Free The Secret Chamber of Osiris: Lost Knowledge of the Sixteen Pyramids by Scott Creighton Page A

burial site against tomb robbers contradicts his own common-sense actions with regard to his mother’s new underground tomb, a tomb he built specifically underground and unmarked because her previous tomb had been found and robbed. And, it has to be said, common sense would have been as available to the ancient Egyptian culture as it is to our own.
    In summary, if, as Egyptology asserts, the early, giant pyramids were conceived and built as eternal tombs for the kings of the period, then it seems that these monumental constructions were set in motion not for reasons relating to religion, nor to security or to vanity. It seems that there was some other, as yet unknown, motivation for the sudden introduction of these massively visible structures.
    2. PYRAMID SHAPE
    Without exception, the superstructures of mastaba tombs in ancient Egypt were always rectangular in shape, a tradition that stretched far back into antiquity, even in ancient Egyptian times. Curiously though, almost without exception, the pyramids of ancient Egypt were built square; that is, with their bases being regular quadrilaterals. There are only two exceptions to this, the first being Menkaure’s pyramid (G3) at Giza, which, according to Lehner’s measurements, is fractionally rectangular, with its north-south axis marginally longer than its east-west axis. (The reason for this will be discussed with fact 6, “Preconceived, Unified Planning.”) The second rectangular pyramid is the very first pyramid ever built, the step pyramid at Saqqara attributed to Djoser, which again is marginally rectangular in shape. However, it is known that the construction of the step pyramid actually began with it as a square, and it was later modified to become slightly rectangular. Its eastern side was extended marginally in order to cover over and make secure eleven shaft entrances to the vast storage galleries beneath this pyramid.
    But this raises a question: Why would the ancient Egyptians suddenly abandon an ancient tomb-building tradition of low, rectangular superstructures (i.e., mastabas) for their kings and queens in favor of giant, square superstructures (i.e., pyramids), and why would they continue to construct low, rectangular mastaba tombs and shaft tombs during the pyramid-building age (and long afterward) for every other royal or noble? In short, the square pyramid fundamentally contradicts the ancient Egyptian tradition of rectangular burial mounds, vis-à-vis the mastaba, a burial structure that the ancient Egyptians used for almost all of their history.
    Furthermore, the burial chambers within the mastaba tomb (from which the pyramid supposedly evolved) were always deep underground, whereas the chambers within the pyramid were mostly either at ground level or high above ground level, thereby contradicting the ancient Egyptian axiom of “body to the earth, spirit to the sky.” Accepting the further axiom that “form follows function,” then this suggests that the square form of the pyramid served a different function to the rectangular form of the mastaba.
    The question arises then: If the pyramids were not built as tombs then where are the bodies of the kings from this period to be found? Well, given the importance of the king’s role in death during the Old Kingdom period, it would naturally have been of paramount importance to protect the king’s remains from looters and desecrators, and the best way of achieving this would naturally have been to have the remains placed in an unmarked tomb, deep underground, similar to the tomb that we know Khufu created for his mother, Hetepheres I, at Giza.
    Intriguingly, there are two kings from this early period who had built pyramids and whose names have also been found on mastaba tombs. Egyptologist J. P. Lepre explains, “The Third Dynasty Pharaoh Huni built a sizable pyramid at Maidum, but it did not contain a sarcophagus. Yet a quite large mastaba located 275 miles to the south at Bet Khallaf did in fact