The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man's Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt's Greatest Mystery

255 Pages·2008·3.97 MB·English

by  Bob Brier

How One Ma n’s
Obsession L ed to the Solut ion of
A ncient Eg y pt’s Greatest Myster y
THE
Secret
OF THE
Great Pyramid
Bob Brier
and
Jean-Pierre Houdin
Dedication
I dedicate this book to my two closest friends: the video artist
Bulle Plexiglass* (my wife Michelle) and Henri, my father, with
whom I’ve all my life had a very strong relationship and a close
complicity.
I want to thank Bulle for always pushing me to go to the
essential in life, to live every day full-time with ethics and pas-
sion. That vision of life led us, in the late nineties, to take a sab-
batical year in New York looking for new ideas. Thanks to that
break—our break with routine—I came back to Paris with new
tools (digital 3-D and Internet), ready for what I call my third
life—a totally unexpected one, focusing on one of the last mys-
teries on earth: trying to resolve how the Great Pyramid was
built! In a few words: the Man in Black would have never existed
without Bulle.
I want to thank Henri for having ignited, almost ten years
ago, my passion for the Pyramid of Khufu with an idea of genius:
that true great pyramids were built not from the outside but from
within, a breakthrough concept relative to what has been thought
for two hundred years. This is the idea that I unconsciously was
looking for for my third life. And I’m proud that our Khufu
Adventure has kept us close to each other. Henri recently turned
eighty-five and is still “young and active”; I have the feeling that
this Khufu Adventure is no little cause for that.
I want also to pay tribute to �enée, my late mother, who was
always very anxious about the future of her son and daughter-
in-law, concerned about the difficult period Bulle and I went
through financially. Sadly, she passed away three years ago after
a long and terrible illness. She was no longer with us when the
“Khufu Story” started to become recognized and respected.
To Brigitte
—J-P.H.
*www.bulleplexiglass.net
Contents
Acknowledgments vi
The Man in Black 1
Birth of the Pyramid 7
Meeting with the Master 19
Imhotep Builds the Step Pyramid 23
Sneferu: King of the Pyramids 29
An Architect Is Born 37
Architect Adrift 43
A Troubled Bridge? 47
Hemienu Plans the Great Pyramid 49
The Underground Burial Chamber 79
Photographic Insert I
Modern Tomb �aiders: The Search for Hidden Chambers 85
The Grand Gallery 93
The Burial Chamber 107
v Contents
Hemienu’s Solution 113
First Plans 125
Anomaly �ising 133
The Notch 137
The Internal �amp 139
Photographic Insert II
The Capstone 145
The Difficult Years 151
The Internal �amp Goes Public 155
The Time Machine to Hemienu 167
The Search for the Internal �amp 171
What’s Next? 185
Appendices
Appendix I: The Search for Imhotep 191
Appendix II: The Lost Pyramid 194
Appendix III: The Case of the Missing Queen 196
Appendix IV: Making Khufu’s Sarcophagus 199
Appendix V: The Pyramid’s Angle 201
Endnotes 203
Bibliography 209
Photography Credits 215
Index 217
About the Authors
Other Books by Bob Brier
Credits
Cover
Copyright
About the Publisher
Acknowledgments
N
early ten years ago, when my father and I started our amazing
adventure about Khufu, we were just the two of us. At the
time of the publication of this book, we are no longer alone:
hundreds of smart, skilled, and friendly people joined us throughout
these long years. The tiny stream from the early times became a large
river, still growing more and more, day after day. It would be quite
impossible to thank by name each of them in these acknowledgments,
but I want them to know how deep my gratitude is for their support,
help, and advice.
I want to thank all the civil engineering experts from the CNISF (Con-
seil National des Ingénieurs et des Scientifiques de France) who were,
from the end of 1999, the first interested in our studies. Their knowledge
and competence in the construction field have always been very useful for
us. Later, they formed the backbone of the ACGP (Association Construire
la Grande Pyramide; www.construire-la-grande-pyramide.fr), an associa-
tion set up in 2003 to financially support the development of the theory
and to help set up a scientific survey on the Giza Plateau.
I am grateful to the founding members of the ACGP, among them
Jean Billard, François Levieux, Jean-Louis Simonneau, Paul Allard,
vii Acknowledgments
Bernard Marrey, Paul Lemoine, Daniel Solvet, Charles Bambade, Do-
minique Ferré, Georges �ème, Emilienne Dubois, and �uth Schu-
mann-Antelme. Many others joined the ACGP, mainly as honorary
members because of their valuable involvement as scientists, Egyptolo-
gists, engineers, personalities, or simply people passionate about ancient
Egypt.
My thanks go to my Egyptian friends, among them Mourad M. Bak-
houm, Farid Atiya, Hany Helal, Naheed Abdel �eheem, Brigitte Boulad,
Sherine Mishriki, Hassan Benham, Mounir Neamatalla, Taha Abdallah,
Mahmoud Ismail, Essam El Maghraby, Atef Moukhtar, Waffiq Shamma,
Nadia Fanous, Sayed Kotb, and the staff of the Victoria Hotel in Cairo.
My thanks go to my French friends, among them Denis Denoël,
Marc Buonomo, Pierre Grussenmeyer, François Schlosser, Jean Car-
ayon, Hubert Labonne, Jean Berthier, �aoul Jahan, Hervé Piquet,
�aphaël Thierry, Albert �anson, Jean-Jacques Urban-Galindo, Pierre
Deletie (deceased), Hui Duong Bui, Guy Delbrel, Dominique Gimet,
François de Closets, and . . . Bernard, my brother.
My thanks go to my other non-French friends, among them Craig
B. Smith, Bob Goldberg, �oman Golicz, Jon Bodsworth, Jack Bak-
layan, Jeffrey Kearney, Lionel Woog, Mark �ose, Norman Stockle,
Jack Scaparro, Pat �emler, and Bob Brier.
My thanks go to the following companies that have supported the
Khufu Adventure since 2004 through financial or technical donations
to the ACGP: Eiffel ( Jacques Huillard), Dassault Systèmes (Bernard
Charlès); Thales Group (Thierry Brizard); Schneider Electric Egypte,
(Frédéric Abbal, Emmanuel Lemasson); Gaz de France Egypte (Pat-
rick Longueville, Jean-Louis Chenel); Air France (François Brousse);
Jacquet SA (Christian Jacquet), GPI (Michel Gergonne); Borifer
FIB ( Jean-François Bordenave); Enerpac France (Guillaume Butty);
Groupe Pyramides Egypte (Bruno Neyret); Arab Consulting Engineers
(Mourad M. Bakhoum); and Farid Atiya Press (Farid Atiya). Without
their support, the Khufu Adventure would have been long dead.
My thanks also for the Egyptologists Audran Labrousse, Dieter
Arnold, and �ainer Stadelmann, who simply took the time to listen
to me, even though I don’t belong to the Egyptology community. The
interest they showed and their advice are those of respectable people.
I wish to include a special acknowledgment to Mehdi Tayoubi,
�ichard Breitner, Fabien Barati, Emmanuel Guerriero, and the whole
Acknowledgments vi ii
“Khufu �evealed” team (www.3ds.com/khufu) at Dassault Systèmes
and Emissive. We have already spent three years together on Khufu’s
Pyramid. Something tells me that we have a lot of work still ahead, and
that one day in the near future we will be able to tell more about this
amazing pyramid.
Special thanks to my friend Laurent Chapus.
I hope those I haven’t named above will forgive me, but I want
them to be sure that I think about them as much as those I have.
Bob, Pat . . . thank you for all.
J-P.H.
T
here are many people to thank and on the top of my list is Jean-
Pierre Houdin. Helping him with Secret of the Great Pyramid
has been a wonderful intellectual adventure. I haven’t learned
so much from one person since graduate school! I asked so many ques-
tions about the Great Pyramid that we now both laugh when I say, “I
have a question.” Jean-Pierre, I hope you get to take your walk up the
ramp.
On a more earthly level I am indebted to my agent, Liza Dawson.
More than just an agent, Liza is a superb editor who always pushes me
to say more and do better. When Liza was satisfied that we had a book,
she placed me in the capable hands of Elisabeth Dyssegaard, my editor
at Smithsonian Books. Elisabeth understood the project right from the
beginning, guided the book, improved my writing, and even made the
endeavor fun. Her assistant, Kate Antony, somehow made sense of all
Jean-Pierre’s diagrams and illustrations and was midwife at the birth of
order out of chaos.
As in all the books I have written, my wife, Pat �emler, not only
forced me to clarify my murky prose, but also provided crucial photos.
Finally, I want to thank yet another unofficial editor, Judith Turner,
whose architectural knowledge saved me time and again.
Thank you all!
B.B.