25 Strangest Mysteries of Egyptian Pyramids

The pyramids that stand on the Giza Plateau in Egypt are the world's best-known landmarks, but are also some of the world's least well-understood monuments. You'd be surprised by how much you don't know about the pyramids, but we're going to show you in this video and maybe we'll throw in a few bonus facts about wider Ancient Egypt while we're at it. The Great Pyramid of Giza seems to contain a lot of encoded mathematical information. The elevation of the pyramid contains encoded references to the three great constants of math, Pi, Phi, and E, especially in its slopes, which are angled at precisely 51.85 degrees. If you were to place an equilateral triangle inside the pyramid, its edge length would be precisely 555.5 feet, which is 6,666 inches. If you were to put a circle inside it, the circle would have a diameter of 365.242 feet. The Earth has a tropical year of 365.242 days. It's possible to go far deeper than this with cones, rectangles, squares, and smaller circles and come up with other repeating numbers and strange coincidences, all of which ignore the fact that feet and inches weren't invented until thousands of years after the pyramids were built. Or were they? Did we forget this measurement system and then rediscover it? Or do a lot of mathematicians have far too much time on their hands? We'll let you decide that. But such geometric precision in something so ancient is surely more than a coincidence. Even the location of the Egyptian pyramids is significant and mysterious. These locations weren't chosen by chance. As we've already seen from the geometry of the structures, everything about their construction is clinically precise. For a start, they're all on the left bank of the Nile, towards the west. The west is associated with the world of the dead in ancient Egyptian mythology. It's been proposed that the three pyramids of the Giza plateau were built in alignment with the stars of the belt of Orion. It might not look that way now, but we have to remember that the stars in the night sky weren't in quite the same positions 4,500 years ago as they are now. Critics of the idea point out that not all of the pyramids were built or planned at the same time, but proponents point out that not being planned or built at the same time doesn't mean that the alignment couldn't have been planned from the moment the second pyramid was built. Furthermore, there's a lot of conjecture about when the pyramids were truly built. Some people even think the shafts inside the pyramids aligned with constellations as they appeared at the time and served as metaphorical stairways to heaven. Is it true? What do you think? Hedaphares I is the most important ancient Egyptian woman you've never heard of. She was the wife of Sneferu, who ruled between 2613 and 2589 BCE and became mother to Khufu. Sneferu and Khufu are both recognized as being the driving forces behind the construction of the pyramids, but Hedaphares was the driving force behind the men. Her tomb was discovered on the Giza Plateau in February 1925 and can only be described as fabulous. Despite being looted during antiquity, the items left behind by the thieves are in pristine condition. They include a wooden carrying chair, a portable pavilion, a bed, and a pair of armchairs. The name of the queen appears on many of the artifacts from the tomb, as does the name of Sneferu. The big mystery about the tomb, though, is what happened to the remains of Hedaphares. A beautiful alabaster sarcophagus was found inside the tomb in 1925 and it was believed to be unopened. But when it was eventually opened two years later, there was nothing inside it. Did Tomb Raider steal her mummified body thousands of years ago? If so, why? Of course, the pyramids on Giza Plateau aren't the only ancient pyramids in Egypt. There are lots more, but none so bizarre as the Ben Pyramid of Dahshur. There are many mysteries about this strange structure, not least the mystery of why it was deliberately built with its distinctive bent shape. The 4000-year-old pyramid was off-limits to the public for more than 50 years between the 20th and 21st centuries, as the Egyptian government carried out what it claimed to be essential restoration work. But there are unresolved questions about why the work took half a century. It finally reopened to visitors in 2019. Upon its reopening, Egypt's antiquities minister announced that numerous sarcophagi had been found inside the pyramid during its many years of renovation, many of which contained perfectly preserved mummies. Again, it's not clear why the discoveries weren't announced at the time they were actually discovered. A popular theory about the bent pyramid is that it was built as an experiment by Sneferu as he tried to identify the formula for the perfect pyramid. But there's no way to confirm that idea. The Pyramid of Unas was built, appropriately enough, for the pharaoh Unas around 4400 years ago. The smooth-sided pyramid is little more than a ruin in North Saqqara today, but it still enjoys a reputation as the magical pyramid. It's the smallest of the known pyramids built during the Old Kingdom, but its every surviving surface is covered in ancient inscriptions known as the Pyramid Texts, most of which are spells designed to assist the king in the afterlife. It's thought that the tradition of inscribing such texts began here and continued into the Middle Kingdom era, eventually leading to the Coffin Text that became the foundation of the Book of the Dead. The strangest of the texts inscribed inside the Pyramid of Unas is known as the Cannibal Hymn and comprises a description of the king meeting the gods in the afterlife and then literally eating them, after which he apparently eats old men and women for fuel. There's presumably a symbolic meaning to the text, but the meaning is lost on us due to a mixture of translation issues and the passage of time. Does the Great Pyramid contain a secret throne carved out of a meteorite that landed on Egypt in ancient times? Probably not, but let's entertain the idea anyway. This is a theory that was floated by Professor Giglio Mali of Milan Polytechnic in 2018. He believes the throne is that of Khufu and that it resides in a secret chamber concealed within an unexplored region of the pyramid. We know the Egyptians sometimes used meteoritic iron to make artifacts because Tutankhamun's dagger is made of meteorite material, but something on the scale of an entire throne would be unprecedented. Mali bases his whole theory on a literal interpretation of the pyramid texts, which, as we've already said, contain an account of Unas eating supernatural deities. We know there are secret chambers within the Great Pyramid because they've been identified with scanning technology. But that's no basis for believing there's a meteorite throne inside one of them. Instead of looking for the throne, perhaps we should be looking into Professor Mali's qualifications to ensure that he's a real professor. Speaking of outlandish claims, what should we make of a bizarre video that was filmed in Cairo in August 2019? It appears to show a mysterious object emerging from a fireball directly above the Great Pyramid of Giza. The video footage speaks for itself. In it, we see a fireball, possibly a meteorite, arcing through the night sky. However, just as it's about to move out of view, a second orb-shaped object seems to detach from it and move away in a different direction. Unsurprisingly, there are several thousand people who've seen the original footage elsewhere on YouTube and believe it to be direct evidence of alien visitation. However, there are just as many people who think it's a plain and simple meteorite. We're not happy with that explanation, though. The meteorite theory wouldn't explain the detachment or movement of the orb. Self-proclaimed UFO expert Scott C. Waring says it's definitely an alien spacecraft. But if you know anything about Scott C. Waring, you'll know that that's the kind of thing he says all the time. Whether it is or isn't, though, it has to be considered an unidentified flying object purely because we can't identify it. We're back to talking about lesser-known pyramids now, because we've got another one to discuss, or rather, something that was found close to it. We're talking about the Medium Pyramid, which is 4,600 years old and has almost completely collapsed. It was the site of a mysterious discovery in February 2009, when the skeletal remains of a 13-year-old girl were found there. She was found buried in what was described as a squatting position inside a tomb at the foot of the pyramid. No other bodies have ever been found inside or even close to the Medium Pyramid, which archaeologists believe may have been built for the If the pyramid was built for Sneferu, it begs the question of who this girl was. Might she have been his daughter? If so, shouldn't there have been some grave goods buried with her, along with inscriptions that might identify her? The discovery is interesting because it seems so out of place, and the mystery of her identity hasn't been resolved in the years since it happened. The pyramids of Egypt are well known for their lack of human remains, which leads many people to question whether they were ever really tombs at all. The discovery of a previously undisturbed tomb in Egypt is always big news, but some tombs are more astonishing than others. This one, which was opened for the first time in 2019, stands head and shoulders above all the rest, and that's because the colors painted on the walls still look so fresh that the work could have been finished yesterday. That's obviously not the case, though. This tomb is more than 4,000 years old. It hasn't been easy to identify the occupant of this almost pristine tomb, but experts believe that it's probably the final resting place of a high-ranking official named Huy, who served as a nobleman during the Fifth Dynasty some 4,400 years ago. His tomb contains numerous depictions of, and references to, Pharaoh Gedkare Assesi, implying that he may have served him directly. The entrance to the tunnel is of a design that's usually reserved for pyramids, which suggests that Huy was held in high regard during his lifetime. Gedkare Assesi ruled for more than 40 years, but little is known about his reign, so archaeologists hope that this beautiful tomb might still have more information to reveal. One of the most enduring mysteries about the pyramids is how they were built. There are many theories, but we might never know which of them, if any, is correct. Let's consider the logistics of the issue. The Great Pyramid of Khufu contains an estimated 2.3 million blocks of stone. The average weight of one of those blocks of stone is 2.5 tons. You don't need to be a math expert to work out that 2.5 tons multiplied by 2.3 million means that the Great Pyramid of Khufu weighs approximately 5.75 million tons. That's a massive amount of weight to lift and move into place. We might even be underestimating the weight because erosion has taken its toll on the stone blocks over the passing of thousands of years. How was all this weight moved? Was it dragged over temporary wraps? Was it lifted into the air using a complex system of rollers, pulleys, and pivots? Did the Egyptians even cast the stones in situ using an early method of making cement? Unless someone invents time travel, it's a secret that may never be revealed. We tend to think of Tutankhamun as the boy king because of his tender age. But Tutankhamun was old enough to have children of his own. We know that because we found two of them. Sadly, they didn't live very long. The children, both of whom were girls, were buried in their father's tomb and so were discovered when it was opened by Howard Carter in 1922. The inscriptions on their tiny coffins refer to them only as the Osiris, meaning the deceased. So we don't even know their names. Somewhat inauspiciously, they're now known as mummies 317a and 317b. The mother of the girls was probably Tutankhamun's wife, Ankhesenamun, who might be the mummy currently labeled KV21a. Mummy 317a was born prematurely after only five or six months gestation, whereas 317b was born at near full term. Their appearance is unusual, and while conditions like spina bifida and Sprengel's deformity have been suggested as possible causes, neither can be confirmed. In fact, scientists have never been able to determine what the cause of death was for either child. There may be no mystery in Egypt bigger than the Serapeum of Saqqara. That's the name given to a collection of 24 jet-black, 100-ton granite boxes hidden on a hillside to the south of Giza's Great Pyramid. The gargantuan sarcophagi appear to have been interred in their current position somewhere around 3,300 years ago, during a time when the legendary pharaoh Ramesses II was on Egypt's throne. Some of the boxes have been opened and found to contain the remains of Apis bulls. Bulls were sacred to the ancient Egyptians, but they wouldn't usually be buried with such honour. One of the most controversial theories about their design and purpose is that they were used for fermentation, which would have generated sufficient stress within the sarcophagi to create a luminous glow inside the dark tunnels. In other words, they might have been a primitive but astonishing form of lighting. The majority of Egyptologists reject this idea out of hand, but they don't have any better explanations of their own. If the ancient Egyptians were capable of creating a lighting system from the gases of decaying bulls, they were even more astonishing than we thought they were at the start of this video. Ancient Egypt wasn't always strictly Egyptian. 2,200 years ago, there was a very strong Greek influence in the country, as evidenced by the discovery of the ruins of a bathhouse in the Egyptian coastal town of Berenike in November 2022. The bathhouse is enormous, made up of two tholoi containing 14 bathtubs each, each of which would have contained either lukewarm or cold water. If you wanted a hot bath, you'd have to enter a separate room. The bathhouse is accompanied by two artificial reservoirs, both of which were fed from the same well. There's a building at the west end of the bathhouse that may have been a gymnasium, but this is difficult to confirm. These ruins date to the Hellenistic period in Egypt, which occurred between the deaths of Alexander the Great and Cleopatra VII. Berenike was a military town back then and was known for its large complement of East African war elephants. It's likely that this bathhouse was built purely for the enjoyment of the military, but the elephants wouldn't have been invited in. We tend to think of counterfeit money as a modern-day problem, but humans have been attempting to get away with fraud for as long as they've existed. And we can prove this by telling you about this vast horde of ancient Egyptian counterfeit money discovered in December 2020. Coins and notes didn't exist when this counterfeit money was created 2200 years ago, and so the economy of the time was dominated by gold, silver, and bronze. Unfortunately, when several Bronze Age civilizations collapsed within a few decades of each other in the Eastern Mediterranean, silver became scarce. That led to people taking criminal measures. Archaeologist Zillah Eshel has spent much of his past year studying hordes of what's long been thought to be Bronze Age silver collected from sites all over Egypt and Israel, only to find that much of it is actually cheap copper alloy-coated with silver to make it look like something more valuable. This probably wasn't a con carried out by market traders, though. Zillah thinks it's much more likely that the rulers of Egypt didn't want people in Canaan, which belonged to Egypt back then, to find out they were running out of silver. They ordered the creation of the fake silver to make it appear that they were still rich during a time when everyone else was running low. During the reign of King Ramses II 3,000 years ago, the capital city of Egypt was Pyramesse. In early 2017, archaeologists working at a site believed to be one of the famous pharaoh's former palaces in Pyramesse came across a surprising discovery – a set of footprints left behind by children. The footprints were found among the fragments of rare paintings, but the two things aren't thought to be connected. The footprints are preserved at the bottom of a mortar pit and belong to children who were between the ages of three and five years of age. The painting fragments found with them appear to have been deposited in the pit deliberately, but we're unable to say why. We don't know why there were children at the bottom of the pit either. They'd have been too young to be child workers, and it seems unlikely that children of that age would be cast into a pit as punishment. As with most discoveries that puzzle them, archaeologists have speculated that the reason for the children being in the pit might be related to an unknown ritual or ceremony. There's no evidence to support that idea, but there's no evidence to support any other theory either. Archaeologists who specialize in Egyptology have done a great job of locating many of the tombs of the pharaohs, but they haven't yet found all of them. The tombstone of Thutmose II is still missing, but a discovery made early in 2020 by accident might have put them on the brink of finding it. A Polish team was rummaging through the rubble in the Deir al-Bahari region of the country in the hope of uncovering part of the mortuary temple of Had Shipset, but they found something quite different and even more remarkable. Instead of temple ruins, they found a 3,500-year-old treasure chest, one that bears an inscription dedicating it to the memory of the lost pharaoh. Measuring little more than a square foot, it's easy to see how the box has been missed by previous researchers for so many years. It looks just like any other piece of rubble until you see it at close quarters. Once the team opened it up, they found a few golden items carefully wrapped in linen, a fossilized goose egg, and the skeletal remains of a sacrificed goose. The placement of the box suggests that a tomb was either created somewhere nearby or was planned to be built somewhere nearby. Archaeologists are betting on the former and hope to be able to find it soon. Aprius was not one of the great pharaohs of ancient Egypt, but an artifact from the time of his rule more than 2,500 years ago has posed a great mystery to historians. His palace in Memphis was enormous, measuring more than 520 feet by 350 feet. The gate to the palace was a grand affair, featuring several decorated limestone reliefs. Only fragments of the gate exist today, but there's a particular shade of yellow on those surviving fragments that ought not to be there. The Egyptians used a pigment called orpiment to create yellow, but there's more than just orpiment on the yellow colors on the gate. There's arsenic in the paint, just as there would be with orpiment, but there's also lead and antimony, plus a layer of wax. Scientists have seen these ingredients in yellow paint before, but it was thought that nobody came up with this particular mixture until the Middle Ages. Lead-10 yellow paint appears, for example, in the milkmaid by Johann Vermeer, which was painted in 1657. Rather than being a European invention, it seems this pigment was invented in Egypt, forgotten about for 2,000 years, and then reinvented by Europeans. No ancient civilization has been studied more than the Egyptians, and yet there are still new things to find out about this mighty race and its empire. We don't even fully understand some of the things we've found already, like the Temple of Qom Ambo. The mummified remains of several hundred crocodiles were recently found underneath the temple, thus finally explaining some of the markings on the walls. Unusually for Ptolemaic-period Egypt, the temple is divided into two. We have two halls, two courts, two sanctuaries, and even two entrances. Half of the temple is devoted to worshipping Sobek, and the other half to Horus. The Sobek half of the temple is covered in crocodile paintings, but nobody could ever work out why. The paintings earned the temple the nickname House of the Crocodiles. But until the crocodile remains were found, most historians just thought of the artwork as quirky and unexplained. What remains unexplained are the engravings of medical and surgical implements on the temple walls, which are said to be the oldest in the world. Were there two separate priesthoods here? Was one devoted to medicine and the other to crocodiles? If so, what did they have in common? The city of Giza, close to Cairo, has been explored more thoroughly by archaeologists than almost any other part of Egypt. It is, after all, the place where the pyramids stand. There are still new discoveries to be made there, though, as evidenced by the discovery of a large ancient building in September 2018. The building has a footprint of 50 square feet and is thought to be part of a former residential area. There's another building right next to it, containing a Roman bath and a room that appears to have been used for religious rituals. That theory stems from the fact that the room contains basins of the kind used for ritual purifications, along with offering pots bearing the head of Bess, the ancient Egyptian god of childbirth and music. We're not clear on what it is about the larger building that led historians to conclude that it was part of a residential community. Other than its size, it's far larger than the average residential dwelling of the era. The presence of the Roman bath and the Roman style of the other artifacts found in the other building might mean that the community that lived here was Roman rather than Egyptian. The Cairo Geniza isn't a building or a location. It's a collection of over 200,000 ancient documents which paint a picture of life in Cairo during the city's Jewish period. The documents were found during the 19th century inside the Ben Ezra Synagogue, which was built by Al-Fustat in 882. Legend has it that it was built on the exact spot where the baby Moses was found on the Nile, although that obviously can't ever be proven. Technically speaking, all of the documents that make up the Cairo Geniza were thrown away. Religious laws say that documents bearing the name of God can't be destroyed or trashed though, so they have to be stored somewhere when they're discarded. The synagogue was as good a place as any. The collection contains documents written between the 10th century and the 19th, including personal correspondence, legal contracts, business documents, and religious manuscripts. They interest historians because rather than detailing the affairs of the social elite of the time, they document the lives of ordinary people. Among the most significant writings in the Cairo Geniza is the pharmacological work of Ahmed ibn al-Dajjar, who was a doctor in the 11th century. There's even a 10th century letter from Kiev which provides the earliest evidence that a Jewish community existed in Ukraine at the time. Amenhotep III, who also went by the nickname Amenhotep the Magnificent, is one of the most significant rulers of Ancient Egypt, reigning for 40 years after taking the throne in 1386 BCE. He was more than just a pharaoh, he was hailed as a living god-king. As such, he had many palaces, but none of those palaces were finer than the Maqqada Palace. It wouldn't be an exaggeration to say that the palace was larger than some of the cities of the era. It's so big that it even contains a ceremonial lake. There's nothing more than ruins left in the palace now, but archaeologists and historians have been able to excavate and identify multiple courtyards and audience chambers, plus blocks of apartments known as the West Villas, which would have housed the many hundreds of workers and servants who were required to keep the palace ticking and attend to the pharaoh's whims. Even in its ruined state, the walls of Maqqada Palace still feature stunning paintings of flowers, animals, reed beds, and more, many of which still bear their original colors. No set of ruins better hints at the splendor that pharaohs lived in than this one. Is the Narmer Palate the world's oldest historical document? Well, perhaps we shouldn't expect a clear answer on that from historians. They can't even agree on what it ought to be called. For every person who calls it the Narmer Palate, there's another who calls it the Great Herakonopolis Palate. The curious artifact was found at Egypt's Temple of Orus in 1897 and is a little over 5,100 years old. Whether or not it's the oldest document in the world, the hieroglyphs carved into its surface are the oldest in Egypt. Proponents of the theory about it being the world's oldest document point to the differences between the two depictions of King Narmer on either side of the artifact. He wears the red crown associated with Lower Egypt on one side and the white crown associated with Upper Egypt on the other. This is the oldest drawing of an ancient Egyptian ruler, but more importantly, it could be interpreted as a record of Narmer's incredible achievement of unifying the ancient kingdom of Egypt. Those who dispute this say that it's actually a reference to a military victory by Narmer's forces over the ancient Libyans. Although to be honest, we don't see how that would change its status as the world's oldest document. Egyptian history and folklore are filled with stories about the great kings, queens, and pharaohs. One of the most famous of all of them was Ramses II, who is considered the greatest leader of Egypt's Golden Age. He owes part of his great reputation to the stunning structures he ordered to be built during his 66-year reign, and the temples of Abu Simbel rank among the very best of them. You'll find them just south of Aswan, close to the country's border with Sudan. There are two temples at the site, the largest of which was built 3,200 years ago and dedicated to Nefertari, the pharaoh's favorite wife. Both temples are still in incredible condition considering their age, with brightly colored carvings and murals still adorning the interior walls. The quietest spot within them, and therefore the best place to sit and quietly gather your thoughts, is the room at the back of the great temple with its four giant statues. Catch it at the right time of day, and you'll find that the sun shines straight through the temple doors to illuminate the statues, giving them an ethereal glow. The most famous pyramids in Egypt are the ones in Cairo, but they're far from the only pyramids in Egypt. It's just that they're larger and in better condition than almost all the others. As an example, here's what's left of the Pyramid of Senesret II in Cajun. The pyramid was built 3,800 years ago while Senesret was still alive, which meant he could give it a name. Somewhat immodestly, he called it Ka-Senesret, which means Senesret Shines. Curiously, he chose to have his pyramid built in Cajun rather than Dahshur, which is where the pyramid of his father, Amenemhet II, is located. That's a significant break from a tradition that was already well-established by that point, and historians aren't sure of the reason for it. He also hid the entrance to the pyramid in an unusual place. Rather than being on the north face of the pyramid, which was standard for old and Middle Kingdom pyramids, Senesret had the entrance concealed beneath the tomb of a princess buried a few hundred feet away. It's been speculated that this may have been a measure to guard the pyramid against grave robbers, but that's just a theory.