By John Zajac

The Pyramids. According to common perception they were built, with the begrudging help of great armies of slaves, by the ancient pharaohs of Egypt as tombs for preserving their royal bodies. Pyramids were meant to be monuments to the pharaoh's greatness, filled with great treasures for the afterlife. To construct these massive shrines, the pharaoh's copied the oldest and largest pyramid of all, the Great Pyramid of Giza. But the Great Pyramid itself contains no pharaoh's body, no treasure chamber, and no treasures. Who, then, designed it and built it? What was its purpose? Let us begin our tour by considering a few basic facts about the Great Pyramid. The Last "Wonder of the World" Thirty times larger than the Empire State Building, the Pyramid's features are so large they can be seen from the Moon.

Its base covers 13.6 acres (equal to seven midtown Manhatten city blocks), each side being greater than five acres in area.

A highway lane eight feet wide and four inches thick could be built from San Francisco to New York and put inside the Great Pyramid.

The oldest structure in existence, having been started 4,617 years ago, it is the sole remnant of the Seven Wonders of the World. Journey to the Center of the Earth Only a solid stone mountain could endure the Pyramid's immense weight. And indeed, a flat solid granite mountain happens to be located just beneath the surface of the ground directly under the Pyramid.

It is built to face true North.

The Pyramid is located at the exact center of the Earth's land mass. That is, its East-West axis corresponds to the longest land parallel across the Earth, passing through Africa, Asia, and America. Similarly, the longest land meridian on Earth, through Asia, Africa, Europa, and Antarctica, also passes right through the Pyramid. Since the Earth has enough land area to provide 3 billion possible building sites for the Pyramid, the odds of it's having been built where it is are 1 in 3 billion. Construction Unequaled by Modern Technology Like 20th century bridge designs, the Pyramid's cornerstones have balls and sockets built into them. Several football fields long, the Pyramid is subject to expansion and contraction movements from heat and cold, as well as earthquakes, settling, and other such phenomena. After 4,600 years it's structure would have been significantly damaged without such construction.

While the bulk of the Pyramid's core was constructed of 4,000- to 40,000-pound blocks of soft limestone, the outer layer of the Pyramid was made of a beautifully bright, protective layer of polished stone. These outer "casing stones" are missing today because about 600 years ago they were stolen by Arabs, (This accounts for the very worn appearance of the Pyramid today, since the inner limestone blocks are not immune to attack by the elements-wind, rain, and sandstrom.) This protective covering was made up of 100-inch-thick, 20-ton block of hard, white limestone, similar to marble but superior in hardness and in durability against the elements. The Great Pyramid did not always look as "rough" as it does today.

Originally it was encased with a layer of tight-fitting, highly polished 20-ton stone slabs. The casing stones, 144,000 in all, were so brilliant that they could literally be seen from the mountains of Israel hundreds of miles away. On bright mornings and late afternoons, sunlight reflected by this vast mirrored surface of 5-1/4 acres distinguished the Pyramid as being visible from the moon. (Note: For those interested in possible symbolic significance, in Bible prophecy 144,000 is the number of people-12,000 from each of the 12 tribes of Israel-who are supposed to evangelize the world at the endtime.)

The people of the area had viewed the Pyramid and its polished stones with awe for centuries. But when a 13th century earthquake loosened some of these casing stones, the Arabs recognized a great quarry of precut stones that could be used to finish off palaces and mosques. For instance, the casing stones were used to rebuild the new city of El Kaherah plus Cairo mosques and palaces, including the Mosque of Sultan Hasan.

Amazingly, the outside surface stones are cut within 0.01 (1/100th) inch of perfectly straight and at nearly perfect right angles for all six sides. And they were placed together with an intentional gap between them of 0.02 inch. Modern technology cannot place such 20-ton stones with greater accuracy than those in the Pyramid.

Even more amazing is that the 0.02-inch gap was designed to allow space for glue to seal and hold the stones together. A white cement that connected the casing stones and made them watertight is still intact and stronger than the blocks that it joins. Let's pause from our tour for a moment's rest and reflection. Whoever built the Pyramid used a technologly that we still do not possess today to cut, move, and cement stones. Whoever built it also had some knowledge of the Earth, because it was built in the right spot-one of the few places that would support such a great weight. The builder also knew where the greatest land mass of the Earth was in both the North-South and East-West directions.

Amazing. But we had better keep going. And joining us on the leg of our tour will be none other than Sir Issac Newton ... The Cosmic Yardstick The Great Pyramid is one of the most comprehensively surveyed buildings in the World. Scientists over the centuries have taken thousands of measurements in their quest to find out more about its mysteries. Among those intrigued by the incredible accuracy of the Pyramid's construction was the great scientist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton. Attemping to formulate his famous law of gravity, Newton needed to know the diameter of the Earth. However, in the 1600's no measurement was accurate enough, especially since Newton theorized that the Earth's spin would cause an equatorial bulge. Having heard legends claiming that knowledge of the Earth, the past, and the future were contained in the Pyramid, Newton set out to investigate. After studying the detailed measurements made by the investigators before him, Newton recognized that many key measurements would be in round numbers if the standard unit of measure was just 0.001 (1/1,000) inch larger than the British inch-which just happens to be the Sacred Jewish Inch. (The Sacred Jewish Inch, 1/25 of a cubit, equals 1.00106 British inches.) This discovery allowed the secrets of the Pyramid to be unlocked and revealed unmistakable and mathematical relationships. For instance: We know from geometry that there is a universal relationship between the diameter of a circle and its circumference. Consider this: The height of the Pyramid's apex is 5,812.98 inches, and each side is 9,131 inches from corner to corner (in a straight line). If the circumference of the Pyramid is divided by twice its height (the diameter of a circle is twice the radius), the result is 3.14159, which just happens to be pi. Incredibly, this calculation is accurate to six digits. So the Pyramid is a square circle, and thus pi was designed into it 4,600 years ago. Pi is demonstrated many times throughout the Pyramid.

Other numbers are also repeated throughout. Each of the Pyramids four walls, when measured as a straight line, are 9,131 inches, for a total of 36,524 inches. At first glance, this number may not seem significant, but move the decimal point over and you get 365.24. Modern science has shown us that the exact length of the solar year is 365.24 days. All of the evidence in the Great Pyramid shows that 4,600 years ago somebody knew a great deal about the Earth. But it gets better, much better: The average height of land above sea level (Miami being low and the Himalayas being high), as can be measured only by modern-day satellites and computers, happens to be 5,449 inches. That is the exact height of the Pyramid.

All four sides of the Pyramid are very slightly and evenly bowed in, or concave. This effect, which cannot be detected by looking at the Pyramid from the ground, was discovered around 1940 by a pilot taking aerial photos to check certain measurements. As measured by today's laser instruments, all of these perfectly cut and intentionally bowed stone blocks duplicate exactly the curvature of the earth. The radius of this bow is equal to the radius of the Earth. This radius of curvature is what Newton had long been seeking.

The Great Pyramid is located on the far right. Clearly, whoever built the Pyramid had access to information beyond that which earthlings possessed at the time, at least earthlings as we know them. Now, one can argue that we were visited by scientifically advanced beings from outer space who taught us their technology. That is possible from the evidence presented, perhaps even likely. If so, these advanced beings had the paramount goal of leaving behind a message that would endure for eons. Suppose these beings decided to leave a message. The message would have to be universal yet simple. It would have to survive the centuries and be understandable by all the Earth's inhabitants despite language and cultural differences. The message would have to be understood by many languages that would not come into existence for centuries after the message was written. So far the message indicates that whoever built the Pyramid knew the Earth well: the length of the year, the radius of curvature, the standard measurement techniques, the average height of the continents, and the center of the land mass. They were able to consruct something that we still cannot construct today, and they were able to tie all these things together in this single structure. Were they extraterrestrial, or perhaps even supernatural? The answer is not yet clear. However, thus far we have examined only the outside of the Pyramid.