The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids (23 page)
Read The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids Online
Authors: Scott Creighton
Tags: #Ancient Mysteries
Thus we can see that the ancient Egyptians certainly could have observed the lifting power of hot air and that they had the ability and the materials to build hot air balloons, and we can calculate that such a balloon of around 125 feet in diameter, including the weight of the balloon itself and ropes and such, could feasibly lift two average limestone blocks. With the sides of the Great Pyramid being around 750 feet in length, then it would be feasible to have four lifting stations on each face of the pyramid, thus giving, in theory at least, sixteen balloons operating around the pyramid perimeter at any given time, each potentially raising two blocks with each lift. If we assume thirty minutes for each lift then in an eighteen-hour working day, a total of 1,152 stone blocks could theoretically have been raised per day. Although estimates vary, the Great Pyramid is believed to contain somewhere in the region of 2.5 million of these blocks, and as such it would take a little under six years (working every day) to raise this number of stone blocks. This is a little over a third of the time the historian Herodotus quotes for the construction of the Great Pyramid—around twenty years.
But how would the ancient Egyptians have gotten enough hot air into a linen-and-paper balloon to generate the required lift, and how could this have been done without the balloon material itself catching fire and going up in flames? The Montgolfier method of a fire directly under the balloon opening was very precarious and wasn’t without its disasters. There may be any number of ways that this could have been achieved, but I will outline here just one method that could have been used and of which there may actually be some physical evidence at the pyramid sites, which will be discussed shortly.
Inflating the balloon with hot air could have been relatively simple through the use of a pair of large, deep stone pits connected near the bottom with a small, horizontal link tunnel; the two pits and the connecting link create a
U
shape. Let’s consider how this would work. At the bottom of the first pit a fire is made. Because the fire is in a pit around twenty to thirty feet deep, it is unaffected by the prevailing wind conditions above ground. The small, horizontal link tunnel connecting the first pit to the second pit provides a draft of air that feeds the fire in the first pit, thereby creating a convection current. The real benefit of this type of fire is that it is very efficient and burns very, very hot; is virtually smoke-free; and is entirely controllable. The stone pit being so deep means it is unlikely that the balloon material itself would ever catch fire. Even today small variants of these pit fires are still used around the world and are known as Dakota smokeless fire pits (figure 8.1).
With the fire burning ferociously at the bottom of the left pit (figure 8.1), the opening of the balloon is laid over the mouth of this pit, perhaps with one side of the balloon raised slightly off the ground to allow the fire below to be fed with more fuel as and when required. Very quickly the deflated horizontal balloon will begin to fill with hot air and rise to the vertical. Also, if the balloon material is dyed black then this would help maintain the heat inside the balloon through absorption of solar radiation from the hot Egyptian sun, allowing the balloon to remain buoyant longer. Naturally, while being inflated the balloon would have to be anchored to the ground by a rope, just as a modern hot air balloon is.
Figure 8.1. Dakota smokeless fire pit
As the balloon becomes buoyant, a rope net containing the stone blocks is fixed to the fully inflated balloon—the payload. A fixed guy rope that runs from the uppermost level of the pyramid down to the lifting station is looped through a couple of O-rings fitted to the underside of the rope net containing the stone blocks. This will effectively tether the balloon to the guy rope, and when the anchor rope is released, the balloon will float up with its cargo, following the path of the guy rope to the top level of the pyramid (see figure 8.2). There may also be a couple of lighter ropes attached to haul the balloon and its “weightless” cargo more quickly up the pyramid slope.
Upon reaching the end of the guy rope at the top of the pyramid, the balloon is once again anchored, and the stones are released from the rope net. The balloon may then be allowed to deflate and recycled back down the pyramid as another cycle of balloons ascend with their payloads. Or the inflated balloon may be hauled down the pyramid by the other ropes, ready to take up another load. It should be added, of course, that a larger balloon could lift heavier blocks, and by clustering a number of balloons together, even heavier loads might be raised in this manner.
Figure 8.2. Hot air balloon carries stone to top of pyramid.
So, through the science of thermodynamics applied to a primitive hot air balloon it may well have been possible for the pyramid stones to have “flown into place”—just as some ancient legends tell us.
PHYSICAL EVIDENCE
But did the ancient Egyptians in fact discover such a lifting technique? Is there any evidence of such? As it turns out, there are some tantalizing clues that hint that they just might have done so. First of all we find that around the perimeter of the pyramids and on the wider Giza plateau there are numerous pits cut deep into the bedrock. These pits range from about twenty to as much as sixty feet deep, and some of them are indeed connected by a small horizontal shaft or tunnel near their base (figure 8.3), a tunnel, it should be noted, that is much too small for any person, even a child, to pass through.
Figure 8.3. Stone pits around Giza with horizontal “air channels” near the
base. Note the arrows pointing to connecting air channels.
This connecting horizontal link tunnel may be the telltale sign for the very type of fire outlined above—the Dakota smokeless fire pit (figure 8.1). As mentioned, one of these deep-hewn stone pits would contain the firewood for burning while the other pit provided a draft of air via the horizontal connecting tunnel to produce the convection current. With the pit hewn directly into the plateau bedrock there would be no possibility of the pit collapsing, and the stone itself within the pit would also heat up, thus boosting the temperature from the pit. And with the fire burning very efficiently in the pit far below the balloon material, burning embers or flames from the fire would be much less likely to set the balloon material ablaze.
A CURIOUS ARTIFACT
Around the Giza plateau several mysterious stone tools in the shape of a mushroom with three curved grooves have been found (figure 8.4). Egyptologists do not really know what this tool was intended for or exactly how it would have been used, but they believe it to be part of some form of proto-pulley system.
Figure 8.4. Mysterious stone tool found at Giza
Of these strange artifacts, Lehner writes, “The Mystery Tool—Examples of these have been found at Giza, apparently dating to the Old Kingdom. They are mushroom-shaped with one or two holes through the stem and three parallel grooves cut into the head. It has been suggested that they could have been bearing-stones or proto-pulleys, with the stem inserted into a pole or scaffold and the grooves acting as guides for ropes. There is no rimmed wheel, as in a true pulley, but the direction of pull could probably have been changed by running the ropes through the grooves.”
2
This “mystery tool” set into a tall “pole or scaffold” is precisely the kind of tool that would be required at the top level of the pyramid to raise the guy rope sufficiently high enough from the pyramid structure to allow the hot air balloon and its cargo to safely land at the top level of the pyramid (figure 8.5).
The guy rope would pass over the center groove of the mystery tool, whereupon its end would be anchored securely to the pyramid, while the other two grooves could be used as guides for two additional ropes that would be used to haul the balloon and its “weightless” cargo quickly up the pyramid’s slope. This tool is not a pulley as such but could merely have functioned as a guide for the ropes to prevent them from rubbing against the sharp edge of the pyramid slope and potentially snagging and snapping.
Figure 8.5. Mystery tool fitted to an A-frame to raise and guide
the guy rope
THE BALLOON BULB
Anyone who has seen a traditional-shaped hot air balloon will recognize its similarity in shape to that of a standard lightbulb. And anyone who has ever attended a hot air balloon flight will have seen how the balloon is first laid flat on the ground; it starts out as a long, thin stretch of material that slowly inflates horizontally on the ground until finally, with sufficient hot air, it gradually rises to the vertical and is ready for takeoff.
In ancient Egyptian art we are often presented with images of flying solar barques, white balloon-like objects surrounded by a pair of wings, suggesting that these balloon-like objects had the ability to take to the sky like a bird. Also, somewhat remarkably, there is even a scene in ancient Egyptian art that may depict a hot air balloon actually being inflated. The scene in question (figure 8.6) is presented in the Temple of Hathor at Dendera, and according to conventional Egyptology, it supposedly depicts the ancient Egyptian god Horus emerging from a lotus flower.
Figure 8.6. Top: a horizontal hot air balloon being inflated.
Bottom: relief carving believed by Egyptologists
to show Horus emerging from a lotus flower. But
could that flower instead be a hot air balloon?
Notice how the balloon shape in the lower image in figure 8.6 lies horizontally on its side and is similar to a modern hot air balloon being laid out and filled with hot air, as shown in the upper image. What is also interesting about this particular relief is that the text on the wall alongside it makes mention of the “sky carriers.” In some interpretations of this relief the goddess sitting on the stone block to the far right of the image is likely the ancient Egyptian goddess Amaunet, the goddess of air, although this could also be the god Heh, who was also an air/ sky god identified with Shu, who supposedly held up the pillars of the sky. Or is Heh referenced in this context, perhaps as holding or carrying someone or something up into the sky? This air goddess is also depicted as a snake (or serpent), which we observe within the center of the balloon-like object.
Intriguingly, on other walls of the Dendera temple are images that also depict this balloon-type object, but in these images the balloons are presented upright (with the snakes of the air goddess Amaunet again depicted within the balloon shape) as though the balloons are now flying up in the air and carrying a cargo in some form of netting or basket beneath them (figure 8.7).
Is it perhaps the case then that in these reliefs we are witnessing a linen balloon being filled with hot air for the lifting of heavy stone blocks? Or does the conventional explanation of this image, that it represents the god Horus being born inside a lotus flower, make more sense? In the context of considering hot air balloons in this image, the depiction of Horus makes perfect sense because this god was, after all, the ancient Egyptian god of the sky.
Objectors to such a proposal will undoubtedly point to the fact that the Temple of Hathor at Dendera was constructed long after the great pyramid-building age. This fact, however, does not invalidate the proposal, because the ancient Egyptians often made reference in their art and texts to practices and rituals whose roots had long since been lost in antiquity and which, in later times, had become couched in the language of religious ritual, the original function and meaning obscured and long lost.
Figure 8.7. Vertical (inflated) balloons depicted in the Dendera
temple appear to carry a payload of stones.
As stated in chapter 7, after the Old Kingdom collapsed, ancient Egypt plunged into a long period of upheaval, chaos, and decline, entering into a relative “dark age” that Egyptologists tell us lasted around two hundred years—long enough for skills and knowledge to be forgotten and lost. Only vague memories would have been passed down to the later generations, campfire stories that would have become legendary, and one of those legendary tales may well have been that the stones of the pyramids “flew into place.” If the ancient Egyptians did indeed discover and use the thermodynamic power of the hot air balloon in the manner presented in this chapter, then the legend of the “flying pyramid stones” of ancient Egypt may not be such a “flight of fantasy” as it might at first appear.