the slightest doubt that the EGYPTIANS KNOW PERFECTLY WHAT AND WHERE IS IN IT. It would be strange to think that they are just sitting and waiting for smart Japanese, Americans or French to reveal their secrets! The pyramid is regularly repaired, restored, and EGYPTIAN SCIENTISTS KNOW EVERYTHING THAT IS PUBLISHED ON THIS TOPIC IN THE WORLD, ALL OUR HYPOTHESES AND FANTASIES... Obtaining permission to conduct an expedition is a whole problem. Dozens of world-renowned universities are queuing up. I suspect that IF THE APPLICATION INDICATES SOMETHING REALLY CAPABLE OF LEADING TO THE SOLVING OF THE PYRAMIDAL MYSTERIES, THE EXPEDITION WILL HARDLY TAKE PLACE. There are several reasons for this. The first, the simplest: tourism is not the country’s last source of income, and the pyramids are a magnet for tourists. Especially while they keep their secrets. Agree: a gutted treasury, despite all its antiquity, is much less attractive. The other reason is less obvious. There are legends (not only in Egypt) that the discovery of the secret of the Sphinx and the pyramids is directly connected... with the end of the world... It is quite natural that there is hardly an eccentric who will allow anyone to conduct such risky experiments in his home . There are also technical difficulties: Egyptian scientists know very well how quickly the most valuable finds, except, probably, gold, turn to dust if they are not immediately preserved on site. It's too difficult for now.
In short, the DEPARTMENT OF ANCIENTS IS VERY CAREFUL TO MAKE SURE THAT NO ONE FOUND ANYTHING EXTRAORDINARY. Scientists are required to make all research results available to him, and ONLY THE DEPARTMENT DETERMINES WHAT PART OF THE INFORMATION CAN BE PUBLISHED.”
The opinion of N. Bondrovsky can be trusted. This fact is evidenced by...
It is known that in China, near the city of Xi’an, Europeans “discovered” several dozen pyramids at the end of the 20th century. German archaeologist Hartwig Hausdorff and his Austrian colleague Peter Crass visited this area of China and noticed that the Chinese had been planting the slopes of earthen pyramids with fast-growing trees and shrubs for several years.
As scientists studied the pyramids, they came to the conclusion that these plantings were carried out deliberately in order to “disguise” the pyramids as natural hills. P. Krassa asked one of the leading Chinese archaeologists, Professor Qia Nai, why scientists do not open the pyramids to study their contents.
“This is a matter for future generations,” replied Tsia Nai. It is possible that the Chinese do not dare to undertake such research for fear of finding in the pyramids certain material evidence of events that could “overturn” today’s ideas about the history of China, and indeed ancient history humanity!..
However, let's return to Egypt and try to sum up some results...
Yes, the pyramids in Tiese are grandiose... But they are not inferior to the “pyramids” of hypotheses and assumptions that have appeared over many centuries, as well as in recent decades, about their true purpose and role in the ancient history of mankind. Already a simple list of some of the put forward versions, and sometimes speculations, speaks volumes...
So, what are the Egyptian pyramids of Giza? They may be:
Tombs or cenotaphs (false tombs) of the pharaohs,
Encyclopedias of knowledge,
Stone textbooks on astronomy, geometry, etc.,
Astronomical observatories,
Solar temples (clocks) marking the equinoxes each year,
Theodolites for taking terrain plans,
Barrages against the advancing desert sands,
Border fortresses,
Shelters from floods and floods,
- “beacons” of the desert,
Granaries (the granaries of the biblical Joseph),
Anti-nuclear shelters from the effects of “divine weapons”,
Moorings for the biblical ark of Noah,
Lightning rods,
Architectural standards containing a specific building module,
Temple of the Holy Grail,
Alien information capsule,
Landing pad for UFOs, etc.
So, everything that is known about the pyramids has been known for a long time. We know everything or almost everything about them... It is today that scientists come up with various useful applications for them to justify the appearance of the pyramids, they argue fiercely about whether they were granaries, observatories or a berth for UFOs...
However, more than a hundred years ago, books were published in which the pyramids were called, for example, places for various magical and religious ceremonies, including initiation and dedication. But orthodox scientists even now treat this mystical literature with disgust...
“As follows from the analysis of the composition of the pyramids in Giza, they were conceived and designed as a single interconnected complex of structures that had a common multi-purpose purpose, and at the same time, each of the objects performed its own functions, unique to it...
In my work... I made the assumption that, apparently, a previous civilization (possibly Atlantis) prepared 10 thousand years ago the drawings, technology and location for the construction of the pyramids, and perhaps also made some kind of layout of them on the ground , and found a way to transmit documents to her descendants for thousands of years to come. The coincidence of the configuration of the pyramids with the Belt of Orion indicates that underground and zero-cycle work was carried out on the Giza plateau 12,500 years ago...
Approximately 12.5 thousand years ago there was a transition from the era of Virgo to the era of Leo... Preparations for laying the foundations of the pyramids and the creation of the Great Sphinx took place about 13,000 years ago... The Sphinx was carved at a turning point - with its head to the east. That is, to where, after 13 thousand years, a new transition will occur, but this time the autumnal equinox point from the constellation Virgo to the constellation Leo. The cycle of precession will end, and this completion will be as difficult and unimaginably dangerous for humanity as the previous one, which entailed the death of Atlantis.”
Thus, from the above we can conclude that any Egyptian pharaoh who built the pyramid did not determine its purpose and did not choose the location of its installation. In fact, the pharaoh did not build the pyramid: he only supervised the construction.
At the same time, a powerful apparatus of priests seemed to direct its creation, although it is very likely that the priests also did not know the final goals of construction...
As if confirming everything said above and developing further, A. Chernyaev in his latest book “The Time of the Pyramids - the Time of Russia. A single plan”, co-authored with S.N. Udalova in 2000, expressed the following thought:
“...The pyramid fields, built over almost a millennium, formed on the surface of Ancient Egypt a GIANT EGG CONTOUR about 85 kilometers long, and the sharp end of this contour is directed strictly to the south.
This is the main goal of the Creator, which the people of Egypt unconsciously or consciously, painfully and joyfully carried out for many centuries, creating “separate”, “randomly planted” pyramids in the desert, as if at the will of their “tormentors” - the pharaohs... That is why the peak of the giant pyramid building ends with Giza, and subsequent pyramids became qualitatively different - imitators. TO DISTRACT ATTENTION FROM THE CONFIGURATION FORMED BY THE PYRAMIDS, THEIR BEGAN TO BE BUILDED IN A CONSTRUCTURALLY UNQUALITY WAY, TRANSFERING THE ATTENTION OF FUTURE GENERATIONS OF RESEARCHERS FROM THE OUTSIDE OF THE PYRAMIDS TO THE INSIDE, FILLING THE INTERIOR ROOMS WITH DIFFERENCES CHINA RELIGIOUS TEXTS...”
“All... factors turn out to be unproven when it turns out that the “random” method of constructing the pyramids “outlined”, ultimately, an area of 85x55 kilometers.
GO EGGS - a symbol of the rebirth of life, thereby proving that the construction of the pyramids was carried out by the hands of people according to the Creator and for a specific purpose.”...
A. Chernyaev speaks about the “giant” or “huge” contour of the egg, which forms the complex of pyramids in Egypt, but he in no way explains the prerequisites for the “origin” of this pyramidal formation... Perhaps, to some extent, first discovered by A. Chernyaev “PYRAMID EGG” is associated with the idea of the African Dogon tribe, about which A. Chernyaev writes in his book:
“... In this description (we are talking about the formation by the Dogon deity Amma of all the spiral star worlds of our world. - A.V.), two things are striking: the creation of a living spiral Universe - the “Egg of the World”, “infinite, but measurable”... and the unity of all living things. It should be noted that MODERN SCIENCE HAS NOT RISEN TO THIS LEVEL OF UNDERSTANDING OF THE UNIVERSE, it was sucked in by the so-called Big Bang theory. Or, which is the same thing, the theory of the dead Universe."
So, despite their venerable age, and perhaps precisely because of this, the Egyptian pyramids continue to spin the heads of those scientists and adventurers who are sincerely convinced that not all the secrets of these colossi have been revealed. Is such a statement correct - further research will show, if no one interferes with them, of the Egyptian pyramids...
Everyone knows how many interesting, sometimes amazing scientific discoveries were made by scientists on ancient Egyptian soil. Her tombs and temples yielded a lot of wonderful finds. But the greatest miracle of Egypt, which amazed people even in ancient times, were the pyramids - these amazing artificial mountains - the tombs of the ancient Egyptian kings. Travelers sailing along the yellow waters of the Nile were always struck by the sharp edge where the Nile Valley with its green fields and date groves gives way to the hot sands of the dead Libyan Desert.
These are the Egyptian pyramids.
They seem to grow out of the desert sands - colossal, majestic, overwhelming a person with their extraordinary size and severity of outline. Standing at the foot of the pyramid, it is difficult to imagine that these huge stone mountains were created by human hands. Meanwhile, they were actually built from individual stone blocks, just as children today build pyramids from cubes. Thousands of hands of slaves and Egyptians subject to the pharaoh were busy with hard and useless labor - the creation of a huge stone mountain, which was supposed to hide the dead body of the Egyptian king in its depths.
By creating an eternal tomb, the pharaoh provided his immortal spirit with an eternal home.
The first Egyptian king to erect a pyramid over his tomb was Pharaoh Djoser. This oldest pyramid in Egypt consists of six huge steps. Before the construction of the first pyramid, tombs with a massive rectangular above-ground part made of stone were erected in Egypt. In shape they resemble Arab benches - mastabas - and under this name they entered science. The pyramid of Djoser was essentially six such mastabas, placed one on top of the other, decreasing towards the top. The creation of the world's first stone structure of such significant size (height about 60 m) is attributed to Imhotep, a remarkable medical scientist, mathematician and architect, former vizier of King Djoser. Imhotep's fame was so great that within a few centuries his name was surrounded by legends. From later times, figurines depicting this remarkable architect have been preserved. Apparently, Pharaoh Djoser himself was so pleased with the unprecedented tomb built by Imhotep that he allowed the architect’s name to be carved on the base of his statue - an honor completely unheard of in ancient Egypt. During excavations of the mortuary temple, located near the pyramid of Djoser, scientists found fragments of several statues of the pharaoh and among them a pedestal on which the name of Imhotep was written.
Excavations near the pyramid of Djoser discovered an entire “city of the dead” surrounding the tomb of the pharaoh. Mastabas were built around - tombs of members of the royal family and nobles close to the pharaoh. There was also a mortuary temple here, where sacrifices were made in honor of the deceased pharaoh. During excavations of the temple, archaeologists discovered a hall decorated with the oldest columns in the world. True, these were not yet ordinary round columns, they only protruded half from the walls, but Imhotep, long before the Greek architects, created the prototype of a strict and slender Dorian colonnade.
The mortuary temple and the pyramid were surrounded by a wall of white limestone and, according to the architect’s plan, formed a single architectural ensemble.
The space near the pyramid was carefully studied by archaeologists at the beginning of this century. However, the Egyptian scientist Mohammed Ghoneim drew attention to one of the terraces southeast of the Pyramid of Djoser. A thorough examination carried out by Goneim discovered the remains of stone walls, fragments of processed limestone and alabaster, Goneim decided to carry out excavations. The work revealed the remains of masonry made of large uncut stones. This was the foundation of a massive fence, the same as the one that once surrounded the pyramid of Djoser. The top of this fence was dismantled in ancient times. Then a well-preserved part of the fence was revealed under a thick layer of sand and rubble - the workers called it the White Wall. It was magnificent - lined with white polished limestone, decorated with elegant protrusions. Undoubtedly, the wall enclosed the pyramid. But where are the traces of the tomb itself, as ancient as the still unique pyramid of Djoser?
Ghoneim decided to look for the remains of a pyramid in the center of the site and was right. From under a multi-meter layer of sand, rubble and construction debris, the lower massive step of the ancient tomb appeared. The height of the step was 7 m. Goneim determined that this pyramid should have seven steps. Consequently, it was one step higher than the famous pyramid of Djoser. The height of the open pyramid should have reached 70 m. But if the remains of the pyramid were buried under a deep layer of sand, then the burial itself was intact. We had to look for him. Near the bottom step of the pyramid, a passage carved into the rock was discovered. It was a long corridor with branches.
In some of the galleries, things were found that only increased interest in the central burial, proving that the tomb had not been robbed in ancient times. Goneim found many stone and clay vessels, gold jewelry, a rubbing box made of gold, and a large number of beautiful porphyry bowls.
But the most valuable find were seals on small vessels made of dark red clay. On the seals Goneim read the name Sekhemkhet, which meant “mighty in body” - this was the hitherto unknown name of the pharaoh of one of the most ancient dynasties. Interest in the unknown ruler buried in the pyramid increased even more. Egyptian newspapers were full of articles with mysterious and sensational headlines like: “The shine of gold from the tomb of the pharaoh” or “Gold placers of the unfinished pyramid.” Everyone eagerly followed the progress of the work. After a long search, many disappointments, with great risk (several times the stones fell into underground passages) the scientist managed to enter the tomb.
In the unfinished, hastily hewn central hall (the construction debris was not removed, but was only shoveled into the adjacent galleries) stood a magnificent alabaster sarcophagus. When the archaeologist carefully examined the sarcophagus, he was amazed - the sarcophagus had no lid. Carved from a single block of alabaster, it was closed on the end side with a door that lowered and rose in grooves. With excitement, Goneim became convinced that after the sarcophagus was placed in the tomb, no one touched it - a funeral wreath of decayed flowers and herbs was placed on top, or rather, what remained of the funeral wreath laid on the sarcophagus 4,700 years ago .
On the day appointed for the opening of the sarcophagus of a hitherto unknown pharaoh, the underground crypt was filled with a crowd of Egyptologists, photo and film reporters, and journalists. The crowd watched with bated breath as the workers began lifting the heavy alabaster door. In deep silence the sarcophagus was opened. It was empty. Shocked, Goneim carefully examined the sarcophagus. On its walls there were only traces left by the tools with which the craftsmen drilled and gouged out the inside of the sarcophagus. No one has ever been buried in this magnificent tomb. Rubble and construction debris not removed from the galleries and passages, the unfinished appearance of the tomb itself, the unfinished pyramid, the empty sarcophagus - all this presented a mystery to Egyptologists.
The mystery of the unfinished pyramid was difficult to unravel. Perhaps the pharaoh for whom the tomb was intended died unexpectedly, and his successor did not consider it necessary to continue construction. Perhaps some other important events occurred, unknown to us (just as the name of King Sekhemkhet himself was unknown until recently), which forced the pharaoh to suddenly interrupt the construction of the pyramid. The secret remains a secret. But the mysteries that arise for scientists are sooner or later solved by them. This was the case with many other monuments discovered on ancient Egyptian soil.
Much was unclear in the largest pyramid, built by Pharaoh Khufu (or Cheops in Greek), who lived in the 28th century. BC.
This huge pyramid has stood for almost five thousand years. Its height reached 147 m (now, due to the collapse of the top, its height is 137 m), and each side is 233 m long. In order to go around the Khufu pyramid, you need to walk about a kilometer. Until the end of the 19th century. Khufu's pyramid was the tallest structure on earth. Its enormous size amazed everyone who was in Egypt. It is not for nothing that the first Russian travelers who came to Egypt called the pyramids “man-made mountains.”
Scientists have calculated that Khufu's pyramid was made of 2,300,000 huge blocks of limestone, polished smooth, and each of these blocks weighed more than two tons. Carefully hewn and polished limestone blocks were so skillfully fitted to one another that it was impossible to insert a knife blade into the gap between two stones.
The stones were tightly adjacent to one another and held together by their own weight. The accuracy of the work of stonemasons and grinders is worthy of surprise, especially if you imagine that the ancient artisans who created such grandiose monuments of human labor also used stone tools. In the quarries on the right bank of the Nile, near the ancient capital of Egypt, Memphis, thousands of workers quarried stone to build the pyramid. Along the boundaries of the stone block marked on the limestone rock, workers hollowed out deep grooves in the stone. This work took a lot of effort and labor. Having dug holes in the furrow, the workers hammered wedges of dry wood into them and watered them with water. The wet wood began to swell, the crack grew larger, and the block broke away from the rock. The broken stone was pulled out of the quarry shafts using thick ropes woven from papyrus (such ropes were found in ancient quarries). The limestone blocks were then hewn together by specialist stonemasons. Stonemasons worked using a range of tools made from wood, stone and copper. This work, of course, was easier than the work of quarrying stone, but even here they had to work from dawn to dusk under the scorching sun. In the famous teaching of the ancient Egyptian scribe Akhtoy, in which he tells his son Piopi about various professions, it is said: “The stonemason is looking for work on every hard stone, when he finishes, his hands drop, he is tired. And so he sits until dusk, his knees and his back is bent." This teaching was written by a scribe who lived during the Middle Kingdom. But the pyramids were built many centuries before, and it is unlikely that the work of a stonemason of that time was easier than in the time of the scribe Akhtoy. Blocks of white facing limestone were transported on boats to the other side of the Nile. They were transported to the construction site by loading them onto special wooden sleds. The ancient Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century. BC, was the first scientist to report in detail the information he collected about the pyramids. Herodotus's work was an extensive narrative consisting of nine books, in one of which he described his journey to Egypt. The first chapter of the famous “History” of Herodotus began with the words: “Herodotus the Halicarnassian presents the following research so that over time the deeds of people will not be erased from our memory, and also so that the huge and amazing structures worthy of surprise, executed partly by Hellenes, partly by barbarians, will not be ingloriously forgotten.” . Herodotus conscientiously and thoroughly recorded the stories of the Egyptians about how the pyramids were created. The road alone, along which stones were delivered from the quarries to the place where the pyramid was erected, took about ten years to build. This road itself, wide, lined on the sides with polished stone, decorated with various images, according to Herodotus, was an amazing structure.
After the stonemasons, the face of the facing stone was processed by grinders. They worked using grinding stone, water and sand. As a result of prolonged processing, the surface of the slab became smooth and shiny. After this, the stones were considered ready for construction.
On a limestone cliff, cleared of sand, gravel and stone, the builders erected a huge pyramid, laying blocks in giant steps. Among these blocks, according to Herodotus, there was not a single one that did not reach 9 m.
According to Herodotus, in order to drag the stone blocks up, an inclined embankment was built. Subsequently it was leveled. Along it, the builders, driven by the sticks of the overseers, pulled heavy stones on ropes, which were installed in place with the help of a wooden lever. How many people died under the weight of a broken block of stone, how many were maimed while laying stones, how many died from backbreaking labor right here, near the still unfinished walls of the pyramid! And this has been going on for twenty long years. When the masonry of the pyramid was completed, its steps were laid with facing blocks. They were brought from quarries located in Upper Egypt, near Aswan. The facing blocks were lifted up along the ledges of the pyramid and laid from top to bottom. Then they were polished. Under the rays of the southern sun they shone with a dazzling brilliance against the background of the cloudless Egyptian sky. Herodotus says that the construction of Khufu's pyramid lasted about twenty years. Every three months, workers were changed, the number of which reached 100,000 people. The whips of the overseers, the grueling heat, and inhuman labor did their job. After all, there were no machines for lifting two-ton limestone blocks. Everything was done only with the help of living human power. Even if we accept Taking into account that Herodotus made a number of obvious exaggerations and inaccuracies, the figures he cited still give an idea of the enormous scale of work undertaken by Cheops to create a colossal tomb.In the same story, Herodotus mentions an inscription made on the pyramid, which indicated the amount spent on onions, garlic and radishes for the workers was equal to 1600 talents. “If this is really so,” exclaims Herodotus, “then how much should be spent on iron tools for work, on food and clothing for the workers?”
The entire burial structure was almost solid masonry. The entrance to the pyramid was always located on its northern edge, at a height of about 14 m from the ground. Inside the pyramid there were several chambers, of which only two were burial chambers. One, the lower one, as scientists suggest, was intended for the king’s wife. The second, somewhat larger in size (10.6 x 5.7 m), located at a height of 42.5 m from the base of the pyramid, served as the tomb of the pharaoh himself. It contained a sarcophagus made of red polished granite. Above the king's burial chamber there are five blind chambers, one above the other, apparently intended to distribute the pressure above the chamber. In the thickness of the pyramid there are several narrow and long passages leading to chambers located inside the pyramid and to a chamber dug under its base. Scientists also traced two ventilation slits that penetrated the thickness of the stonework and came from the chamber of Cheops itself. When clearing the surface of the pyramid, marks made in red paint and containing the name of Pharaoh Khufu were discovered on many blocks. Parts of the ancient cladding were discovered by archaeologists while clearing the sand-covered lower part of the pyramid. The pressing of the facing stones was so perfect that it was impossible to immediately determine the places where they were connected. And when photographing this cladding, the researchers had to specially paint around the seams where the blocks met. We can safely say that none of the kings who ruled after Khufu could surpass his tomb in size and grandeur, but the name of the pharaoh, who decided to glorify himself by building a pyramid of unprecedented magnificence, was hated by the population of Egypt for many centuries.
The second largest after the tomb of Khufu is considered to be the pyramid of Pharaoh Khafre (Khefre). It is 8 m lower, but less destroyed. The top of the pyramid retains part of the polished cladding. The remaining pyramids are much smaller, and many of them are badly damaged.
Near the pyramid of Khafre, a hill rises from the desert sand. Its height is about 20 m, length is about 60 m. Approaching the hill, travelers see a huge statue carved almost entirely from rock. This is the famous Great Sphinx - a figure of a reclining lion with a human head. His face was cracked, his nose and chin were broken off. So the Muslim Arabs mutilated the statue, which had stood for thousands of years. The Arabs believed that evil spirits lived in the statues of ancient Egyptian gods, and therefore tried to destroy as many of their images as possible. They were unable to cope with such a giant as the Great Sphinx, but they disfigured him thoroughly.
"Father of Terror" - that's what they call it Great Sphinx desert inhabitants. He inspires them with the greatest fear at night, illuminated by the bright moon, when deep shadows give his features special expressiveness.
Who does this colossal statue represent, and why did it end up in such close proximity to the pyramids? On the head of the statue is a bandage that was worn only by pharaohs. Scientists believe that this is a statue of Pharaoh Khafre, which was part of a number of structures associated with the tomb of the pharaoh.
In ancient Egypt, not every mortal had the right to approach the pyramid - this “eternal horizon”, beyond which the pharaoh “went” (they didn’t say about the pharaoh that he died - he “went” beyond the horizon, like the sun; Egyptian kings called themselves sons sun). In order for those who wished to be able to honor the memory of the deceased pharaoh without offending his greatness, a funeral temple was erected at some distance from the pyramid - something like a reception hall for the deceased king. Massive rectangular pillars of polished granite supported the ceiling. The granite walls and floor of the building were carefully polished.
The light fell from small holes punched in the upper part of the walls, and created a solemn twilight, in which the dark statues of the pharaoh, the ruler receiving respectful guests, seemed especially majestic. A long covered corridor led from this ceremonial hall to the pyramid. Its walls and floor were also made of polished granite. Along this corridor, the body of the pharaoh was taken to the pyramid in a heavy sarcophagus made of valuable stone.
In order to preserve the king’s body, which was the abode of his soul (the Egyptians called it Ka), from decay, he was embalmed. A detailed account of the embalming process was preserved for us by the ancient Greek writer Diodorus, who lived in the 1st century. AD Herodotus also talks about embalming the dead. The deceased was brought into the room for embalming. The corpse was laid on the floor and a person approached it, who was called the sign scribe. On the left side of the body, he marked with a line the place where the incision was to be made. Then another person approached and made a cut on the corpse with an Ethiopian stone, after which he fled, since, according to custom, everyone present threw stones at him with curses. These curses constituted an ancient religious ritual associated with mutilation of the deceased. After this, the embalmers directly began to work on the body. One was using iron hooks through his nostrils to remove part of the brain from the skull. The remaining brain was dissolved by injecting various strong drugs. The entrails were removed through a wound in the side and washed with palm wine and fragrant essences. Then they were wrapped in thin linen cloth and placed in special canopic vessels made of clay, alabaster or porphyry. The canopic lids were made in the shape of various heads. The stomach and intestines were placed in a canopic jar with a lid depicting a human head, the lungs and heart lay in a canopic jar with a jackal’s head, and a vessel with a falcon’s head was intended for the liver. At this time, the body of the deceased was first rubbed with cedar oil and washed inside with palm wine. Then they put it in a special alkaline solution for 40 days. Then they were washed again with wine and soaked in various aromatic resins that protected them from rotting. Having filled the inside of the body with aromatic substances, the incision was stitched up and the embalmed corpse was handed over to special dressers who decorated it. Often, fingernails and toenails were gilded, and eyes made of crystal or ivory were inserted. Rings were put on the fingers and toes. Having dressed the deceased in this way, the dressers covered the entire body with a layer of glue and began to wrap it in thin linen bandages. They carefully wrapped the fingers and toes and the entire body several times, so that the length of these bandages was several hundred meters. In this way, a mummy was prepared - an imperishable abode for the spirit of Ka, which was supposed to live forever.
The same Diodorus says that when the king of Egypt died, a long period of mourning was imposed on the entire country, lasting seventy-two days. The temples were locked, no sacrifices were made to the gods, no celebrations were celebrated, no incense was anointed. All these days the Egyptians ate neither meat, nor wine, nor flour food. Having sprinkled dust on their heads, crowds of men and women wandered around the city singing plaintive chants in which the virtues of the deceased pharaoh were glorified. On the day appointed for burial, the sarcophagus with the embalmed body of the pharaoh was placed on special runners, decorated with rich carvings and paintings, and with solemn ceremonies the deceased ruler, the “son of the sun” who had gone to the gods, was escorted on his last journey. The sarcophagus containing the king's body was placed in a crypt inside the pyramid, the granite walls and ceiling of which were carefully polished.
The pharaoh's relatives and priests made sure that the deceased was not in danger in the afterlife, that he could move freely inside his tomb, and that the gods would accept him as an equal. Therefore, the walls of rooms inside the pyramids are often covered with prayers and spells. Doors that led from one room to another or from a corridor to a cell were subjected to especially careful spells. In the pyramid of the 6th dynasty pharaoh Pepi, an entire hymn is written near the first door, which states that these “doors of heaven” are opened only for Pepi, but not for anyone else. In front of the other door there is a text that ends with the words: “When Pepi comes with his Ka, the door should open. This pyramid is dedicated to Pepi and his Ka.” On the walls adjacent to the doors there are images of door guards - baboons, wolves, lions, and spells against them and evil demons threatening the deceased pharaoh. These texts, discovered in large numbers, are among the oldest works of religious literature. Scientists called them “pyramid texts” after the place where they were found.
Caring for the safety of the spirit of the deceased in the afterlife, his relatives did not forget about vital things. Jewels and various items that belonged to the pharaoh were kept in special rooms. After all, the ancient Egyptians believed that the deceased continues to live after death, that he needs all the things that he needed during life. And the magnificent tomb of the king served as his home, just as a luxurious palace was his home during his lifetime.
On holidays in memory of the deceased pharaoh, a solemn procession headed to his pyramid. In a hall with columns in front of the image of the pharaoh, “seated next to Ra,” prayers were performed and sacrifices were made. These days in the “city of the dead” near the large pyramids it was noisy and lively. Herds of sacrificial animals were being driven, people were walking with baskets of gifts, flowers, and offerings. Only the king’s relatives, close associates and priests were allowed into the funeral temple. The rest of the participants in the procession in honor of the deceased pharaoh remained in the valley at the entrance to the corridor leading to the mortuary temple of the king, and waited for the end of the sacrifice. A mere mortal did not dare approach the pyramid - the sacred resting place of the pharaoh who became a deity. However, the riches that filled the storerooms of the royal tomb were a great temptation for robbers. The builders of the pyramids also foresaw this. The entrance to the crypt was closed from the inside with a heavy keystone. After the end of the funeral ceremonies, the supports were knocked out from under the stone and the entrance to the central chamber of the pyramid, where the magnificent granite sarcophagus with the body of the pharaoh stood, was closed forever.
The same huge stone, lowered down an inclined passage into the crypt, blocked the passage to the corridor.
The well through which people descended was filled up after all the entrances and exits were walled up. The royal grave was inaccessible to people and demons. The pharaoh could rest peacefully under the hundred-meter huge pyramid hanging over the vaulted crypt.
But all precautions were in vain. The royal tombs were robbed in ancient times, and to this day only empty halls and complex passages inside the pyramids have survived. One could only guess about the unheard-of value of the treasures that were hidden in the royal graves until in 1922-1923. The famous tomb of the 18th dynasty king Tutankhamun, who died in the 14th century, was not opened. BC, more than 32 centuries ago. By a lucky coincidence, it was not plundered, and all the utensils that accompanied the king into his afterlife appeared before the eyes of scientists.
Several rooms surrounded the central room, where stood the sarcophagus of the young king, who died when he was only 18 years old. All these storerooms were filled with a lot of things. Here were four royal chariots shrouded in gold, magnificent royal beds with the heads of animals, a golden throne, on the back of which an image of the deceased pharaoh and his wife was made from precious stones. Fragrant ointments were kept in wonderful vessels made of transparent alabaster. In wooden cases they found roasted geese and hams - the food of the young king in his afterlife. Numerous chests with clothes, jewelry, shoes, and vessels filled the storerooms.
At the entrance there were statues of the pharaoh himself, guarding the doors that led to the central room. When the door was opened, the scientists saw a solid golden wall decorated with turquoise tiles. It was a huge box - a sarcophagus that occupied almost the entire room. On one side of the box there were doors, sealed with a seal with the name of Tutankhamun and closed with a bronze bolt. Three thousand years have passed since the seal of the pharaoh was placed on these doors, and now they creaked again, but now under the hand of an archaeologist. The first case was removed. Beneath it was a second one, equally richly decorated. The gaps between the first and second sarcophagi were also filled with things. Here lay two magnificent golden fans made of ostrich feathers, wonderful alabaster vessels and many other valuable things.
The third coffin was made of expensive carved gilded oak. When they removed it, what was underneath was a sarcophagus made of pink granite of extraordinary beauty. Having removed the lid, the scientists saw a gilded bed on which was a sarcophagus in the shape of a swaddled mummy. It was covered with sheets of gold and sparkled with precious stones.
The last case, in which lay the mummy of Pharaoh Tutankhamun, wrapped in 16 linen shrouds, was made of pure gold. On the face of the mummy there was a golden mask-portrait of a young pharaoh. A huge amount of gold jewelry - necklaces and bracelets - was found on the mummy. Gold forged sandals were worn on the feet, and the fingers and toes were encased in gold cases. The treasures found in the tomb of the young king had no price. But this was not yet the richest burial of the Egyptian rulers.
Pharaoh Tutankhamun was an insignificant ruler, under him Egypt did not achieve much power and wealth. A pyramid was not erected over his grave. During this era, pharaohs were buried in the Valley of the Kings, in tombs carved into the rock.
What countless riches must have been contained in the burials of other, more powerful rulers of Egypt! It is no coincidence that the Babylonian king wrote to the Egyptian pharaoh: “My brother, there is as much gold in your country as sand.”
And, probably, weeks and months were needed to place in numerous storerooms and hiding places all the priceless gifts, treasures and sacrificial offerings that were due to the powerful king.
It is not for nothing that the inscriptions found in the pyramids compare the deceased pharaoh with the sun god Ra himself, the supreme deity of the Egyptians.
“He is flying, flying away... He is flying away from you, O people,” reads one of the inscriptions. “He is no longer on earth, he is in heaven... He rows in your boat, O Ra, in your boat he rules in the sky, and when you emerge from the eastern horizon, he sails with you in your boat, O Ra , oh Sun!"
But although the texts of the pyramids praised the divine power of the pharaoh, although the powerful walls of the pyramid reliably covered the burial of the king, the huge granite sarcophagi in the pyramids of kings Khufu and Khafre are empty. Even in ancient times, the temples at the pyramid of Khafre were destroyed. Huge statues of Pharaoh Khafre were broken and thrown into a well, from where archaeologists extracted them during excavations. It was clear that these magnificent statues made of dark, hard stone had not suffered from time. They were deliberately damaged, broken into pieces, mutilated.
Even Herodotus, who during his travels through Egypt collected stories about the pharaohs who built the pyramids, wrote that the kings Khufu and Khafre, who erected the largest pyramids, were hated by the people even after death. It was said that the people, driven to despair by backbreaking labor, extortion, hunger and poverty, rebelled and plundered the tombs of these two most merciless tyrants. The mummies of Khufu and Khafre were thrown from their magnificent tombs and torn to pieces. The statues that perpetuated the memory of these cruel oppressors were smashed by the indignant people wherever they were found. And the hated names of Khufu and Khafre were consigned to oblivion for many centuries, the people avoided calling them.
It is easy to imagine what a grandiose uprising resulted in the despair of the people who had been languishing for decades on the construction of the huge pyramid of Khufu.
Vague legends have reached our time about this uprising. But papyri telling about the performances of the Egyptian poor in later times say that the Egyptian people were not humble sufferers. He tried to protect his freedom from the tyranny of the rich. Papyri repeatedly mention popular unrest, when the people, driven out of patience by the despotism of the pharaoh, priests and rich people, took up arms. Stonemasons and stone cutters rebelled, exhausted by back-breaking work. Craftsmen and peasants rose up. They were joined by slaves who worked in quarries, on irrigation canals and dams. They destroyed rich estates, temples, killed oppressors, destroyed the very memory of them, captured in statues, tombs, and mortuary temples.
“The rich man falls asleep hungry, and those who previously begged him for olives drink strong wine... those who had no bread now have barns...” - this is what it says in one of the papyri, which is called “Ipuver’s Complaint”. “The earth has turned like a potter’s wheel: the insignificant ones own the treasures... The noble ones are full of complaints, and the insignificant ones are full of joy,” the priest Ipuver narrated with horror.
Apparently, the rebel people managed to temporarily seize into their own hands part of the wealth of the nobility, land, livestock, and granaries. The exploiters were forced to work in the most difficult and humiliating jobs. Civil war broke out in Egypt.
But from the same papyri, scientists learned that the previous order was restored again, when, according to Ipuver, “the hands of people will build pyramids, dig ponds, plant groves of trees for the gods; it is good when noble people stand, dressed in thin clothes, and they look at the rejoicing in their house..."
These people, whose hands were supposed to build the pyramids again, were the same Egyptian poor - artisans, farmers, slaves. The merciless burden of taxes, duties, exhausting and hard work fell on them again.
During the uprising and civil war, temples, royal tombs and tombs of the nobility were not built. But when calm came, the pharaohs and nobles began to again erect magnificent funeral structures.
In Egypt, even the most noble person did not dare to think about building such a funerary structure as a pyramid. Only Pharaoh, the son of the Sun, could have such a grandiose tomb. The tombs of noble Egyptians were either carved into the rock or built of stone or brick. These were low rectangular structures built above the crypt. The tombs of the Egyptian nobility are usually crowded around the pyramids, as if the nobles wanted to be closer to the pharaoh even after death.
These mastaba tombs usually had several rooms. In the main one there was a sarcophagus with the body of the deceased. In one of the rooms, things that belonged to the owner of the tomb were stored. In a small room there was usually a statue of the deceased. The scale walls were decorated with paintings or painted reliefs. The colors of the paintings amaze with their brightness and freshness. The liveliness and subtlety of the drawing were amazing. But Egyptian artists worked with rather rough brushes made from pieces of fibrous wood. At one end such a piece was broken with a stone until it was softened, forming a rough fringe. It was with such primitive brushes (several brushes with remains of paint on them were found in tombs) that artists created elegant, picturesque images that decorated the walls of the tombs.
Here you can see scenes of everyday life - harvesting, sowing, artisans and farmers at work, hunting, boating on the Nile, girls dancing, warriors dancing. Simple people, hardworking and talented - these were the Egyptian workers depicted at their usual activities.
And it was not the nobles - the owners of rich, decorated mastabas, who boastfully listed their services to the pharaoh, who immortalized themselves by building these tombs, but humble workers, whose names are not mentioned in the inscriptions.
It was they who grew the wonderful crops of the Nile Valley. They built irrigation canals and dams, they carved magnificent statues, erected beautiful temples, and decorated the walls of buildings with wonderful reliefs full of life's truth. And in these pictures of everyday life they immortalized themselves, their invisible work, without which the entire thousand-year-old culture of Egypt could not have existed. Without knowing it themselves, they have preserved to this day on the stone pages of the walls stories about their hard working life, about the forced existence of some and the prosperity of others, about their sorrows, fun and entertainment.
The times are long gone when the Egyptian pyramids amazed the observer with unprecedented grandeur and unsurpassed monumentality. About one thousand three hundred years ago, humanity learned to build bigger, higher, more massive and faster than the ancient Egyptians did. But still, for four thousand years, leadership in the field of construction remained with a long-vanished people...
Who, how and when built the Egyptian pyramids? Interest in the Pyramids of Giza has not waned for five millennia in a row. Egyptologists know the answers to most questions.
How and from what the ancient Egyptians built the pyramids – in many cases we only speculate, and among the hypotheses being propagated there is a lot of outright fantasy. Let's try to understand the history of the Egyptian pyramids without prejudice, mysticism and feigned mystery.
How many pyramids are there in Egypt?
The question is far from idle, given the length of the period of construction of the pyramids, the variety of materials used, the architectural features - and, of course, the safety. According to various sources, the total number of Egyptian pyramids reaches 140, but many of them are difficult to identify.And if the pyramids of Giza are famous for their impressive size, perfect shape and good preservation, the pyramids of other ancient Egyptian tombs were less fortunate. Many of them - due to the fragility of the usual adobe clay brick at that time or the urgent need for building materials - collapsed completely or partially, and are more reminiscent of hills than pyramids.
Thus, in 2013, American archaeologist Angela Micol, examining high-resolution photographic maps, suggested that several hills on the territory of modern Egypt are nothing more than ancient pyramids, partly eroded under the influence of climatic factors, partly covered with sand and dust.
Inspired by a hint from overseas, Egyptian archaeologists undertook an expedition to the indicated heights. Cautious statements have appeared in the press regarding the fairness of the judgments of the American scientist, however, the finds of Angela Micol have not yet been included in the official register of Egyptian pyramids - as well as the remains of 17 more pyramids, similarly discovered by Sarah Parcak from the University of Birmingham, Alabama.
Mastaba - the modest tomb of the pharaoh
The tradition of building pyramids as pharaonic tombs did not arise suddenly. The burials of the pharaohs of the first dynasty (there are more than 30 dynasties in total) were arranged in relatively small buildings that looked like a cut-off hill or a tetrahedral pyramid with a cut-off top and a rectangular base.The imperfection of the then construction technologies forced the Egyptians to create buildings with inclined edges of the outer walls. The intuitive assimilation of the artificial structure to a natural embankment made of stone ensured the stability of the erected structure no worse than that of a conical pile of debris of different sizes at the foot of the mountain.
In Arab Egypt, the first tombs of the pharaohs were called “mastaba”, which means “stool” in Arabic.
In terms of its architectural appearance, the mastaba resembles a slightly expanded ancient Egyptian residential building, and there is not a drop of holiness in the purely utilitarian building. So it is not surprising that every new ruler sought to build his mastaba higher than any buildings in the area, and most importantly, higher than the tomb of his predecessor. Delusions of grandeur are so characteristic of leaders!
The logical result of the growth of the mastaba was a geometrically correct pyramid, but it was not possible to achieve the desired shape immediately.
Tomb of Djoser - the first Egyptian pyramid
Thirty kilometers south of Cairo is the village of Saqqara. Saqqara is the resting place of the pharaohs of the III-IV dynasty. The oldest surviving Egyptian pyramid, the Pyramid of Djoser, is located here.Imhotep - a brave innovator
According to information collected by historians, Imhotep, the main architect of the project, initially planned to build an ordinary mastaba. However, the idea of building a multi-tiered tomb seemed much more fruitful to both the architect and the customer. Therefore, already during the construction process, the project was changed. The triple superstructure of a smaller mastaba over a larger one resulted in a forty-meter four-tier pyramid with a rectangular base.Realizing that adobe clay brick (in Russian tradition the material is known as “adobe”) was not strong enough to create a high-rise structure, Imhotep ordered the use of limestone blocks to construct the tomb body.
Ingenious technology for constructing Djoser's pyramid
for construction it was mined in a quarry nearby. The dimensions and shape of the stone blocks were not strictly observed, but they allowed masonry with ligation: three longitudinally oriented blocks were replaced by two transverse ones - and so on. The mass of a single block did not exceed the “carrying capacity” of a strong porter.A thick clay composition was used as a binding solution, designed not so much to hold the blocks together as to fill the voids. Nature itself could have suggested the idea of such a building material to Imhotep. Egyptians traveling around the surrounding world probably came across objects formed by mudflows and quickly turning into dense and durable material.
The clay was dug in the Nile Valley, soaked and mixed with some sand (to prevent cracking during the drying process). The wall stone was laid at an angle inside the building so that the wall line deviated from the vertical by 15˚. Thus, the walls of each of the tiers of the tomb formed an angle of 75˚ with the conventional plane of the firmament.
The critical components of the internal structures of Djoser's pyramid were made of two-ton blocks, delivered from afar by water, and coarsely hewn limestone. The cementing gypsum mortar, used by the Egyptians more often than lime, held the elements together only in some places. In particular, the blue tiles in the lining of the interior of the tomb were held on the walls thanks to gypsum binders.
Imhotep - the deified pioneer of perestroika
Having erected a four-tier pyramid, inspired by the success, Imhotep proposed not to stop construction and increase the number of tiers to six while simultaneously increasing the total area of the pyramid. For the exterior cladding of the structure, it was planned to use white limestone from the Tours quarry on the eastern bank of the Nile.The pharaoh's consent was not long in coming. The uninterrupted continuation of work allowed the outstanding architect of Ancient Egypt to increase the height of the pyramid to 62 meters. Having become six-tiered in 2649 BC, the pyramid of Djoser crowned a huge complex of ritual buildings and for a long time became a record-breaking structure in Egypt and the entire world of that time.
It is estimated that 850 thousand tons of limestone were spent on the construction of the Djoser pyramid. According to the unanimous opinion of the builders of our time, there are no technological mysteries in the construction of the first Egyptian pyramid. However, Imhotep's contemporaries treated the outstanding architect with much greater reverence. After his death, the architect, engineer and scientist Imhotep was deified, and the Egyptian pyramids, according to the behest of the founder, were built in steps for a long time.
The Pyramids of Giza are the center of secrets and mysteries
There are quite a lot of stepped and multi-tiered pyramids and pyramids built according to the precepts of the great Imhotep in Egypt. But only the Egyptian pyramids of the regular tetrahedral shape are considered wonders of the world, and not all of them, but only those that stand in Giza.The pyramids of Cheops, Khafre and Mikerin represent the pinnacle of the building art of Ancient Egypt. The studies carried out did not provide a clear and reliable picture of the stages and methods of construction. Of the historical documents, the description of Herodotus is considered the most detailed - however, we must remember that Herodotus made his notes 2000 years after the construction of the Cheops pyramid...
Hemiun – hero of pyramid-building work
The task assigned to Hemiun, a relative of the pharaoh and, concurrently, the chief administrator of the state, was difficult. On a rocky square base it was necessary to build a pyramid of the correct geometric shape and standard aesthetic qualities. The structure, of course, had to be higher than the pyramids of previous pharaohs and, preferably, remain unsurpassed in the future. 
Perhaps the task was posed in some other way - but it doesn’t matter. Hemiun managed to create a pyramid that contained millions of tons of natural stone, rose almost to the skies (147 meters in height), concealed several secret rooms, and amazed (and amazes) the observer with the perfection of its forms and the grandeur of the idea.
The first secret plus the main secret
How the construction was carried out is not described anywhere. Not a single papyrus was found in which not only the construction technology of Hemiun was revealed, but even the pyramid of Cheops was simply mentioned!This is the first mystery of the main Egyptian pyramid. However, there may be several answers:
- a) researchers were simply unlucky to find required document;
- b) there was a ban on documenting and disclosing methods for constructing the pyramid;
- c) design documentation was not drawn up, construction records were not carried out - as unnecessary.
How the greatest of the Egyptian pyramids was built
Most of the Cheops pyramid is made of blocks of yellow-gray limestone, a relatively loose material, but quite strong. Since the blocks were cut down in different sizes, it would be logical, when preparing materials at a construction site, to arrange the stones so that the largest and heaviest ones at the bottom were spent on the construction of the lower tiers of the masonry, and less massive stones were intended for the upper tiers. 
Egyptian builders did just that. The limestone blocks of the pyramid are smaller the closer to the top they lie. Which, by the way, refutes the fashionable theory about building a structure from concrete blocks.
Is the concrete idea false?
It is indeed easier to transport buckets of thick mortar to the upper floors of a construction site, but why change the standard of formwork from tier to tier? Artificial building stone, as a rule, has standardized dimensions, while the blocks of the Cheops pyramid are far from standard.The time factor is also important. Curing of concrete requires the cast part to rest for a long time. Initial setting does not equate to full strength development. A multi-ton load cannot be immediately piled on a freshly cast and already hardened stone. You can speed up the hardening of the casting with organic additives - at least egg white - but then the mountain of shells will exceed the size of the pyramid. Is such a monument acceptable to the pharaoh?
The production of binder for concrete requires high-temperature dehydration of the raw material - in the case of Ancient Egypt. The country's resources made it possible to produce a certain amount of gypsum mortar painlessly, but not the millions of cubic meters required for a complete transition to artificial building stone! There simply wasn’t that much firewood in the state!
Concrete is not only a binder, it is also a mineral filler of several fractions. Modern concrete is created from cement mortar, sand and crushed granite. The blocks of the Egyptian pyramids are entirely limestone. One can, of course, imagine how thousands of slaves spend years crushing natural limestone to obtain crumbs, other thousands drag stretchers with limestone chips to a construction site, still others carry water in wineskins, and still others trample wet concrete - because without compaction it will turn out to be fragile.
But isn't it easier to carve ready-made blocks from stone? Moreover, all qualified mineralogists are unanimous in their assessment of the main material of the Cheops pyramid and consider it natural limestone.
However, individual structural elements of the pyramids could indeed be made of artificial stone. But not the most responsible and loaded with astronomical masses of overlying materials.
The granite mystery of the Cheops pyramid
Adherents of secret knowledge talk about the impossibility of manufacturing, processing and delivering granite construction parts without the use of steel tools and abrasives of a hardness level.Meanwhile, granite columns, obelisks and other “megaliths” were produced in Ancient Egypt without much difficulty. Our French contemporaries reproduced all stages of granite mining and processing, and were quite satisfied with the experience gained.
The following method was used to break off a large workpiece from a natural massif.
- 1. Along the contour of the proposed workpiece, a low fireplace was built from clay bricks.
- 2. Firewood was loaded into the hearth and a fire was lit. Hot coals heated the underlying granite to a shallow depth.
- 3. Water was poured onto the heated granite. The stone was cracking.
- 4. After removing the brick, ash and exfoliated rock, the heating zone was subjected to impact treatment with dolerite (dolerite is a type) hammers. As a result, a groove 10–15 cm deep was formed in the monolithic granite massif.
- 5. To deepen the contour groove, the operation was repeated.
The handmade technique with a rounded dolerite hammer requires endurance and perseverance of the performer. An hour's (even not very dexterous) beating of dolerite on granite allows you to remove a layer 6 - 8 mm thick over an area of several square decimeters.
A dolerite nodule split in half served as the main tool for grinding granite. The abundance of dolerite in the eastern regions of Egypt allowed ancient craftsmen to use this hard stone in unlimited quantities.
Lifting heavy objects without a crane
Herodotus writes that lifting the stone upward was carried out by simple wooden devices such as a well crane. The carrying capacity of such devices is sufficient for two-ton cargo (the average volume of a lime block of the Cheops pyramid is 850 - 1000 liters, the density of limestone is 2000 kg per cubic meter). But how were the much more massive structural elements installed? In particular, the pyramidion, the monolithic top of the pyramid weighing 15 tons?Modern inventors talk about the possibility of covering a stone product with three-dimensional wooden structures that bring the shape of the packaged part closer to a cylinder. Such containers really make transportation easier, but require a solid road.
Inclined ramp or spiral road?
How is a waste heap - a cone-shaped dump of waste rock - constructed? First, supports are installed, and an inclined rail track is placed on them. Cars with bulk mass are driven onto the rails and unloaded to the side. As the dump grows, the road lengthens. The end result is an artificial mountain with steep slopes and a long, gentle embankment with rails from the flat bottom to the very top. 
Researchers believe that this is how access roads to the Egyptian pyramids were built. An extendable inclined (7˚-8˚) ramp, made of bulk materials, compacted and reinforced with imported timber, could really help deliver massive stone blocks to their installation site.
However, the volume of earthworks in this case turns out to be comparable to the volume of the entire construction, and the pace of work is limited by the frequency of reconstruction of the transport route. The bulk spiral road laid around the pyramid makes it impossible to check the geometry of the edges and faces of the entire structure.
It would be another matter, suggested the French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin, if the spiral road was laid in the body of the pyramid along its outer edges. You can walk along such a road like a gentle staircase, dragging limestone blocks up along the way. True, this path is replete with right-angle turns. But if you make open areas with simple lifts at turning points, the difficulties will disappear.
Houdin's hypothesis is flawed in many respects. However, turning platforms were discovered in the corners of the structure, as well as some inclined passages along the perimeter of the pyramid. However, the Egyptian authorities have not yet given permission for large-scale hardware research of the historical structure.
Final process reconstruction
A generally reconstructed picture of the construction of the Cheops pyramid looks like this:- - the most massive parts of the base of the pyramid and the interior of the tomb were delivered to the installation site along surface roads and a low bulk ramp;
- - the blocks composing the body of the pyramid rose along spiral scaffolding built outside;
- - a white limestone top - pyramidion - was installed immediately after the completion of the masonry;
- - facing blocks of white limestone, in cross-section representing a right-angled triangle, were laid from top to bottom, flush with the edges of the pyramidion.
And although individual details of the construction are not fully clarified, the overall picture is quite clear and plausible. However, the secrets of the Egyptian pyramids lay not only in the design and construction of Cyclopean structures.
"Unsolved" secrets of the Egyptian pyramids
The exploration of the Cheops pyramid, undertaken by treasure-hungry humanity over the past two thousand years, turned out to be very traumatic for the historical structure. Partly for this reason, and partly because of the high tourism potential, permission for scientific research in Giza is very difficult to obtain.As a result, today scientists do not have a complete plan of the cavities and rooms of the Cheops pyramid - which is why assumptions about the purpose of rooms, corridors and channels are based on insufficient information.
This situation gives food for idle thoughts about the presence of secret treasuries under the Egyptian pyramids and the Sphinx. The tabloid press is all about the idea of the hiddenness of samples of ancient knowledge, stored either under the paws of the Sphinx, or under the burial chamber of Khufu, or even deeper.
However, historians and archaeologists do not expect any special revelations from hypothetical treasuries. Yes, if repositories that were not looted in the past are discovered, museum collections around the world will be significantly replenished with works of ancient Egyptian art - but one cannot expect advanced technologies among the surviving artifacts. Alas…
Is the pyramid a working device?
The idea that each individual pyramid, and especially the largest and most beautiful pyramid of Cheops, is not just a monument and tomb, but some kind of tool for interacting with secret forces, has tormented humanity for four and a half thousand years.Echoes of the excitement that arose during the perestroika years regarding the miraculous properties of pyramidal structures are still alive. Allegedly, the blades in them self-sharpen, bacteria self-destruct, water self-sanctifies - and in large pyramids, plus time slows down, organisms become younger and fools become wiser.
The experiments are still ongoing, but the statistics of the results are disappointing. Nothing special happens either in the ancient Egyptian pyramids or in their modern counterparts.
“In addition,” object the esotericists, “that contact is made with the higher mind!”
The influence of the Egyptian pyramids on the mind
Initiates write: whoever lies down in the sarcophagus of the Cheops pyramid and concentrates, voices become audible, colorful pictures are visible, the complexities of the structure of the universe are understood - and the future is also revealed. So Napolen, after spending the night in the sarcophagus, came out pale, was silent about his experience, and only in exile on the island of St. Helena hinted that he had seen his own fall...True, psychiatrists, having learned about the voices and visions, begin to nervously trample and stroke bags of medicine. Psychologists talk about the similarity of individual reactions to darkness, silence and complete solitude. To save money, they say, instead of a sarcophagus, you can lie down in a wooden box with a lid, and instead of an Egyptian pyramid, use any dungeon - even a shallow hole.
The sum of sensations and thoughts that arise in the subjects is typical. In such solitude, every person thinks about the transience of life, the vanity of all things and the inevitability of the end. Pyramids have nothing to do with it!
Astronomical factor
The Belgian Robert Bauval, born and long lived in Alexandria, Egypt, was not the first person to notice the similarity between the locations of the pyramids at Giza and the stars in Orion's Belt. However, he was the first to speak out loudly and publicly about the similarity.The check showed that the coincidence of directions and proportions is very conditional. Defending his point of view, Bauval suggested: the position of the pyramids corresponds to the picture of the starry sky during the third dynasty of the pharaohs.
The development of computer technology has made it possible to restore the position of stars in the past. The simulated picture of the starry sky of 2500 BC turned out to be close to the location of the pyramids at Giza, but only approximately...
Further research led astronomers to the conclusion: the relative position of the pyramids of Khufu, Khafre and Menkaure (Cheops, Khafre and Mikerin) fully corresponds to the location of Alnitak, Alnilam and Mintak (stars of the “Orion’s Belt” asterism) in 10500 BC.
Idle thinkers immediately came to the conclusion that the initial marking of the construction site was completed in 10500, and they decided to postpone the actual construction for 8 thousand years.
Moreover! At the beginning, namely 14 thousand years before the birth of Christ, on the site of the future Giza and all its tombs there was a pyramid - to all pyramids a pyramid, the size of a real mountain! True, the ancestor of the pyramids was monolithic and cracked during the earthquake. It was decided to demolish the colossus, and in its place, after cleaning up the debris, to build a new pyramidal complex.
The thinkers do not say who and why made such unexpected decisions.
Numerological heresy of the Cheops pyramid
Heading to Egypt, Napoleon, as is known, included more than one and a half hundred scientists in his detachment. Bored during the transition, inquisitive scientists pounced on the Egyptian pyramids like a hungry dog on a bone. All available space was measured and measured, including each of the pyramids and the Sphinx.The data obtained became the subject of scientific discussions that continue to this day. Over two hundred years of speculation, particularly advanced experts have established a relationship between the linear parameters of the Cheops pyramid and:
- - the size of the Earth and the Solar system;
- - the number "pi";
- - past and future events;
- - physical constants that determine the balance of interaction of forces in the Universe.
Hey, psychiatrists!..
So, does this mean that there are no secrets in the Egyptian pyramids?
There are still many secrets in Egyptology. However, the Egyptian pyramids have been studied very thoroughly, although not completely. There are a number of ambiguities in the unhurried existence of the pyramids that are visible to specialists. For example, did the visible deflection of the faces of the Cheops pyramid arise as a result of unexpected deformation of materials or as a result of architectural calculations?So far, there is no clear picture of the complex of technologies used almost 5,000 years ago. It is not clear why the Pyramid of Cheops, the most monumental of all the monuments of Ancient Egypt, is devoid of wall inscriptions and images. There is no confidence in understanding the purpose of the discovered objects, premises, buildings...
It is important, however, that only those studies of the Egyptian pyramids that are conducted within the framework of materialist theory become fruitful. The search for the extraordinary forces that took part in the creation of the Egyptian pyramids is fantastically funny - that’s all.
