Contribution

Michael Behrend

As to the value of this discussion I take a Fortean View, that it is intermediate between the profoundest philosophy and absolute nonsense, tho’ approximating fairly closely to one of these extremes.  Of course it is a tactical error to publish it at all, as our organizer Robert Forrest will be able to use it for anti-geomantic purposes – pointing out how easy it is to find ‘significant’ facts that really mean nothing.  I now call on Mr Cole. 

J. H. Cole:  I have made an accurate survey of the Great Pyramid and have obtained the following measurements for the sides. 

Piazzi Smyth:  Ah – you have adopted the permissive use of the atheistic and rationalistic French Metric System.  I must consider you to have forfeited your claim to be a true Israelite; and must consider you as a subject of the Beast’s Kingdom. 

J. H. Cole:  If you don’t shut up I’ll convert all the angles to grades. 

Smyth:  Anyway, you never measured the height. 

I. E. S. Edwards:  It was 481.4 feet, before the top fell off. 

Cole:  That’s 146.73 metres. 

Behrend:  Right.  The height is often said to be 280 royal cubits.  This implies a cubit of 524.04 mm (or 20.631 inches) which of course is very reasonable.  Mr Plutarch. 

Plutarch:  The Egyptians believe that the risings of the Nile have some relation to the Moon’s illuminations.  For the largest rising, near Elephantine, reaches 28 cubits, which is the number of the illuminations and measures of time in each of the Moon’s monthly orbits; the shortest rising, near Mendes and Xois, is 7 cubits, corresponding to the half moon; while the mean rising, near Memphis, when it is normal, is 14 cubits, corresponding to full Moon. 

Behrend:  What I’m getting at here is that the height of the Pyramid, 280 cubits, has some kind of symbolic connection with the Moon.  It is well known too that the Egyptians had 28 gods of the cubit rod (one for each digit) along with 28 gods of the lunar month.  Now this is rather interesting, as John Michell has already speculated that the length of the Pyramid’s base is somehow connected with the Sun, being 277.5 Megalithic Yards, that is 3 × 37 Megalithic Rods.  The Scottish researcher L. McL. Mann, working 40 years before Thom, found a unit of 20.425 feet (6.2255 metres) which is probably identical with 3 Megalithic Rods.  And 37 times Mann’s unit equals 230.345 metres, differing from the mean Pyramid side by only 10 mm. 

Voice:  Where does the Sun come into all this? 

Behrend:  Well, in the magic square of the Sun the total of the numbers is 666 or …

Aleister Crowley:  The number of the Beast! 

Behrend:  … or 18 × 37, and the numbers round the perimeter add up to 370. 

Another Voice:  What has all this got to do with Ancient Egypt? 

Behrend:  I suggest you consult Eliphas Levi’s writings upon the subject.  Carry on please, Mr Plutarch. 

Plutarch:  One might suppose that the Egyptians liken the Nature of the Universe especially to the supremely beautiful of the triangles which Plato also in the ‘Republic’ seems to have used in deriving his wedding figure.  That triangle has a vertical of 3 units of length, a base of 4, and a hypotenuse of 5 … The vertical should thus be likened to the male, the base to the female, and the hypotenuse to their offspring; and one should similarly view Osiris as the origin, Isis as the receptive element, and Horus as the perfected achievement.  The number 3 is the first and perfect odd number; 4 is the square of the even number 2; 5 is analogous partly to the father and partly to the mother, being made up of a triad and a dyad. 

Behrend:  Well, of course we have to tip the triangle the other way, then we get base = Osiris = Sun, height = Isis = Moon, so presumably edge = Horus = Mercury.  More about this in a minute.  About 1300 the Chinese mathematician Tsu-I-Chi had a similar idea when he wrote: “Heaven corresponds to the base of the right-angled triangle, Earth to the height, Man to the hypotenuse.” Its easy to think up examples connecting 3 with Heaven, 4 with Earth, and 5 with Man.  Now if Sun = 37 and Moon = 28 we’ll suppose that Mercury = 37 + 28 = 65.  And look, the magic square of Mercury adds up to 2080 which is 32 × 65. 

Voice:  But the square of the Moon adds up to 3321, which doesn’t divide by 28. 

Behrend:  Ah, be quiet.  The slant edge of the Pyramid works out to 210.234 metres.  Back now to good old Ludo Mann.  One of the units he discovered and described in Craftsmen’s Measures was the beta foot of 13.28 inches or 337.312 mm.  And the slant edge of the Pyramid when measured in beta feet is 649.94 or virtually 10 × 65. 

Smyth:  Wow.  But what about gematria? 

Behrend:  Watch this:

• Ωρος = 1170 = 18×65
• Ισις = 420 = 15×28
• Οσιρις = 590 = 16×37 − 2 (dammit)

Here the multiples of 28 and 87 differ by 1, and the total of 15×28 and 16×37 is equivalent (allowing colel) to Μυσαρος, whom you can read about in Stirling.  You can use this principle of multipliers differing by 1 to get some more interesting numbers. 

• (6×28) + (5×37) = 353 = Ερμης
• (14×28) + (13×37) = 873 = ½×1746 = Michell’s number. 
• (25×28) + (26×37) = 1662 = 2×831, the value of πυραμις
• (27×28) + (28×37) = 1792 = 1 + Ερμης Τρισμεγιστος
• (37×28) + ( 36×37) = 2368 = Ιησους Χριστος

Crowley:  My Confessions contain a very impressive identification of Mercury with the Christ of the Gospels. 

Wm Stirling:  Having found that each side of the base of the Great Pyramid measures 755 2/3 feet, there will be nothing ridiculous in considering what ideas the Greeks, who wrote the Gospel, connected with the word Petros, 755, a stone.  If the text of the Gospel were literally translated, the name Peter would be rendered “The Stone”, for it almost invariably appears as ο πετρος, 825, and is therefore equivalent by Gematria to Christopher Robin.  Further, Piglet = 482 = Jesus Christ; whilst Winnie the Pooh = 672 which, if colel be subtracted, is equivalent to Adonai.  Again, —

Smyth:  Aaaaaaaaaagh! 

Behrend:  You asked for it.  … Few people realise that it is possible to combine the linear measures of antiquity into a harmonious system.  Unfortunately there are at least two such systems, mutually exclusive although equally plausible.  In any case, we start off by assuming that the ‘landscape geometry’ unit X, found in large scale (~ 100 km) arrangements of prehistoric sites, is obtained by dividing the Earth’s equatorial radius into 6 × 60 × 60 (= 21,600) parts.  This gives 295.284 metres, in accord with the known value X = 295.3 metres.  The companion unit Y is 11/7 times X; hence, with the approximation π = 22/7, Y results from the same division of the equatorial quadrant.  The number of Y units in the circumference equals the number of seconds in a day.  Berriman considers that the Earth’s circumference is 216000 Greek Stades, and if so the Stade is equal to 0.4 Y.  He goes on to say that the Romans knew the Greek Stade and accounted it 625 of their feet.  This makes the Roman Foot 296.97 mm.  On the other hand, we can just as well speculate that the Roman Foot is 1/1000 of unit X or 295.28 mm.  Either figure is consistent with the known range of values. 

Cole:  So all these calculations seem to be pretty futile. 

Smyth:  Anyway, what’s all this got to do with the Pyramid? 

Behrend:  We know the cubit is √2 times the remen and – speculatively – that the Megalithic Yard is √5 times the remen.  If we play about with these ratios we find that Y/√10 equals 146.736 metres, identical with the pyramid’s height.  That leads back to values for the cubit, remen and megalithic yard – the last being 1/560 of unit Y. 

Ludo Mann:  What about my unit of 20.425 feet? 

Behrend:  Well, it can be got as X/15√10 or as 7 × 48 digits of the remen – these values are identical if you accept that √2 = 99/70 (whence π/2√2 ≈ 10/9, as in Berriman).  This means that the ratio between the height of the Pyramid and the diagonal of its base is 50:111, giving a very good approximation to the angle of slope, as you can see from the table. 

Mann:  Sounds a bit fanciful. 

Behrend:  Yes, I’d prefer to think that your unit is exactly 3 Megalithic Rods rather than 168/25√5 or 3.00528.  After all, both units were discovered in neolithic British sites and have no proven connection with Egypt.  Well, this is a “Pyramid Speculation” folio, which is an excuse to avoid deciding whether all this stuff means anything or not.  Let’s just finish with a few more calculations. 

References

M. Behrend.  The Landscape Geometry of Southern Britain.  (I.G.R. Occasional Paper No. 1, Bar Hill, Cambridge, 1976.)
M. Behrend (ed.) Ludovic McLellan Mann.  (I.G.R. Occasional Paper No. 7.)
A. F. Berriman.  Historical Metrology.  London 1953. 
J. H. Cole.  Determination of the exact size and orientation of the Great Pyramid of Giza.  Cairo 1925. 
I. E. S. Edwards.  The Pyramids of Egypt.  London 1961. 
L. McL. Mann.  Craftsmen’s Measures in Prehistoric Times.  Glasgow 1930. 
J. Michell.  The View Over Atlantis.  London 196. 
J. Michell.  City of Revelation.  London 1972. 
Plutarch.  On Isis and Osiris (tr. J. G. Griffith).  Cardiff 1970. 
W. Stirling.  The Canon.  Repr. London 1974. 
Tsu-I-Chi.  Preface to Chu Shih-Chieh’s Algebra.  (Quoted by J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 3, Cambridge 1959). 
A. Thom.  Megalithic Sites in Britain.  Oxford 1967. 

I.G.R. = Institute of Geomantic Research
1 Megalithic Rod = 2½ Megalithic Yards
1 Megalithic Yard = 2.72 English Feet

The I.G.R. no longer exists.  I do not now believe in the X and Y units that I “discovered” in the 1970s.