As unexplained
mysteries go, the pyramids of Giza in Egypt really are something special. We
still don't really know how the Egyptians built
the largest pyramid of all, known as the Great Pyramid of Cheops (or Khufu),
some 5,000 years ago. Remember, this was even before the invention of the wheel!
The Pyramid of Cheops is the size of a 40-storey building and
covers an area big enough to fit 10 football fields in it. More than 2 million
stone blocks were used to make the pyramid, each weighing 2-5 tons and cut from
a distant limestone quarry on the other side of the Nile. Experts reckon it
took 400,000 men and 20 years to complete.
Engineering feats aside, there are still some reported unexplained
mysteries going on at the Pyramid of Cheops. In the 1940s, a French hardware
dealer spotted some mummified animals exactly one-third up the height of the
pyramid. The remarkable thing was they showed no signs of decomposition. He
deducted that the pyramid shape was responsible for preserving these creatures.
Later, a Czech radio engineer conducted a series of experiments in
which he placed a brand new razor blade inside a 1:1,000 scale model of Cheops.
He aligned his pyramid on a north-south axis exactly like the real thing. After
getting 50 shaves from the razor, he was forced to conclude that it was only
getting sharper from being inside the pyramid. It took him 10 years to obtain a
patent for this device, which he claims still has no scientific explanation
today.
But is it a genuine unexplained mystery - or an embellishment of
the truth? This is another way that stories become legends which, because they
are so famous, people believe there simply must be something to it. If
"Pyramid Power" were a real, observable effect, it would surely have
been commercialized by now. (It hasn't.)
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