Comments

John Ivimy

This is an interesting dossier.  It has admirably served its purpose of making people think about other people’s ideas as well as their own.  I must confess, however, that as far as I am concerned the result has been to make me more than ever convinced that my theories are at least on the right lines.  I feel that the ‘Spacemen’ and Martian theories do not hold water, while the ‘coincidence’ theory stretches coincidence far beyond the limits of the credible and asks us to believe that obviously rational men abandoned reason when they designed and built the world’s most lasting monuments. 

I wholeheartedly agree with Mr. Forrest’s statement on p. 2 of his comments that the aim should be to compare the merits of various numerical theories concerning the Pyramid and to weigh them against the ‘number juggling’ argument.  The essence of this problem is to distinguish coincidences which are or might be meaningful from those which are meaningless, and then to decide in regard to the former on which side the balance of probability lies. 

Most of the extraneous coincidences quoted by Mr. Forrest are obviously meaningless in that they could not possibly have been produced by a human decision nor did they play any part in one.  The fact that Budge-Budge lies on a latitude which has peculiar mathematical properties makes it neither more nor less likely that Stonehenge or the Great Pyramid were sited where they were because of the mathematical properties of their latitudes.  Those other coincidences are therefore irrelevant.  The only ones worth considering are those which might be meaningful, i.e. those round which it is possible to construct a plausible theory as to the reasons which led the architects to incorporate then in their designs.  In the absence of any such theory – and I do not regard the theory that the designers of the Pyramid had prophetic knowledge of the future course of world history as plausible – the conclusion must be that the coincidences were fortuitous.  But if a plausible theory is proposed, then the burden of proof is shifted onto those who deny it to prove their case. 

Following this logic I submit that my theory is a plausible one and should therefore be accepted in the absence of a better.  Unfortunately the recipients of this dossier who have not read my book were until now unable to judge the theory because I omitted to include in my contribution the vital chapter 12 which describes it.  This omission is now repaired.  I apologise to those who missed it. 

My theory is, of course, like any other theory on this point, speculation.  But it is based on quite a solid foundation of facts and reasonable inferences from facts.  Among these are the following. 

1.  We have it on the authority of Plutarch (De Iside et Osiride) that the Egyptians held the 3, 4, 5 Pythagorean triangle sacred as being symbolic of the Trinity of Osiris (3), Isis (4), and Horus (5). 

2.  Four of these triangles can be constructed so as to fit into the King’s Chamber diagonally across its three dimensions: (4 × 2 × √5) × 5 Royal cubits. 

3.  Osiris was the divine Judge of the Dead; the Pyramids were built to house the bodies of dead Pharaohs. 

4.  Osiris was also a resurrected god; the purpose of the funerary rituals on the death of a pharaoh was to effect his resurrection.  The Chamber contained an empty sarcophagus. 

5.  The inference is inescapable that the dimensions of the King’s Chamber were chosen because they incorporated the sacred Osirian triangle. 

6.  If the architects used a mathematico-religious symbolism to determine the dimensions of the interior of the tomb what is more likely than that they would have done the same for the exterior dimensions? 

7.  The foundation of the Pyramid’s design is the near-Pythagorean triangle of sides 55, 70, 89.  These numbers form a geometric series in the proportions 1, √φ, φ.  The first and last are Fibonacci numbers. 

8.  Fibonacci numbers are found ubiquitously in nature, especially in flowers and shells.  Modern biologists have discovered no reason for this preference, but they admit that there must be a reason. 

9.  The phi ratio has been identified as determining the design of some of the earliest works of art of the Old Kingdom of Egypt.  Schwaller de Lubicz described it as having a sacred character for the Egyptians.  It was a kind of philosophical concept which bridged the gap between the physical and the spiritual sides of Nature.  His researches were conducted not at Gizeh but in Luxor. 

10.  The Egyptians knew that the Earth was round, and they used 22/7 as a close approximation to the ratio between the circumference and diameter of a circle (44/7 for the radius). 

11.  The ratio between the base perimeter and the vertical height of the Great Pyramid is 44/7

12.  From points 7 and 11 above it follows that, by accident or design,

(a) the length of the base perimeter is equal to the circumference of a circle whose radius is the height of the Pyramid, and

(b) its basic dimensions embody the near equation

π/4 ≈ φ−½

The reader’s task is to decide the question: was it accident or design?  In the absence of a plausible theory to explain why these particular dimensions should have been regarded by the architects as more meaningful than any others I would say he ought to decide in favour of accident.  But if the coincidence of the last equation is taken in conjunction with the coincidence of the appearance of the other pi/phi equation

5π/6 ≈ φ2

in the ‘flattened’ stone circles, and considered in the light of the theory put forward in my chapter 12, I submit that he will have a hard job trying, to prove that they were accidental. 

As a final point, Note 2 to chapter 12 here reproduced is copied from the American paperback edition which contains a further new suggestion regarding the meanings which, in accordance with Pythagorean philosophy, the ancients might have attached to particular numbers in the phi series.  In holding that numbers are the Ultimate reality, were they perhaps wiser than we are? 


J.W.L.I.
11/1/77