Who REALLY Built The Pyramids- Mysteries and Secrets of Ancient Egypt

Imagine that you are Napoleon Bonaparte. You have recently landed with your army in Egypt. You have a whole pile of very important tasks ahead of you. First, you need to take Egypt away from the English. Then you will have to build your political career, become an emperor, conquer Europe. In short, you have this complete feeling that you are at the epicenter of events, riding the crest of history. At that moment, there is no one more important than you. And really, only two people can probably be compared to you. Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great. And then your army, half of it barefoot French Christians, approaches Cairo. And near a dirty little village called Giza, they see the Egyptian pyramids for the first time. And somehow, all at once, everything you were thinking about, everything you were worried about, suddenly seems small and insignificant. Because those pyramids were built back in the days when your French ancestors were walking around in skins, living in forests, and basically praying to who knows what. Probably to some oak trees. The pyramids have been standing for 4,000 years. And apparently, they will stand for another 4,000. They have seen Caesar, Alexander the Great, and an endless number of kings and commanders, each of whom considered himself the main character of human history. Well, those kings and commanders turned to dust a long time ago. And except for a few names are absolutely forgotten, while the pyramids remain. So yes, Napoleon was shaken. Of course, he was impressed by the sight. He was so struck that he began his speech before the battle with the words, soldiers, 40 centuries of history are looking at you. If we assume that the pyramids really could look at anything, they would not have cared in the slightest at that moment. What had they not seen battles over 4,000 years? In general, friends, we are starting a new history lesson. And today, we will talk about the pyramids, where they came from, their meaning, their construction, their design, and the many wild conspiracy theories that have been wrapped around them. You're watching Histories Omitted, where stories don't just get told, they finally get explained. Let's begin. Let's imagine that the story takes place about a thousand years before Napoleon. You are a powerful Arab caliph, a local ruler. From your fortress in the center of Cairo, it is impossible not to notice the pyramids. They catch your eye every day. And honestly, they annoy you. And so you decide to break into the largest one, the Great Pyramid of Khufu. Well, there must be some immeasurable treasures lying there. Gold, silver, gemstones the size of a human head. You have read about all of this in ancient books. That in Roman times, there was an entrance somewhere on the north side. And that it could be opened. So, by the caliph's order, a whole horde of workers spends months, day after day, pounding into the pyramid. They try hammers, sledgehammers. They pour vinegar on the casing so the stone will be eaten away. Finally, by the sound of stones falling somewhere inside, the builders understand that they missed by about five meters to the side. At about ten meters in height, at last, your tunnel still leads you into the correct corridor. But those first builders of the pyramid, who have been dead for several thousand years, had anticipated that scenario. Inside, the Arabs will find no treasures at all, only a thick layer of dust. At night, the vizier will toss a jar of gold coins into the pyramid, just enough to pay the workers. Otherwise, it becomes awkward. People spent months doing who knows what. And 500 years later, one of the heirs of that Arab caliph will decide that such a thing still has to be put to use somehow. And he will remove the white casing from the pyramid of Khufu. And from the slabs that were taken, one of the most beautiful Cairo mosques will be built. And now, tourists enter the pyramid through the hole that the caliph broke through. It still exists. Possibly, if you have been to Giza on an excursia, you also climbed into the pyramid through that hole. So it is not clear at all when they were created. In fact, the first written testimonies about the pyramids that we have are from Herodotus, the father of history. And Herodotus lived in the 5th century BC. And the pyramid of Khufu, according to specialist assumptions, was built at least in the 27th century BC. That means Herodotus was separated from the pyramids by 22 centuries. Slightly less than we today are separated from Herodotus himself. Ancient Greeks and Romans traveled to Egypt to stare at the pyramids in exactly the same way we now go to see the Acropolis or the Colosseum. And already then, they were occupied by the very same questions as us. What is this in general? Who built these pyramids and how? Why was all of this needed? What is inside? And just like us, there was no one left to ask. The pharaohs were long gone. Egypt had been conquered by the Persians. Over thousands of years, the Egyptians themselves had forgotten a lot. And the priests, of whom only a few remained for obvious reasons, were in no hurry to share secrets with tourists. The pyramid of Khufu was already included in the ancient list of the seven wonders of the world. And it is the only wonder of the seven that has survived to our day. Let's first deal with the official, likely version. Herodotus is exactly the ancestor of that version. We do not have earlier testimonies anyway. Herodotus reported that the Egyptians were the most religious and pious people he had seen in his life. A people literally obsessed with religion and the afterlife. According to Herodotus, the pyramids are the tombs of the pharaohs. True, he would tachneel that, for example, Khufu was not buried inside his own pyramid out of the understandable fear that the slaves whom Khufu forced to build the pyramid would want revenge after his death and would desecrate his body. Indeed, inside the pyramids themselves, unlike the tombs in the Valley of the Kings, mummies are rarely found. And if they are found, it is usually some fragments. From Herodotus also comes the version that the pyramids were built by slaves. Later, that version lived in historical scholarship for a long time. The ancient Greeks were slave owners and slave traders, and it was hard for them to imagine that a free person would voluntarily build these giants, dragging stone blocks across the desert on his own back. Today, that version is no longer the main one. According to current research, the pyramids were built by special teams of hired workers who were paid very well for it. But as for the funerary function, Around the pyramids, they find a lot of things connected with death. Nearby, there are various temple complexes where funerary rites were performed. Inside the pyramids themselves, sometimes funerary texts are carved on the walls where the achievements of the dead are listed. But still, for people of antiquity, it did not fit in their heads in the same way it does not fit in mine, for example, now. To build a tomb for one person for 20 years, with the whole country, even if that person is a pharaoh, and to throw the whole economy into that construction, how is that even possible? The pharaoh, by the way, at the moment of construction was alive and well and was eagerly waiting for the building to be completed. And he would give the architect valuable instructions, like, make it higher. I don't want my grave to be smaller than, for example, my father's, my descendants will laugh at me. And the architect is not digging a big pit, he is piling up a huge hill and putting an obelisk on it. No, not like that either. He is solving the most difficult engineering task, so difficult that even now, with all our science and technology, it is not a trivial story. So, obviously, there is the history of humanity, there are historical documents. When there are no historical documents, there are earlier chronicles, memories. And by comparing all this, plus applying radiocarbon analyses, mathematical models, scholars assume that it was like this. And again, as a viewer, there are many places where I get, as they say, pressed. Like, it was kind of like that look. The Egyptians have no diesel engines, no tower cranes, only hammers, chisels, ropes, drills, and stones. So with those stones, they polished other stones. Here is a small insert. Try taking a big stone of a fairly decent size at home and try polishing it with another stone. Ask 25 of your friends, for example, to spend some time doing it with you. Then record how long it takes you to polish one side down to a surface, like a book. How many hours, days, maybe a week. I have never done such experiments in my life, but I just imagine that today, grinders are equipped with diamond dust and other things. And the process works differently. But when you rub stone against stone like this, I don't know how long it will take. Again, this is a layman's question. I will ask these questions periodically. And we will return to the Pyramid of Khufu. We will keep returning to it because, first, it is the largest. Second, the most impressive. And in general, the most illustrative. Its official name, translated from Ancient Egyptian, is the Horizon of Khufu. Pyramids, in general, had very poetic names. Horizon of Khufu, Radiance of Sneferu, Divine Menkaure, and so on. Cheops is a Greek distortion. In reality, the pharaoh was called Khnum Khufu. So the height of the Pyramid of Khufu is 146 meters. The base is 230 by 230 meters. For several thousand years, it was the largest man-made object on the entire planet. The pyramid is built from one and a half million stone blocks. The average weight of one such block is 2.5 tons. But there are heavier ones as well. For example, the inner burial chamber is assembled from granite blocks. And the heaviest of those blocks weighs 30 tons. The total amount of material is 5 million tons of limestone and 8,000 tons of granite. The construction, according to the most common version, lasted 20 years. And considering the number of blocks and the complexity of the work, 20 years is very little. I will add from myself, it is negligibly little. I absolutely cannot imagine what kind of, you know, not even organization mathematically, blocks, plumb lines, how to move it all, but logistically, how several hundred thousand people, free stonemasons plus slaves, had to drag these millions of blocks. I simply cannot imagine this in the 21st century. Historians say that is how it was. The Egyptians were so highly organized in terms of logistics and construction that even then they knew how to do it. Let's go on. The pyramid was perfectly oriented to the cardinal directions. North, east, southwest. And it was clearly built by people who understood engineering. For example, in fact, it has eight faces. That is, each side is split in half and slightly concave inward for stability. Before the incident with the sultan, the pyramid was clad in white limestone slabs that made its faces visually smooth rather than stepped, as they are now. The slabs were polished and tightly fitted to each other. In places, the gaps were less than a millimeter. At the very top, there was a special capstone, the so-called pyramidion, a smaller pyramid. It was gilded. That is, the white stone shone in the sun and above it sparkled a gilded vershina. You can imagine what kind of impression all this made on the Egyptians. Here is another moment I noticed. Some blocks are cut so that it is easier to fit them. Some are shorter, some longer. That is, in principle, not only logistically, but also the production is calculated extremely precisely. You understand, in our time, to open a restaurant or renovate an apartment, we draw all this in AutoCAD. And only then do we understand where to cut tile, how to lay the flooring, and so on. Now imagine, with the pyramids, it was almost the same. There are no computers. How they could visualize all of this, I do not understand. But returning to the pyramids, it is impressive even now, although we have already seen everything. There are Burj Khalifas. Humans have flown into space. Anything. And imagine what it was like to look at this for illiterate ancient Egyptian peasants. You live in a hut made of clay and palm leaves. You catch crocodiles for dinner or a crocodile catches you for dinner. And on the horizon, this is shining. That is it. No questions. It is clear that the Pharaoh is a living God. So, of course you pay him taxes. Of course you listen to the priests. Do you know what creates dissonance for me? Peasants who pray to crocodiles understand that the Pharaoh is a living God and freeze in awe at this pyramid, which they themselves, those peasants, also built for 20 years. So here. Peasants are not very smart people living in clay huts. And at the same time, they can create such works of architectural art. It does not fit in the head. In general, you have to understand what ancient Egypt is. First, the main artery is the Nile. If someone has been to Egypt, they know that in this sense, nothing has changed since Khufu. All life is around the Nile. And around the Nile stretches a narrow strip along both banks of the river. Everything else is desert. From the point of view of let's settle here, the Nile in the ancient world was an absolute jackpot. A huge, full-flowing river water is life. Water is agriculture. Ancient states that appeared around such rivers were all more or less similar in their structure. They are called aqua despotisms, implying that everything revolves around agriculture and the distribution of water. You settle on the bank, dig irrigation canals, and that's it. Nothing more is needed. Live like that for a thousand years or 10,000 years. In Egypt, they did. And the Nile, moreover, flooded steadily every year. And until recently, before it was blocked by the Aswan hydroelectric station, the flood brought incredibly fertile silt that fertilized the soil, plus a warm climate. An Egyptian winter is 10, 15 degrees above zero. As a result, in the Nile Valley, one could harvest several crops a year. And so Egypt was this huge agro complex that fed not only itself, but also the entire Mediterranean, the entire ancient world as we know it. Around the export of Egyptian grain, there were constantly various political collisions. In Rome, for example. Later, there would be Byzantium. In other words, with such a social structure, it works best when nothing changes. You plant the crop, you harvest the crop. Many generations lived like that. Of course, there were wars, foreign invasions, but even they changed little. No one wanted to break what already worked well. The new ruler was simply declared a god, a pharaoh, and so on. And the entire bureaucracy, the entire management system, remained the same as it was. When the Romans came, they began to say, now you will have Roman administration. The priests told them, no, you don't need to explain anything to our people. We will say that you are the new pharaoh. The guys will understand. The elites will understand. And that's it. We will put a golden mask on you. Don't break anything. Everything will work. Bread will constantly be delivered to Rome. And you will be a living god. And the Romans quickly agreed to that. So, for the ordinary Egyptian peasant, nothing changed at all. The conqueror, as it were, connected to an already ready interface. And through that interface began to rule. And the most convenient way to govern such a society is, of course, religion. If in other ancient states, a major role was played by merchants, warriors, politicians, and other people we understand today, then all of Egypt was under the power of priests. Temple complexes were engaged simultaneously in propaganda and in management of the entire state structure, including agriculture, education, and the accumulation of knowledge. And at the top of it all was, of course, the pharaoh. Not only an absolute monarch, not only the high priest, but for simplicity, literally a living god, a sacred figure. A living god, not in the sense that he was very loved or very feared, although that too. And not in the sense that he could do anything he wanted to you, although that too. But in the sense that, in the population's view, the pharaoh was responsible for basic things. Without him, the sun would not rise, the Nile would not flood, and purely on a human level, it is understandable. Life in complete dependence on the Nile floods is life where you control nothing. There was a flood, great, we live. No flood, bad. Drought, mass, famine. And religion gives a sense of control, a feeling that something still depends on you. Why drought? The sacred crocodiles were fed badly, or the rituals were performed badly, incorrectly. Next time, we will feed the crocodiles properly and everything will be fine. The priests might not even be aware that the deal has nothing to do with crocodiles. These were educated people, smart. Their management experience was enormous. But why disturb the peasants who, for 100 generations, have been working the fields and digging canals? They won't understand anyway. Egyptian religion is a huge topic for a separate episode. And now, we will not spend an hour retelling Egyptian religion. But a couple of words must be said. Otherwise, it will be unclear why they bothered so much with pyramids. The Egyptians lived in the cyclical rhythm of the Nile floods. And their worldview was cyclical as well. The river floods, the river recedes. Wheat zirnaw is planted in the ground. It sprouts. Then the ears are cut and a new zirnaw is planted. You see, it even sounds like a mantra. The central figure of the Egyptian pantheon is Osiris, the god of fertility from the underworld. In myths, he is killed, dismembered, and thrown into the Nile. But he is resurrected from the dead. Accordingly, the ancient Egyptians believed in eternal life after death. Not only for the god Osiris, but also for themselves. The idea is quite obvious. Everything around renews itself. The cycle of nature is eternal, so a person probably does not die forever either. There were, of course, nuances. You had to live a destoiny life, your heart would be weighed on scales, and so on. But the main principle was, for the soul to have somewhere to return, you need to make a mumia out of the person. And the posthumous success of some of them depended directly on the condition of the dead body. That is why bodies were hidden in reliable tombs, so that no one would harm the mummies. Everything necessary for the posthumous journey was placed there as well. But pharaohs, of course, received treasures, weapons, chariots, and other riches. And also a whole army of servants in the form of special figurines. For pharaohs, pyramids or underground tombs with hidden chambers were built. Poor people, after death, were wrapped in cloth and sometimes buried, prama in the desert sand. For the road to the afterlife, they received a staff and sandals. It is believed that it was the desert that gave the ancient Egyptians the idea of mummification. Egypt is very dry. There is almost no rain there. And in the desert, bodies did not rot, but dried out and retained their shape. But that was only the beginning. Quite soon, the Egyptians achieved enormous successes in mummification. There were special priests who knew anatomy very well. Special tools with which they pulled out of the body everything the mummy no longer needed, but that could cause decay. They invented chemical compositions for embalming. There were several options of mummification. Literally, economy, comfort, and business class mummification. People, most likely, tried not to save money here. The quality of the afterlife depended on it directly. And the procedure was polished down to the smallest details, especially since everything had to be done quickly. And at the same time, the necessary rituals had to be observed impeccably. Which amulet to put where? Which words to say? From our point of view, funerals are simply a tribute of respect to the deceased. From the point of view of an Egyptian, a human life was at stake. And the fact that it was an afterlife did not change much. You might ask me, is it really possible that you believed all this without any proof? Well, how to put it? Right now, among the super rich, there is a fashion for cryonics. People voluntarily go into deep freezing in the hope that someday in the far future, scientists will invent physical immortality. Conspiracy theorists say that under Denver airport, there are already whole stacks of these refrigerators with bodies of rich people. There are no guarantees there either. It is much more likely that some idiot in 2136 will accidentally press a button and vickluch it the electricity, for example. And that's it. Eternal life turns into some liquid state of the body. And all these rich people will never be revived. And yet it doesn't stop anyone. Mummification in its ancient Egyptian essence was the same cryonics only based on religious principles, not technical ones. An Egyptian thought about death all his life, but not in a gloomy sense. On the contrary, he hoped that eternity awaited him. And from this point of view, the idea that the entire country would build a tomb for the pharaoh for 20 years, agree, no longer looks strange. And these really were great constructions. Each pyramid was essentially a national project. So how, for example, did they build the Pyramid of Khufu? First, they chose the place for a long time. The location was new. In the previous necropolis, such a large pyramid simply would not have fit anymore. They found a more or less flat rock, Veri-ud-Dashna. They immediately solved the fundamental issue of the foundation. They solved the issue of building materials. The limestone for the pyramid could be Dibavat right there, nearby. Everything was planned with enormous precision. The plan was laid out prama on the limestone. They made various marks there. As a result, the discrepancy in length between different sides of the pyramid is no more than four centimeters and in height, no more than two centimeters. Interestingly, by the errors, archaeologists still figured out from which side the builders began to work. From the eastern side, it is made more accurately. They leveled the rock, but in the very middle, they did not touch it and left a rise. Around which, in fact, they began to stack the pyramid. There is a common opinion that pyramids are built out of some Adinakovic stone blocks of incredibly correct shape. That is absolutely not true. Inside, they use blocks of very different sizes, very roughly processed. They Dibavali them right there to the southeast of the construction. Now, it is believed that from the quarry straight to the site, there went a ramp, which they later dismantled. It still was not easy. Into the lower part of the pyramid went blocks of three tons. Into the upper part, about a ton. They did not particularly care about the aesthetics of the inner masonry. Irregularities could even be filled during construction with sand. The latest research has shown voids inside the klotka. Stones of correct shape went to the outer layer and were laid in rows with a small offset. At first, it was possible to work from the ground. Then, around the pyramid, they began to build scaffolding and ramps. As the pyramid itself grew upward, after construction, the scaffolding was partially dismantled and partially it ended up inside the core of the pyramid itself. In total, the outer masonry consists of 201 tiers. It is believed that about 10 verhnich are lost. Then, there was a layer of small stones and mortar. Its chemical composition has now been analyzed. They found, among other things, charcoal there. And then on top, finally, there was the casing. This is where the builders really got serious. For the casing, they took white limestone from another quarry on the opposite bank of the Nile. And now, it is even known where from. In 2013, French archaeologists found papyri with the Diary of Merer, one of the foremen on the construction of the Great Pyramid. This foreman was responsible for transporting the casing limestone. The blocks were first carried by boats, then dragged to the site by hauling. And, in the opinion of scholars, the slabs were first laid and only then polished. That is where such tight-fitting comes from. But again, it sounds simple. You have to understand that the only way to polish stone in those days was to scrape it dolga and tediously with another harder stone. How much time that took is strachna to imagine. The papyri with the foreman's diary, by the way, were discovered on the Red Sea, at the point from which Khufu, at one time, sent expeditions for copper ore and turquoise. It is also known that, specifically for the construction of the pyramid, the pharaoh looked for suitable sources of red pigment and other natural paints. That is, all this was a bit more complex than buying materials wholesale from some single contractor. The most impressive thing is how the Egyptians used granite. Unlike limestone, it was transported from far away from Aswan. The Nile, of course, made it easier. When you have water, if you want, you can deliver anything anywhere. But still, multi-ton granite blocks were transported for 900 kilometers. Granite was needed for the strength of internal rooms, burial chambers, and tunnels. Otherwise, the pyramid would simply crush them with its weight. You could get into the pyramid through an entrance that was 15 meters above the ground and was sealed with a stone plug. From there, the tunnel went downward to an underground burial chamber. That is what archaeologists think. To an unfinished chamber, they did not finish it and abandoned it. As one option, it could have been a backup in case the pharaoh died too early. Then the pyramid would have been completed directly over the body of the pharaoh. On the way to the lower chamber, the tunnel splits. One branch goes upward into the core of the pyramid. There's another fork there. A horizontal tunnel went to the so-called Queen's Chamber. About the queen, by the way, it is not a fact. There is a version that in that chamber, a statue of the pharaoh could have been kept and thus one of his several souls could live there. And here, they already found traces of tomb robbers who apparently, at some point, managed to break inside. Above was a volume that is printed to call the Grand Gallery. This is a long section of the passage with an eight-meter vault. And behind the gallery was the King's Chamber, which is lined with black granite. There, they found only an empty sarcophagus. The walls are made from the same granite. The entrance is blocked by three massive granite doors. Once they were lowered into place using a complex system of taggy and counterweights. The ceiling is supported by nine granite beams, which by themselves weigh 400 tons. This was a rather ingenious engineering structure with a system of load distribution. It is funny that the builders made a mistake in the calculation somewhere. On the southern side, there is a crack in a ceiling beam and it appeared, apparently, already during construction. Archaeologists found a technical tunnel that was clearly broken through so they could crawl in and check whether everything was okay there. The construction in Giza itself was massive. The building of the pyramid pulled along the entire economy of the country. To one degree or another, the entire population of Egypt was involved in it. Someone hauled stone. Someone supplied materials. Someone fed and clothed the builders. Someone kept budgets and documentation. It is interesting, of course, whether they managed to skim something off the materials and what they did with the person who was caught doing that. Entire beer breweries and hundreds of livestock farms worked for the construction. Herodotus gives the number of 100,000 builders, but most likely, of course, he exaggerates. Besides, he was estimating the number of slaves. Modern research gives the number as several thousand professional crew workers. These were not only builders, but, for example, also workshop workers who manufactured and repaired tools. Well, it is clear that neither Herodotus nor modern historians know anything with certainty. They only assume. The construction site in Giza is now actively being excavated and it is literally an entire city. The pharaoh sometimes came and lived right there at the site in a separate temporary palace. And from there, he ruled the country. It did not end with the pyramid. Nearby, it was necessary to build a temple complex. Tombs for the family. Tombs for top officials. This was a kind of bonus of civil service. After death, you will also be properly packed. The best professionals in the country will do everything. And the architect who built all of this did not offend himself either. A tomb was prepared nearby for him too. Of course, it does not end with the Pyramid of Khufu. Egypt has a huge number of pyramids. At least 118 have now been identified. And surely there are more. The most famous besides the Great Pyramid are the other two pyramids standing next to it on the Giza Plateau. The Pyramid of Menkaure and the Pyramid of Khafre. Menkaure's pyramid is more modest, only 66 meters high. But in its design, there is a monolith that weighs more than 200 tons. A weight with which, well, not every modern engineer will even understand what to do. This pyramid looks stylish too. Besides white limestone, it was clad in red granite. In the 12th century, by the way, one of the Arab sultans, the son of the famous Saladin, ordered the pyramid to be destroyed. For eight months, workers tried to do at least something to that pyramid, but then they abandoned it and gave up. All they achieved was to make a hole in one of the faces. And they reported to the Zakashik that by their estimates, destroying the pyramid would take longer than it took to build it. It feels like by other standards, the ancient Egyptian builders simply did not work in principle. The Pyramid of Pharaoh Djoser and Saqqara was built in the 27th century BC and is considered the oldest in Egypt. It is well-preserved and from it, you can imagine how pyramids developed in general. Before Djoser, noble Egyptians were buried in one-story tombs called mastabas. In shape, they were also pyramids, but truncated. The burial rooms with mummies were located underground. Djoser originally ordered himself the same, but the architect decided to experiment and built a stepped structure. The result was liked. First, it looked impressive. And second, there was a certain symbolism. It turned out to be like a staircase into the sky. Interestingly, we even know the name of the architect, Imhotep, the pharaoh's vizier, a sage and an astrologer. His career went so well that 10-something centuries later, the Egyptians already revered him as a god of wisdom and medicine. In Saqqara, too, there is not one pyramid, but an entire necropolis. Very interesting. There is, for example, the pyramids of pharaohs of the 5th and 6th dynasties, where on the walls of the inner rooms, they found the so-called pyramid texts. And those, by the way, are the first discovered examples of ancient Egyptian funerary and magical literature. Mostly, they are descriptions of rituals, protective spells, and other useful life hacks for traveling through the afterlife. The oldest of the discovered funerary texts are from the 25th, 24th century BC. Later, they formed the basis of the so-called Book of the Dead. Another well-known burial complex is Dahshur. It is located not far from where the city of Memphis was one of the capitals of ancient Egypt. It was there that they first built a pyramid of the shape familiar to us, rather than a stepped one. From the Dahshur pyramids, you can also clearly see how the Egyptians experimented. In total, there were 11 there. Five survived. Among them is the famous Black Pyramid. There is nothing ominous about it. It simply stands on a hill of black rubble. And the Pyramidion from it is also black. It is now kept in the first hall of the Cairo Museum. The second interesting structure is the so-called Bent Pyramid. This is, of course, hell for a perfectionist. It looks as if it was assembled from two. A wide base, a flattened vershina, what is the logic? Scholars still have not fully viusnili. According to one version, there was an error in the project, and they urgently had to change it on the go so that everything would not collapse. According to another version, they were in a hurry because the Zakashik died earlier than the deadlines. But that, by the way, is unlikely. Because the Zakashik was Pharaoh Sneferu, the father of Khufu. And he has two more pyramids left. One of them is exactly the first truly pyramidal one. It is the Red Pyramid, the third highest after Khufu and Khafre. 109.5 meters high. It, like the Pyramids of Giza, also had white casing, which in the Middle Ages was also carried off for building materials. Under the casing, there was limestone of an unusual shade that looks pink at sunset, hence the romantic name. Pyramids were built even outside Egypt, from the 9th to the 4th century BC, on the territory of modern Sudan, there was the so-called Kingdom of Meroe. Nubians lived there, who fell under strong Egyptian influence. So modern revisionists who say that the pharaohs were black do have some grounds to think so. The Nubians of Meroe really did imitate their older Tavarshi, the Egyptians, as best they could, and they also built pyramids. Small ones, the biggest is 30 meters high. But there are a lot of pyramids, 255 inches total. Not all of them have survived to us, of course, because in the 19th century, an Italian archaeologist named Giuseppe Ferlini came to the region. That is, he told the locals that he was an archaeologist. But in fact, he was an adventurer and a hunter for other people's treasures. Pretty quickly, he got tired of digging with a shovel in search of treasure, and about 40 pyramids he blew up with dynamite. Now, in fact, we can move on to the theories about aliens. Interestingly, Europe became acquainted with the pyramids rather late. That is, all educated people knew that there had been such a thing as ancient Egypt, that somewhere out there, pyramids and other ruins remained. But the first to bring proper images of the pyramids were the scholars and the entourage of Napoleon. By that time, there were no indigenous Egyptians left anymore. Their remnants had turned into the people we now call Khats. And in general, this people had long forgotten their own ancient culture. Arabs had already lived in Egypt for a thousand years, and they themselves had no idea what these pyramids were, what they were for, and did not show much interest at all. Ancient papyri could be used to light a stove, and mummies were dug up, ground into powder, and sold as medicine. It was believed that this helped against all diseases at once. Napoleon was the first to bring to Egypt a full-fledged scientific expedition, which later published a huge report. Everything by the book. That is, Egyptology as a science begins in the 19th century. The time was turbulent. All kinds of esotericism and occultism very quickly came into fashion. At the same time, the Egyptian theme was picked up by the Freemasons, who were popular then. Scientific traditions, on the contrary, had not yet fully formed. Many researchers were amateurs, or simply frauds. The not-so-obvious idea that historical monuments should be preserved had also not yet taken root. As already mentioned, dynamite was actively used. In short, all kinds of occult esoteric theories began to grow around the pyramids. There were so many of them that a special term even appeared, Pyramidology. People especially often went off the rails on numerology. In 1859, an Englishman named John Taylor published a book titled The Great Pyramid, Why Was It Built, and Who Built It. In the book, he desperately tried to fit the proportions of the pyramids to the golden ratio. And he claimed that the pyramids were not built by Egyptians, but by Jews. He even cited passages from the Old Testament that were suitable in meaning. Taylor was not a scholar. He was a publisher who made money on second-rate English poets. He had never been to Egypt either. But he set the canon. He is considered the founder of Pyramidology. The first to become fans of Taylor were members of a British group called the Israelite Movement. It was a sect that believed the English belonged to one of the ten lost tribes of Israel. They provided the following evidence. The basic Egyptian unit of length, if you squint a little, is approximately equal to the English inch. Taylor was opposed by the American Charles Taze Russell. He claimed that the pyramids were built by God in order to settle the righteous there after the Last Judgment. There were even more exotic versions. For example, there lives such a remarkable character named Ignatius Donnelly, an American politician, Freemason, and communist. All of this quite officially. A representative of an organization called the Noble and Holy Order of the Knights of Labor. In 1881, he published the book Atlantis, the Antediluvian World. The book sold in insane numbers. The plot there was roughly as follows. Atlantis existed, the beings we call gods live there, and the last colony of the Atlanteans was ancient Egypt. Since the Atlantean race possessed technologies unimaginable to us, it was no problem for them to build the pyramids. And not only in Egypt. A new wave of interest in the pyramids came in the second half of the 20th century. It was the era of new age. People were going crazy about everything paranormal. In the 1,970 seconds, inventor Patrick Flanagan created a model of the Giza pyramids and discovered that pyramids supposedly have resonator properties. He gained followers who developed the theory further. According to them, people age more slowly inside copies of Egyptian pyramids, and plants grow faster. And of course, using sacred numerology, pyramids were used to predict World War I, the crucifixion of Christ, and Armageddon. Everything except the last one was predicted retroactively. A person of the 19th century saw in pyramids signs of divine will and a key to interpreting sacred texts. Hippies and new age thinkers, in the spirit of their time, removed pyramids from historical context altogether and reassigned them to aliens traveling through time. The legendary author of alternative history theories, Erich von Däniken, attributed the pyramids to ancient astronauts. In 1968, his famous book Chariots of the Gods was published, where he was one of the first to formulate the theory of paleocontact, that is, encounters between humanity and extraterrestrials in the distant past. And in his opinion, the pyramids are navigation markers for ancient astronauts. And the Egyptians could not have built the pyramids because they did not have suitable tools. Besides, there is allegedly no evidence of the presence of Egyptians at the construction site. But in reality, many tools have survived. Traces of builder settlements have been found and developed infrastructure as well. But Däniken remains a classic of pyramidology and the foundation for many other speculations. In particular, for the so-called Orion correlation theory. According to it, the arrangement of the three main pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx corresponds to the arrangement of stars in the constellations of Orion and Leo. The stream of people with rulers has not dried up to this day. They are mainly interested in the pyramid of Khufu. There are, of course, mathematically significant proportions, precise orientation to the cardinal directions, and Khufu himself was indeed not found inside. They still say that if you divide certain dimensions by others, you get the number pi. And if you multiply something else by something else, you get the golden ratio. You can check it yourself if you want. It is quite entertaining. Or watch the documentary, The Mysteries of the Pyramids, where all of this is laid out convincingly. The simplest assumption is that the Egyptians, just like us, were obsessed with proportions and beautiful numbers. The beauty of mathematics and geometry is that they work anywhere, whether in ancient Egypt or in the Louvre. Any mathematician will tell you that to do mathematics, you need three things. Something to write with, something to write on, and preferably a head to think with. Ink existed in ancient Egypt. Papyrus existed. Time to think also existed tens of thousands of years. There were no other entertainments anyway. Those had not yet been invented. In all this conspiracy thinking, there is a curious characteristic belief of the modern person that people of the past could not have been smarter than people today. Some super developed aliens must have flown in, built all of this, polished it with laser chisels and atomic hammers, and left. We live in an age of progress. We're used to thinking that progress is linear. Today, you have a steam locomotive. Tomorrow, you have a car. Day after tomorrow, a spaceship. Or maybe the spaceship already existed among the ancient Atlanteans. Everything complex and impressive is automatically associated with futurism and technological advancement. There are actually millions of alternative versions of the purpose and origin of the pyramids. An average professional Egyptologist receives about one letter a week on this topic. A cosmic beacon. A giant sundial measuring time until the destruction of civilization with the Sphinx as its hand. A granary from the Bible. This is a medieval version proposed by Christian pilgrims. Facilities for producing fertilizers. Headquarters of intelligent dinosaurs who died in a nuclear war. An alien base. Even a power station operating on principles unknown to us. There are pyramidologists who insist that the Pyramid of Khufu lies on one line with the pyramids of the Incas, Easter Island, Angkor Wat, and other similar landmarks. Well, it is clear that our planet is round. And with sufficient desire, anything can end up on one line, depending on how you draw it. So far, the main argument against the religious function of the pyramids is as follows. Archaeologists like to attribute religious functions to everything they do not understand. Similar cases have already occurred in history. For example, in the 19th century, specialists were convinced that ancient Romans had special household temples. Romans supposedly worshipped running water and river nymphs there. But by the end of the 19th century, large European cities switched from cesspits to toilets. And then it dawned on the specialists that these were not temples of river nymphs, but ancient Roman toilets with flushing connected to the city sewer system. It cannot be ruled out that something similar will happen with the pyramids. In the 23rd century, humanity may suddenly realize that these were not tombs at all. Literally slap itself on the forehead and say, oh damn, so that's what it was. If sufficiently convincing evidence appears, mainstream science will not hide it. After all, just imagine how many dissertations could be defended. But for now, the tomb version remains the most convincing. New information appears constantly anyway. Research continues. For example, in 1993, a small robot named after an Egyptian god who opens paths was sent into the ventilation shafts of the Pyramid of Khufu. And it turned out that these are not ventilation shafts at all. They reach the surface, but do not exit outside. So what are they for? It is unclear. The main version is that these were symbolic channels through which the soul of the pharaoh could leave the pyramid and return back. In 2017, a team of Japanese, French, and Egyptian researchers used special scanning on the Pyramid of Khufu and found a large cavity above the Grand Gallery. 30 by 4 meters. What could be there and what to do with it? There is scientific discussion about this as well. Even the dating of the pyramids is floating. That is, for Egyptian officials, everything is simple. They have officially set the construction date of the pyramid as the 23rd of August 25, 60 BC. And they celebrate it every year. But in reality, different dates are proposed. Recently in Scotland, samples of wood were found that had been taken a hundred years ago from the Queen's chamber by a crafty Englishman. Radiocarbon analysis showed a range from 3,341 BC to 3,094 BC. So now there is such an opinion as well. The Egyptian Book of the Dead says, This is clearly the style of the 24th century BC. And here is the style of the 21st century AD. On the 2nd of August 2020, a few days before the launch of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, Elon Musk wrote on Twitter, As for my own opinion about the pyramids, it is very simple. Naturally, I am not a scientist. Naturally, I am not an archaeologist. I do not know what they were actually meant for. And I am not ready to call pyramidologists idiots or scientist frauds. But I, once again, as an ordinary viewer, have a question. You see, dear friends, we are used to the idea that civilization develops in a linear, progressive way. That is, humans learned how to build, for example, defensive structures, which they later called castles. Then they began building temples, and continued building them, modifying them, improving them. At some point, architecture became poorer. Then there was a revival. Everything returned. But still, people never forgot how to build houses, how to build defensive structures. And here we have the pyramids. It is unclear why they were built. We invented for ourselves the idea that slaves drag stones there and polish them, raising these pyramids to an incredible height. Modern builders cannot build anything like this. We do not know what they were actually needed for. But civilization simply abandoned them and moved on. Then the Persians came. Then the Arabs came. And the pyramids just stand there and stand. In fact, a lot of things stand on this earth. There are many things standing on this earth. Therefore, both versions are, of course, unconvincing. But it still seems to me that the people who built these things could not have done all this with chisels and picks, polishing stone against stone. They could not have calculated all this. Because, you know, even to build a garage next to your own house, you need certain skills and certain mathematical knowledge. And that civilization supposedly did not have such knowledge. And yet they built these things. That is what occupies my mind. And I cannot answer the question of what the pyramids were actually for or who exactly built them. But still, probably aliens. Thank you for watching this video to the end. If you liked this episode, subscribe to the channel and share this video with your friends. See you soon. Bye.