“There have been in the world, and are still, many strange beliefs and cults current in the world, such as flat-earth-ism, the transmutation of Shakespeare into Pork, and those excellent people who have bought land on the Mount of Olives in preparation for the Second Coming. They all have their followers, who naturally believe in them, and they are all impervious to common sense. But the Pyramid has attracted a much more formidable concourse than any other subject, largely because of the imaginary mystery of the monument, the remoteness of its date, and the learned formulae and pages of calculus (above the heads of at least 90 per cent. of readers – fortunately), which cloak the looseness of statements of fact by writers on the subject. Let us see where it all began. … That this farrago of nonsense should be read at all is remarkable, but that it should be believed, as it is, by large numbers of otherwise normal people is in itself a miracle.”
(From Pyramids and Their Purpose: Part III: Pyramid Mysticism and Mystification by Noel F. Wheeler, Antiquity, vol. 9, p. 292 ff. In this article Wheeler is specifically shooting holes in the works of Davidson and the Edgars. It is not just a sneering attack, however, but a well researched exposé of some of the ‘results’ of Davidson & the Edgars.)
The following are from Martin Gardner’s Fads and Fallacies, Dover Edition:
“Our Inheritance [in the Great Pyramid] is a classic of its kind. Few books illustrate the ease with which an intelligent man, passionately convinced of a theory, can manipulate the subject matter in such a way as to make it conform to previously held opinions.” (p. 176)
“It is not difficult to understand how Smyth achieved these astonishing scientific and historical correspondences. If you set about measuring a complicated structure like the Great Pyramid, you will quickly have on hand a great abundance of lengths to play with. If you have sufficient patience to juggle them about in various ways, you are certain to come out with many figures which coincide with important historical dates or figures in the sciences. Since you are bound by no rules, it would be odd indeed if this search for ‘Pyramid’ truths failed to meet with considerable success.
Take the Pyramid’s height, for example. Smyth multiplies it by ten to the ninth power to obtain the distance to the sun. The nine here is purely arbitrary. And if no simple multiple had yielded the distance to the sun, he could try other multiples to see if it gave the distance to the moon, or the nearest star, or any other scientific figure.” (p. 177–8)
“No book has ever demonstrated more clearly than Smyth’s (the other Pyramid books, of course, to a lesser degree) how easy it is to work over an undigested mass of data and emerge with a pattern, which at first glance, is so intricately put together that it is difficult to believe that it is nothing more than the product of a man’s brain.” (p. 186)
(Though the above is levelled mainly at Smyth, similar comments have been levelled at other pyramid theorists. Further, the fact that so many different – and often opposing – theories have been produced since Smyth’s day (as a simple glance through the pages of Peter Tompkins’s book will testify) tends only to confirm Martin Gardner’s view.)
“A favourite occupation of cranks is the discovery of hidden meanings in things. Whether we are to say that the passionate quest of the occult has been prolific in mental disturbances, or whether we had better say that persons with ill-balanced minds take especial delight in the search for the occult, the practical result is the same. The impelling motive is not very different from that of the circle squarers; it is pleasing to one’s self-love to feel that one discerns things to which all other people are blind. Hence the number of mare’s-nests that have been complacently stared into by learned donkeys is legion. Here erudition is no sure safeguard against the subtle forms which the temptation takes on, as we may see from the ingenuity that has been wasted on the Great Pyramid.’
(From A Century of Science: John Fiske, London 1899. Fiske goes on to say that Smyth was an excellent astronomer, “But the Pyramids were too much for his mental equilibrium”. He also quotes De Morgan’s Budget of Paradoxes that Smyth’s work “is a paradox of a very high order backed by a great quantity of useful labour …”.)
From W. Raymond Drake’s book Gods and Spacemen in the Ancient East (1968) come the following:
“The Pyramid was probably built by Spacemen or by Initiates mastering extra-terrestrial science.” (p. 139)
“Scholars and cranks linking the Pyramid with the Bible and Solomon’s Temple have laboured to fathom some hidden message secreted in stone for posterity. Most men contrive to find what they are looking for, so it is hardly surprising that visionaries discover in this mound of stone support for their delusions, yet some of the measurements found appear to possess some significance transcending chance coincidence.” (p. 140)
“Sensitives today claim that the Great Pyramid still radiates magnetic force and that the immense blocks of stone were levitated by Extraterrestrials utilising anti-gravity or sonic vibrations, perhaps the same power motivating their spaceships, one of which is alleged to have been buried nearby. Traditions suggest that Thoth, the Great Teacher of Ancient Egypt, possibly a Spaceman, secreted occult records in a hidden chamber, so one day wisdom from other worlds may come to light within the Great Pyramid.” (p. 144)
(Notes: the sonic vibrations idea originated, I think, in the early ramblings of Adamski. On the buried spaceship idea, see Williamson’s Secret Places of the Lion p. 22 – an oddity derived from the Egyptian ‘boat pits’? On the ‘secret chamber’ idea see ibid. p. 10 – an interesting ‘Space Age Adaptation’ of Joseph Seiss’s ‘superior chamber … answering to the celestial city’ in A Miracle in Stone, p. 159, 2nd ed.
From Robert Charroux’s book The Mysterious Unknown (1972):
“Study of the pyramids and their mysteries has shown that the scientific knowledge governing their shape and their construction could have descended only from the Higher Ancestors in Atlantis, or from even further back in time.” (p. 169)
“Tradition gives the cubic contents of the burial chamber as equal to those of the Brazen Sea of Solomon’s Temple, a foolish story on the same level as predictions made by measurements of the interior of the Pyramid. … The King’s Chamber is a cavity eminently suitable for the purpose of natural mummification, but it is also a place for meditation, where psychic powers could be greatly intensified.” (p. 178)
(Notes: Here we have Atlanteans instead of Spacemen! Also the same contempt for the biblical theorists as shown by Drake. On ‘natural mummification’ see Ostrander & Schroeder’s book Psychic Discoveries Behind the Iron Curtain, p. 359. On the psychic-powers-in-the-King’s-Chamber see Brunton’s A Search in Secret Egypt Ch. 4 – but not to be read at bed-time!)
Levitation by Atlanteans … Anti-Gravity by Spacemen … we have seen them both. Erich von Däniken, in Chariots of the Gods?, lumps Smyth along with “hundreds of crazy and untenable theories” (p. 99), and yet is startled enough by some of his pyramid coincidences (when he quotes them correctly) to see the hidden hands of spacemen. Von Däniken wrote: “The Great Pyramid is (and remains?) visible testimony of a technique that has never been understood. Today, in the twentieth century, no architect could build a copy of the Pyramid of Cheops, even if the technical resources of every continent were at his disposal.” (p. 100). Being of a sceptical turn of mind I sent this quote of Mr von Däniken’s, along with details of the Great Pyramid, to Wimpeys. They replied as follows (letter dated 2nd August 1976):
“Further to your letter regarding the Pyramids the quotation you give certainly seems to be overstated.
We see no reason why the Great Pyramid should not be built using modern construction methods. Such an enterprise would, however, cost a great deal of money and we rather doubt whether in the present times anyone would wish to sponsor such an undertaking.”
So there you have it …