The True Purpose of the Pyramids

Sometimes on YouTube, you'll run across videos dealing with the subject of the Egyptian pyramids, and quite a few on the pyramids of Giza in particular. One common proposition is that the pyramids of Egypt were not, in fact, tombs, as Egyptologists will tell you, but something else. One video that's gotten quite a bit of attention is from the channel Universe Inside You, called PYRAMIDS TRUE PURPOSE FINALLY DISCOVERED ADVANCED ANCIENT TECHNOLOGY. Let's take a closer look at this video, examine the arguments in it, look for signs of advanced technology, and see if we can ascertain what the true purpose of the pyramids actually was. Myths of Ancient History is aimed at dispelling common misconceptions about the past. If you're interested in ancient history, lost civilizations, and secrets from antiquity, I encourage you to subscribe to the channel, because you will get lots of it. And if you find this particular video valuable, please hit the like button, and comment below with your favorite takeaway. And feel free to ask any clarification questions that you may have. Universe Inside You is a channel run by Stefan Dimitrov of Bulgaria, who says the purpose of his channel is to help people to grow their, quote, spiritual, esoteric, psychological, philosophical, and extraterrestrial knowledge, unquote. I'm noting the absence of the word historical there. Even so, he frequently dabbles in the subject of ancient history, and, regrettably, often gets his facts wrong. The particular video we're looking at was narrated by Elizabeth Firestone, who also is responsible for writing it. But seeing as she was hired by Dimitrov, I'm going to proceed in this video under the assumption that the ideas, if not the exact words, are Dimitrov's own ideas. It is, after all, his channel. You might wonder why I'm even bothering with a channel like this, but you see, many, many people view these kinds of videos. They're quite popular. His video currently has over 14 million views. And that's not even counting the knockoffs. Like, I saw that Anonymous Official, they've plagiarized his video, and they've got almost a million views. That, unfortunately, results in the spreading of misinformation about ancient history, which, over time, can become incorporated into the public consciousness, and, as an educator, I feel one of my responsibilities is to provide an antidote to that. Not everyone who has watched this video by Universe Inside You has adopted New Age philosophy or become a believer in the extraterrestrial origin of the pyramids, but they may have doubts now about the true purpose of the pyramids and wonder if there's more to them than what they've learned in school. I'll leave a link to Dimitrov's video in the description below so that you can check to make sure I'm not misrepresenting him. So let's take a look. Mainstream historians will tell you that the Great Pyramid of Giza was a glorified tomb for the Egyptian pharaohs. There's only one problem. The Great Pyramid has none of the characteristics of tombs, including extravagant artifacts, ornate wall art, sealed entrances, elaborate coffins, or even mummies themselves. So here, Dimitrov claims that the Great Pyramid of Giza has none, I repeat, none, of the characteristics of tombs. This statement is simply false. First of all, it's in the middle of a necropolis, a cemetery, and is surrounded by the tombs of the family of the king. It has a mortuary temple attached to it. Mortuary temples were places to worship dead kings and are a conspicuous feature of tombs. It had a causeway built leading up to it, another feature of tombs. It had solar ships buried next to it, just like at the tombs of many other kings of Egypt. Dimitrov is wrong that the Great Pyramid didn't have sealed entrances. It did, and it did have a large sarcophagus in a chamber inside it. It still does. The statement that it has no extravagant artifacts is true for all the tombs of the kings of Egypt, including those in the Valley of the Kings, with the sole exception of King Tut's tomb, because it was the only one not looted by grave robbers. The statement that it has no mummies also is the case for all the tombs of the kings of Egypt, including those in the Valley of the Kings, with the sole exception of King Tut's tomb, because the mummies were removed by the priest of Egypt to prevent their desecration by tomb robbers. We have ancient Egyptian documents that say as much. The reason why the Great Pyramid has no ornate wall art is because it comes from the fourth dynasty, and it wasn't until the fifth that they began carving things on the walls of their pyramids. So right off the bat, Dimitrov is misleading his audience, or perhaps he just doesn't know and is repeating things he's heard uncritically. It was, however, built with unique materials, the same materials that are used today for electrical conductivity. These facts are leading more and more historians to believe the pyramids may have had a far more useful purpose. The Pyramid of Giza was not at all a tomb, but a power plant, generating and transmitting electricity to the civilizations surrounding it. Okay, so here we get to his main thesis, that the Great Pyramid was a power plant. To be fair, this is not Dimitrov's own hypothesis. It goes back to Christopher Dunn, a machinist from Manchester, England, who has published books and articles on the subject since the 80s. There have been several variations of his theory propounded through the years, and I'm not sure where the idea that the Great Pyramid was a wireless Tesla-like power plant came from, but it has been making the rounds, and that's the hypothesis that Dimitrov is advocating here. To start, it's important to comprehend the tremendous effort that went into creating these monuments. The Pyramids of Giza are among no less than 118 of these structures in Egypt alone, and that doesn't even include those pyramids in other parts of the world. Hmm, is there a reason why we should consider the pyramids in other parts of the world? The Egyptians didn't build them, so how does this have a bearing on the amount of effort the Egyptians put into building their pyramids? Seems irrelevant. Given our current understanding of how early civilizations built their monuments, it would have taken no less than 20 years to build these so-called tombs, and that's if no less than 20,000 workers worked daily. Dimitrov is taking this 20 years, 20,000 workers figure from the Greek historian Herodotus, who visited Egypt in the 5th century BCE, and who was told this about the Great Pyramid by the Egyptians of that time, which was 2,000 years after the Great Pyramid had been constructed. Those same Egyptians told Herodotus that the Great Pyramid was a tomb built for the king known in Greek as Cheops and in Egyptian as Khufu. So why Dimitrov is accepting one piece of information they gave and rejecting others, I do not know. To this day, historians still can't prove exactly how or when they were built. We do have a good idea when the pyramids were built. All the pottery you find at Giza looks like the pottery of the time of Khufu, Khafre, and Menkaure of the 4th dynasty. Several rounds of carbon dating have been conducted on materials in the Giza pyramids, showing that they come from the mid-3rd millennium BCE. It's true that the carbon dates vary by several centuries, but not by millennia. Archaeologists believe that the variation in the carbon dates has to do with the Egyptians reusing wood. Carbon dating can only show when the trees were cut down. But primarily, we date the pyramids by their position in the development of Egyptian architecture and material culture over time. So we don't assess the pyramids of Giza in isolation, but within the context of Egyptian architectural history. We can see the evolution of pyramid design, from mastaba tombs to the step pyramid of Djoser, to the failed pyramid attempts of Sneferu, to the pyramids of Giza. He's right, we don't know precisely how the pyramids were built, but we know the Egyptians built them. We have Egyptian mathematical documents that show the math behind pyramid creation, and people have demonstrated that it was within the realm of Egyptian technological know-how to build them. There's a papyrus document called the Diary of Merer, which is a logbook written by an Egyptian overseer who documents the transportation of limestone blocks during the reign of Khufu from the quarry at Tura on boats on the Nile to the Akhet Khufu. The Akhet Khufu is the name of the Great Pyramid, according to inscriptions present in tombs dated some 200 years later, which report the names of all the three pyramids at Giza. As a side note, the Egyptian religious belief the Akhet is the place in which the king undergoes the final transformation into an Akh, that's the spiritual being one becomes after death. The fact that it's called the Akhet Khufu indicates that the pyramid had a mortuary purpose. Yeah, we can't prove exactly how the pyramids were built, but how is that relevant? We don't know exactly how many things in many cultures were created, but we have the objects, so we know that they were made. So this is a red herring, because the question of how the pyramids were built is a different question than what the purpose of the pyramids was. We may not know exactly how a temple was made, but we still can know what a temple is for. Same with a pyramid. I hope he knows that ancient history and archaeology can't prove exactly anything, ever. All of our evidence is circumstantial. That's just the nature of the research we do. That's because scientific reasoning is inductive. Conclusions are drawn empirically. We should be talking about whether certain claims are warranted rather than whether they are proven. And then we should choose the explanation for which there is the most warrant, until and unless a better explanation comes along. I am certainly willing to do that, and if Dimitrov or anyone else presents a better evidenced explanation for the pyramids, I would switch over. I'll let you decide, though, whether the evidence for Dimitrov's proposal is stronger than the proposal that the pyramids were tombs. You also might ask yourself, is Dimitrov holding himself to the same standard that he holds Egyptologists to? Does he prove exactly how and when the pyramids were built, or is he also using inductive arguments? Any proposal about the purpose of the pyramids, say that 10 times fast, the proposal about the purpose of pyramids, any proposal must explain what we see in all the pyramids, not just one, or else it doesn't account for all the evidence. If your hypothesis considers some evidence and ignores other evidence, it's not a viable hypothesis. Even if you argue that your proposal applies only to the Great Pyramid, it still needs to explain the existence of the other pyramids, because you need to give a reason why the Great Pyramid should be separated from the rest of the pyramids when it comes to purpose. Unfortunately, what we find is that Dimitrov looks at evidence from only one pyramid to draw conclusions about all the pyramids, even though the layouts of the pyramids differ from one another. This leads us to ask, what resting place for the dead could possibly be so important that it would warrant such phenomenal effort, time, and precise engineering, even without knowing that they have nothing in common with regular tombs? You only need to stand before them to realize that's a lot of work for a cadaver. Dimitrov commits here what we call the historian's fallacy, which is to judge the actions of past societies by the values of today, or in this case Dimitrov's own values. He can't see why anyone would put so much effort into building tombs, because he himself would never put that much effort into it. What he is failing to appreciate is how important the afterlife was to the ancient Egyptians and the things they preferred to invest their efforts into. He would do so if he were better read in the ancient Egyptian writings. Egyptologists, those today with the most broad and thorough understanding of ancient Egyptian society, after examining all the pyramids and looking at all the Egyptian writings about the pyramids, possess substantial evidence that the pyramids were tombs. I think it might be helpful to review it. Number one, the ancient Egyptians tell us they were tombs. I mean, can you get more definite than that? Documents that have survived until today refer to the pyramids as tombs of the pharaohs. I'm not just talking about Herodotus. For example, in the Harper Song of Inteph, probably from around the first intermediate period, early to mid-second millennium BCE, a verse mentions the gods, meaning kings, who existed before, who rest in their pyramids, and the blessed nobles likewise buried in their pyramids. Yeah, the Abbot papyrus of the 20th dynasty, from around 1100 BCE or so, documents robberies of many of the kings' and queens' tombs, many of which are clearly stated to be pyramids. Number two, funerary text inscriptions, the pyramid texts as they're often called, were discovered in the remains of pyramids from the late 5th and 6th dynasties, and they contain spells, encouragement, and instructions for the kings on their journey into the afterlife. The kings are even named in the texts. That these texts about the afterlife would be placed in tombs makes sense. In fact, in later times, these texts were written on papyrus, first as the coffin texts, and finally the book of the dead, and placed with deceased Egyptians. We have found them in tombs. Number three, the pyramids are located within necropolises. A necropolis, city of the dead, is a huge cemetery. In other words, the pyramid did not exist as an isolated structure. It represented only one element, the most important, of a grand complex, which included a satellite pyramid, other small pyramids for queens, a mortuary temple, a valley temple, and a causeway between them, and also offering shrines and mastaba tombs for other family members and nobles. King Menkaure of the 5th dynasty ordered a tomb to be built for his courtier, Debehen, and placed near Menkaure's own pyramid at Giza. This suggests that Giza was a place for the dead to be interred. A typical pyramid complex in turn was surrounded by a wall, and around that was the larger necropolis. Thus, its location is another indication that the was intended as a tomb. Number four, mortuary temples were placed next to the pyramids. Priests officiated at these temples, where offerings were given to a dead king next to the pyramid made in his name. It would make sense that the king would be buried nearby. In fact, private tombs were indeed set up that way. A chapel, made for presenting offerings for the dead, was built right next to the tomb. The Abusir papyri, which were written in the old kingdom, 5th dynasty we're talking, names priests who worked in the mortuary temples next to the pyramids. I'm not done. Number five, there's evidence that pyramids evolved from mastaba tombs. Pyramids didn't just pop up suddenly in history. The Egyptians started with mastabas, which clearly are tombs because they have burials in them, and gradually they improved these tombs until they took on the pyramid shape. The step pyramid of Djoser from the 3rd dynasty is the first ever pyramid, and it clearly is a super developed mastaba tomb. It contains art that depicts King Djoser performing rituals, and more importantly, there is a clear burial vault beneath the pyramid. Sneferu of the 4th dynasty experimented further with pyramid designs, and finally was able to perfect the smooth-sided pyramid. This evidence thus suggests that pyramids can trace their ancestry back to mastaba tombs. Number six, burial equipment has been found in pyramids. Specifically, I refer to sarcophagi and coffins. For example, under one of Menkaure's queen's pyramids, pyramid G3A, a pink granite sarcophagus was found, and part of a wooden coffin was found in the main pyramid of Menkaure. The presence of this equipment suggests a mortuary purpose. Number seven, remains of human bodies have been found in pyramids. Sometimes you'll hear someone make the claim that no mummies have ever been found in a pyramid, and therefore we cannot say for certain that they were used as tombs. But the fact is, a mummy was found in the pyramid of King Merenre I of the 6th dynasty. It was laying right next to his sarcophagus, and many fragments of mummies have been found in other pyramids. A mummified foot was found in Djoser's pyramid, a right arm, some pieces of skull, and other bones were found in the pyramid of Unas, an arm and a shoulder in Teti's pyramid, a skull, pelvis, legs, and parts of a torso in the recently discovered pyramid of one of Teti's wives, fragments of a mummy in the pyramid of Pepi I, some mummy wrappings in the pyramid of Pepi II, mummy fragments in the coffin in Menkaure's pyramid, and burnt bones in Amenemhet III's pyramid. Among these assorted remains may be pieces of the original royal bodies. Now, those who deny that the pyramids were meant to be tombs argue that the human remains and burial equipment are not original to the structures and were added intrusively sometime after robbers had broken in. In other words, they may have been used as tombs later, but that was not their original use. Unless the body of an actual verifiable king is found inside of one, they won't accept the tomb theory. It's true that because the pyramids had all been robbed by the time of the 26th dynasty, new bodies were sometimes placed in some pyramids. So indeed, the remains that have been found are not necessarily original. We'll give you that. However, DNA analysis may be possible on the mummy remains found in the pyramid of Teti's wife, Sesheshet, her name was, and if her identity can be confirmed, this would demonstrate further that in her time, the 6th dynasty, the Egyptians were burying royal bodies in pyramids. Number 8. Some of the pyramids that were robbed had coffins inscribed for the original kings reinterred in them. The practice of entombing new coffins into the pyramids was a way to continue honoring the pharaohs despite the desecration of the pyramids, but the practice suggests an effort to restore a king's tomb, not use the pyramid for a different purpose than originally was intended. You understand? So the names of the kings on these coffins suggest that the kings were buried there originally. Number 9, and this is my final one, private burials of the New Kingdom period had pyramids. Kings weren't buried in pyramids during the New Kingdom. By this time, they were being placed in the Valley of the Kings, but private individuals would often be buried beneath the ground with a chapel above them where visitors could leave offerings. A pyramid would be placed above the chapel. Even though the dead were not placed inside the pyramids, this nevertheless shows the association of pyramids and burials. But despite all of this evidence, Dimitrov thinks he has a better theory. In my next video, we'll take a look at his arguments in detail, and you can let me know what you think. Until then, thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.