Why the Summit of the Great Pyramid is Missing

Welcome to History for Granite. Join me to explore Ancient Egypt. Please subscribe, and together we'll uncover secrets from the past written in stone. When looking at the stone pyramids of Ancient Egypt, even the most casual viewer will notice that something is missing from the Great Pyramid. Despite other pyramids also having their casing stones removed, those pyramids remain rather pointy at the top. In contrast, the Great Pyramid has a flat and wide summit, which is surely due to some extra destruction that was wrought upon it. The large amount of material missing at the summit has occasionally produced fanciful speculation about an enormous gilded capstone that would have been stolen long ago. In a previous video, I discussed how the summit of Khafre's Pyramid proves its pyramidion at the top couldn't have been taller than 2.5 meters. It was probably closer to 1 meter in height, based upon another example found nearby. Another of my videos also elaborated on how a gilded capstone would not visibly contrast the white limestone of the pyramid in daylight, especially at such a far distance from the ground. But if the Great Pyramid had a plain and modestly sized pyramidion like we might expect, why would so much of its summit be missing compared to other pyramids? In a recent video, I also speculated that another pharaoh might be incentivized to give the Great Pyramid a haircut to diminish the accomplishment of Khufu. Projecting power over one's predecessors was a common practice by the kings of ancient Egypt. But the Great Pyramid has stood for 4,500 years, and it's not hard to imagine the damage was a This is a safe and rather boring explanation, but something about that narrative wasn't supported with my understanding of human behavior at pyramids. If rolling blocks off the top of a pyramid is so much fun, why have other pyramids been spared this form of entertainment? It would be much easier to roll off the top block at other pyramids, rather than move one from the center of Khufu's flat summit all the way to the edge. Furthermore, you would need to plan and haul equipment to the top of the Great Pyramid to move enormous blocks that far. This scale of destruction couldn't be done by tourists at the top getting a sudden desire to watch gravity work its magic. A quick note about the summit. In this video, you will see a wooden mast appear and disappear depending upon when the images were captured. The mast was constructed by astronomer David Gill around 1874 and probably was used to triangulate the pyramid's height. Years later, the top broke off, and it was no longer an accurate representation. In 2019, a mentally distressed person climbed to the top of the pyramid and partially destroyed it. This presumably led authorities to use the opportunity to bring the whole thing down. There are many old accounts of visitors summoning the Great Pyramid, but nobody confesses to a campaign of destruction at the top. It's a mystery long ignored by Egyptology, but I believe we can solve this puzzle by determining when the damage occurred. We may not have a time machine to know for certain, but identifying the means, motive, and opportunity for this crime will give us a plausible explanation for what happened. As it turns out, determining exactly when the damage occurred is a big challenge, because written records about the height and summit of the pyramid are wildly inconsistent. How can we know who to trust when narrowing down the time of destruction? The only place to start is the two accounts from antiquity, Diodorus Siculus in the 1st century BC and Pliny the Elder in the 1st century AD. Both men state the summit was flat in their time, and give measurements for the pyramid's base, height, and the size of the platform at the top. Their measurements for the pyramid height correspond to the length one would climb the face of the structure from the ground to the top. This also makes sense, because they would not have the ability nor incentive to measure the vertical axis of the structure. We can roughly evaluate their accuracy by comparing the ratio of the pyramid's known height and base to the figures given by Pliny and Diodorus, and both are quite close given the challenge of such an endeavor. This proves both these men took quality measurements and journeyed to the pyramid summit to document the platform in their time. Diodorus states that each side at the top is 6 cubits long, about 2.76 meters, and Pliny measures the perimeter of the platform at 16.5 feet, which converts to about 1.22 meters in length. Averaging the two data points, the Great Pyramid summit was about 2 meters on each side. Considering Pliny came after Diodorus, and Pliny's platform is measured smaller, it's safe to assume they witnessed the same condition of the pyramid. Despite this occurring 2,000 years ago, we're on firm ground with these observations. A quick note about this diagram. I needed a close symmetrical image at just the right elevation, and this corner view was the best I could find. Measurements will reference the side length of the pyramid and not the diagonal, even though the diagonal is what we see. For the ancient accounts, some basic trigonometry gives us a missing height of a little under one and a half meters. This would be about three courses of stone removed from the Great Pyramid if the capstone was only one course tall. The Pyramidian may have been taller than a standard course near the top, but we'll assume it was close to one course in height to simplify keeping track of later missing courses. Under this assumption, with 201 existing courses plus the fragments of two more, the original pyramid was a maximum 217 courses tall, based upon what we know about the height of an average course. Thus, the damage 2,000 years ago was limited to the Pyramidion and one or two courses of stone beneath it. The casing stones of the pyramid were intact at this time, and so this was a narrow and limited amount of destruction. Stealing or knocking off the Pyramidion was the only degree to which ancient Egyptians seem to have dismantled the summit. But after the Romans, it's a very long time before we get precise measurements of the Great Pyramid. Abd al-Latif al-Baghdadi in 1200 AD describes the casing stones intact and measures the length of the summit at 10 Turkish cubits, or about 5.78 meters. That makes 3.68 meters of missing height for about seven standard courses of stone. By the year 1395, a noble Frenchman from Anglore witnessed the large-scale removal of the casing stones, stating, quote, About halfway up the slope there were certain masons who were using tackle to remove the great hewn stones, which form the facing of the granary, and were letting the stones down to the bottom. End quote. This testimony also counters a textbook narrative that it was an earthquake in the early 14th century that shook the casing stones loose. It's more likely that earthquake seriously damaged Cairo, which precipitated the need to use the pyramid as a quarry for rebuilding, and that's why the two events are connected. One could imagine most of the summit being destroyed with the removal of the casing stones, but we need evidence to support that assertion. However, it becomes dramatically more difficult to track the pyramid's height after the casing stones were removed. The problem is that with the core of the pyramid exposed, visitors start measuring the height of the pyramid by counting the courses on their way up. This would seem like a simple and reliable method of accounting, but it turned out to be the worst possible way to observe the structure. Egyptologist Georges Goyen studied the courses of the Great Pyramid in 1978, and he writes, quote, During my ascents, I had naturally counted the number of steps. But depending on the path I took, I noticed each time that the number was not the same. This is explained by the fact that the stones of the same course did not all have the same height, although the whole course was built on the same horizontal plane. End quote. Goyen is describing that while the casing stones may have been kept even horizontally, the backing stones behind them would sometimes double up smaller blocks to equal the height of one course of casing. Thus, if you're counting steps beneath you, it's easy to accidentally count a single course twice because you step up two times. Furthermore, errors made by climbers would vary depending upon which side of the pyramid they climbed, and thus we end up with a ton of incorrect and misleading data. Here is a table with step counts of visitors to the Great Pyramid centuries after the casing stones were removed. Clearly, some people were just estimating, but even precise figures vary through the 15th, 16th, 17th, and 18th centuries. The number of courses trends down as you move forward in time, and so it's tempting to interpret the pyramid as shrinking. You're going to laugh, but only three of these testimonies accurately counted the number of courses on the pyramid in their time. I know this because the number of courses did not change in this era. The correct number was 206, as listed by Johann Wanslebun, Johannes Egmont, and Nathaniel Davison. The key to tracking damage at the summit was Davison's 1765 testimony, in which he was the first person to document the individual height of each step up the pyramid. Davison's measurements are the most accurate until Flinders Petrie's landmark study over a century later. However, Davison never published his work, and it only partially survived with his friend Robert Walpole's memoirs, which were published in 1818. These memoirs contain most of Davison's data, but the measurements still had enough errors to make it questionable. Courses 1 and 2 had transposed measurements, and three other courses were accidentally recorded one foot shorter than reality. Furthermore, you can't use the pyramid's present total height as a reference, because if data is off by even a quarter inch per course, your margin of error is several courses of stone at the top. Lastly, Davison noted course 206 was exceptionally tall, just under one meter, which is about twice the height of the existing courses near the summit. Looking at the summit today, some of the uppermost stones are abnormally tall, and this caused me to wonder if Davison had mistakenly counted these partial course numbers 202 and 203 as course number 206. On a tip from independent researcher Stefan Bergdahl, last year I tracked down Davison's original manuscript and found his handwritten notes and measurements. Included is a sketch of the summit with six scattered blocks, and I wondered if these were just the same stones from today moved around a bit. But Davison's diary also listed the length of the summit at 5.23 meters, and this is less than half of the size of the present summit at 10.96 meters. The discrepancy was too large to be a measurement error, and so Davison saw more courses of the pyramid in 1765. With Davison's accuracy validated, I could now use his observations as reference points to evaluate other testimonies. The length of the summit and the oversized blocks on course 206 were the key points to cross-reference with other testimonies that counted courses. And sure enough, despite the number of courses fluctuating for centuries, summit observations and measurements always agreed with Davison. Those other measurements used all manner of units—paces, long steps, feet, black cubits, and even fathoms—but all numbers could be ballparked close to the five meters Davison recorded. And even though the measurements varied by a meter or more, the oversized blocks at the summit always stood out to visitors. Moving backwards in time from Davison in 1765, we get numerous accounts of these six stones at the summit, some of which explain there was enough space for six more stones that were then missing. A description from Paul Lucas in 1699 is the earliest account which describes the top course as about six oversized blocks. In 1693, the missing stones are observed, and the top course is described as twelve very large stones by earlier explorers in the 17th century. So magnificent was the quality of course 206 that in the year 1589, Jacques de Viamont believed the summit was one solid block measuring 15 feet long on each side. It is the exceptional size and quality of course 206 which gives us confidence that minor variations in measurements at the summit were simply human error and that the pyramid was not shedding courses in this era. The earliest European account with measurements comes from Marco Grimani around 1540 who measured eight long steps at the summit. Extra credit to Grimani for also being the first person to record the northern air channel exit around course 100. Now we're back to Abdel Latif al-Baghdadi in the year 1200 with the casing stones still on the Great Pyramid. His measurement of 5.78 meters is about one meter larger than course 206 was measured with the casing stones missing. This represents about four courses of stone that would have come off the pyramid in the era the casing stones were removed. Therefore, the backing stones were left mostly undisturbed. This makes total sense because profit was the incentive for removing the casing stones. There would be no monetary gain by removing the backing stone courses of the pyramid. In summary, for the first 2500 years, only about three courses of height are removed from the Great Pyramid. In the next 1200 years, about four more courses come off the top. For reference, this is close to how we see the top of Khafre's pyramid today, where about five and a half courses are presently missing. Next, the Great Pyramid loses its casing stones and about four courses of height in that era. No doubt the oversized blocks of course 206 added stability and prevented accidental or casual destruction at that level. Just before the year 1700, half of course 206 was removed, but this only amounted to six large stones. But by the year 1800, the Great Pyramid would lose another five courses, which represents the overwhelming majority of stones removed from the summit. After this crime, it was no longer disturbed and exists as we see it today. If you have any doubts, here is a drawing by Edward Lane from the 1820s which matches the current pyramid. Furthermore, we can use other testimonies to pinpoint the exact year of this destruction. Explorers after Davison in the late 1700s also measured the summit at about 5 meters in length, and then we get to Napoleon's expedition to Egypt in 1798. Three men who joined Napoleon on this campaign were Jacques Grobert, Edmé Jaumat, and Jean Coutel, and they each climbed and measured the steps of the Great Pyramid independently. Grobert's accuracy wasn't great. He counts 205 steps, plus three buried ones at the bottom, for a total of 208. His measurements aren't as good as Davison, but you can still cross-reference them and see that the exceptionally tall course 206 still existed. Shortly thereafter, Jaumat and Coutel also give measurements, but instead they each count 201 steps, plus the partial remains of two more, for a total of 203. Conspicuously, the uppermost course is no longer measured as exceptionally tall. In fact, Jaumat and Coutel's step counts and descriptions are exactly what we find at the top of the pyramid today. Jaumat writes, quote, On the day that I climbed it for the first time, January 5th, 1799, the platform was 30 feet 10 inches. I fixed the time, because with time this platform widens at the same time as the height decreases. The climate doubtless acts little on the stones of the summit, but, once, for some cause, they are shaken, the Arabs and the visitors detach them insensibly, and they are thrown from the top to the bottom with an enormous crash, breaking in their fall the edges of the lower steps. In the center I found the remains of two steps, which will soon disappear. They bore the traces of the recent removal of the adjacent stones. End quote. Jaumat witnessed the final acts of destruction upon the pyramid, because no more damage occurred after his testimony. Like many after him, Jaumat thought the destruction was continuous and random vandalism, because there was no rational means to explain it. But we now know this was not the case, because the Great Pyramid Summit remained undisturbed for many centuries at a time. This final act of destruction could only have occurred at the end of 1798, between the time Jacques Grobert arrived in Egypt and Edmé Jaumat's visit to the Great Pyramid. It was an enormous amount of destruction in a very short period. The damage wasn't for entertainment. It was a serious job, planned and coordinated in advance. Like Jaumat, at first this destruction seemed insensible to me. Why spend so much effort to attack the summit of the Great Pyramid at one time? But then I remembered Ali Dobri, the pyramid guide from the mid-19th century, who explained to Charles Piazzi Smith how they would plug up pyramid passages to greater profit from tourists. I previously made a video on this subject, and it's a good companion to this one. Dobri mentions that most tourists of his era preferred to climb the Great Pyramid than to go inside, and this was the most profitable arrangement for the guides. The Great Pyramid Summit, however, was still small and irregular until 1798, as shown by Nathaniel Davison. Not a place suitable for chairs, tables, and a large gathering, which would pay the portage costs of bringing supplies to the top. It is only this context which makes removing five courses of the Great Pyramid a worthwhile endeavor. In late 1798, Jacques Grobert was the last person to measure the Great Pyramid, up to course 206. At this time, he writes, The Turks look askance when the infidels take any measures in their country. They always suspect some sinister project, or at least some witchcraft. An Arab sheikh who accompanied me to the pyramids said to me one day, It is useless for you to take so much trouble. There is no money in it. I swear Allah, on God, and on my faith. And there you have it, perhaps the very man who organized the destruction we see today at the top of the Great Pyramid. If it wasn't for this one incident, almost all the backing stones would remain in place. If the casing stones were never quarried, the top of the Great Pyramid would look nearly the same as the Pyramid of Khafre. It illustrates how a few self-centered individuals can play an oversized role in the disappearance of our ancient history. As easy as it may be to judge the men who decapitated the Great Pyramid to host tea parties, the recent century of tourism renovations may not look any different to future generations. The incentive to profit from the pyramids is greater than ever, and this often means evidence is destroyed to attract or facilitate more visitors. Only by understanding this cause and effect can we hope to preserve history for the people that follow us. The now-missing Course 206 is a fantastic clue about how the Great Pyramid was built, and every detail may someday add up to a complete picture of the monument. There's still plenty of discovery to be made at the top. The graffiti has never been fully documented, and by some accounts, a few names and dates precede the 1798 destruction. Perhaps even an extra-tall block is a remnant from Course 206. A luminescence dating test would easily confirm if this was the case. It's time for Egyptology to take the complete history of the pyramids seriously, and to etch the year 1798 as a lesson that can no longer be forgotten. We must learn from the mistakes of the past to preserve our history for the future. Thanks to everyone who watched this video to the end. Please subscribe to the channel to see more of this content. Give a like or comment as you see fit. And above all, remember to ask your friends if they take their history for granted.