Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012) (22 page)

“I didn’t know about some of those facts you’ve just told us,” said Mary. “But have you researched the construction of the pyramid? That’s what really drives Egyptologists crazy.”

Richard fired back a reply. “Of course. From what I’ve read, it was built by the Pharaoh Cheops in only twenty years. To do so, he used almost three million stones, each weighing several tons and some as much as eighty, and they were cut with the same precision as optical prisms. They brought the stones from the quarry at Aswan, located six hundred miles away, without the use of wheels or roads, and crossing the Nile regardless of whether the river level was high or low. They brought the stones over half a mile along Giza Plateau and then raised them up to a height of five hundred feet.

Mary smiled as she saw the look of expectation on James’ face while he listened intently to his friend’s explanations.

“But… doing the math, that would mean - ”

“A block every three minutes, working absolutely non-stop for twenty years,” replied Mary before the professor could finish.

Richard fixed the woman with a slightly menacing look, but she took it lightheartedly. Clearly that little piece of trivia had been written on his list and he had been jealously guarding it, waiting for the right moment to strike.

“Because they were using quick-setting cement, they had to place the blocks with immense precision. It would have been impossible to move the block to line it up once it was in place. And all the while working to the rhythm of block every three minutes!”

“The most startling thing of all this,” said Mary, returning to the conversation, “is how the blocks themselves were created, their ability to lay them with minimal error and the machinery used to place such heavy blocks in such high places. Archaeologists haven’t managed to uncover the techniques employed to build it. Astronomers pale at the thought of how they could have aligned it with such accuracy at that time, given that each wall is oriented to a cardinal point. On top of all of this, the plains had to be leveled out in order to build the structure, yet this only caused an error of a mere half inch between points on the pyramid which are a thousand feet apart. It is something which topographers can’t get their heads around. And lastly, engineers prefer not to think about what kind of cranes they used to raise weights of almost eighty tons up to heights of hundreds of feet, even more so when there are only a few such cranes in the world today which could lift that weight. They haven’t even found remains of rope ties or anything similar which they could have used!”

“How are the blocks thought to have been made?” asked James, intrigued.

Mary cleared her throat before answering. She didn’t really know the answer. “That is another of the mysteries. The most advanced technology in cutting stones uses a round blade, so that with each turn it cuts in 0.0015 of an inch.” Mary sighed and continued on. “I don’t know how the Egyptians did it, but with each sweep of the saw they cut in 0.09 of an inch, or sixty times more. It is impossible to increase the pressure applied today because the points on the circular blade would break.”

“So what material did the Egyptians use?”

“I don’t know. But I can assure you that there is no material in the world or the solar system, whether manmade or natural, which is able to withstand such pressure. The Egyptians must have used a material with a hardness of five hundred, or in other words fifty times harder than diamond, which scores ten on the scale. But the most shocking thing is that the Pyramid was clad with twenty-six thousand blocks which were carved and polished with a precision which is nowadays unfeasible. Obviously those responsible for its construction used highly accurate optical instruments.”

The conversation went on for hours. They debated all the mysteries relating to those magnificent monuments, year after year, pondering what could still be hidden inside and singing its praises, given that they had managed to remain hidden year upon year. Eventually they finished their third round of drinks, and looked back at the Great Pyramid of Cheops in the distance. It is made up of 2 billion cubic feet of stone, a quantity more than enough to build an eight-lane freeway between New York and San Francisco and whose length would be over 2800 miles.

James looked at his watch. They had twenty minutes until they could go in.

A
man about forty-five-years-old, with unkempt black hair and a noticeable goatee, stood at the base of the Great Pyramid. He was stocky and was wearing a white short-sleeved shirt and a pair of ripped and dusty jeans, copying the most fashionable trend among the youth of today. A small group of around twenty people were waiting around him to go inside. Even though their skins were lightly tanned, the sun continued to beat down on the hot tourists, inflicting telltale sunburn marks on their necks and arms which were visible when their flesh was exposed. The majority were wearing short-sleeved summer tops, sunglasses, a cap to protect themselves from the blazing rays and toting a large bottle of water to constantly quench their thirst. However, there was always somebody who seemed to want to dehydrate themselves as quickly as they could by wearing winter clothes.

The guide raised his hand to greet those who had attended and he waited for the murmuring to die down. “Good afternoon. My name is David Roberts and as you can see, I’m not Egyptian.” Some sniggering could be heard at the back. “I belong to a group of archaeologists who, for all of today, will be investigating the authenticity of the most recent discoveries made in the Great Pyramid. First of all, I’d like to apologize on behalf of all my team to all those people who came to visit in the morning and were denied access because of us. There should be about a hundred of you now, but probably most of them had to keep to a tight itinerary and weren’t able to make it at this time. After finding out that most people in the group were Americans, just like us, we spoke to the relevant authorities in order to make it up to you somehow; they have allowed us to show you this fabulous monument ourselves.”

A round of applause of gratitude broke the desert silence - anyone else in his position wouldn’t have even apologized. He had about a hundred sheets in his hands which he quickly shared out among the tourists. All the pages had the following diagram printed on them:

The archaeologist began to explain as the excitement of the crowd grew. “It is a basic plan of the interior of the Great Pyramid. It is thought to have been built at the time of the Pharaoh Cheops around 2500 BC, despite some geological analyses showing it to be ten thousand years old.”

“Ten thousand years!” quietly gasped one of the girls in the group. David heard the subtle whisper.

“Although it may seem ridiculous on the face of it,” he responded, looking at her out of the corner of his eye, “it was recently discovered that the Pyramids of Giza are aligned with the stars in the constellation Orion, which makes the idea of them being built ten thousand years seem not so crazy after all.”

The group was already grateful for David’s presence. Almost all of them agreed that they were going to learn much more about the mysteries within the pyramid with him than with any other guide.

“It’s full of chambers, tunnels, passages and galleries. Up until now, three chambers have been discovered: a subterranean one around thirteen feet below the Great Pyramid, and another two inside the structure itself - the ‘King’s Chamber’ and the ‘Queen’s Chamber’. Please stay together so that nobody gets lost, because today we won’t be using the normal tourist entrance, which is located on the fifth row of stones. Instead, we’re going to go in via the original entrance, on the fifteenth row.”

When they reached the entrance they saw how the narrow tunnel led downwards until it was lost from view in the depths of the pyramid. It would have been impossible to walk down it upright - it was less than four feet tall and barely more than three feet wide. With David at the front, the tourists descended down the tunnel with extreme caution - the gradient was some 26 degrees and when combined with the length of the tunnel itself, and it was fairly likely that one of them would end up rolling down the full three hundred and twenty feet.

One of the girls at the back was walking carelessly without heeding the archaeologist’s warnings, until she tripped on one of the steps which had been fitted. Her boyfriend’s quick thinking and her own dexterity stopped her from hurting herself.

David waited until everybody had finished their descent and formed a circle around him. “We are now underground, right below the pyramid. You see that tunnel there?” Everybody shuffled closer without daring to step inside without the American’s authorization. “It is much smaller than the others, it measures thirty feet in length and you have to crawl on all fours to get through it. On the other side is the deepest chamber of all. So, let’s get to work.”

The tourists were immediately struck by the lack of air together with a sense of claustrophobia as they went through it. Millions of tons of stone were sitting above their heads. That thought alone was more than enough for them to want to get to the other side as quickly as possible, and responsible for more than a couple of instances of nerves and unease when people weren’t moving.

Eventually, a seemingly unfinished room lay before them. Mary was the last to enter and immediately made her way towards her friends who were already scanning the room in search of some clue which would lead them to the first fragment of the
Trifariam
. Judging by the looks on their faces, they were disappointed.

Richard folded his arms. “I expected more than this. I feel like I’m in an unfinished room. Plus I can’t see any of that architectural perfection in the walls whatsoever.”

Mary elbowed him lightly, offended by his words. “Don’t be so ignorant. This room was meant to be like this. It is thought that it was meant to discourage raiders so that they would think the same as you and would leave empty-handed.”

James laughed as he pointed out to his friends that it was time to leave; people were having difficulty breathing and some were showing symptoms of anxiety.

Richard noticed some steps which led up from the chamber and wondered where they led to. “Why don’t we go up those steps?”

“They’re obstructed by three blocks of stone. I guess the guide will take us through either the tunnel made by the looters, which is further up, or the normal route.”

After retracing their steps and going up part of the tunnel they had initially come down, they saw a shaft which they had inadvertently missed during their descent, and which had the same incline as the one before. It was shorter, around a hundred and twenty feet, with the final part splitting off into two: the horizontal shaft would take them to the Queen’s Chamber, but continuing up would lead to the “Grand Gallery”.

David went through the horizontal shaft followed by about twenty enthusiastic tourists. They entered the Queen’s Chamber, where they caught their first glimpse of the magnificence of this lost civilization.

“This is the Queen’s Chamber. Its name doesn’t make much sense, because there’s no queen here at all. It measures about three hundred and twenty square feet, and if you look carefully at the walls, you’ll see that the stones have been joined together with an accuracy which was unheard of for the time. If anybody manages to get a needle between the stones, I’ll give them my car,” he boomed between fits of laughter.

“What is that on your left? It looks like a hole in the wall in the shape of a layered pyramid” asked one of the tourists.

“It is thought that it was a niche where they kept the ‘pharaoh’s double’, which is nothing more than a sculpture of him.”

James was awestruck. He had run his fingers over the walls and been astonished at their smoothness. The stones were so polished and they fitted together so perfectly that he now understood what Mary had meant, and why it was so unbelievable to think that such a perfect work of architecture had been carried out almost five thousand years ago. His eyes detected the presence of a square hole, each side around eight inches in length, on one of the chamber walls.

“What’s this?” asked James aloud. The other tourists turned to look.

“At first, it was thought that they could be ventilation shafts. It was later discovered that this wasn’t the case and they instead had a ritualistic and astronomical purpose - some even lead to hidden chambers in the pyramid itself. On the map I gave you, you can see some have been drawn on. This shaft in particular is very famous. A few years ago, a robot was sent through it and at the end of the shaft it found a big stone around two and a half inches thick which stopped it from going any further. After obtaining the required permission, they were allowed to use a drill to make a hole large enough to get a camera through.”

“What did they find?” asked another tourist.

“Another stone block. This still hasn’t been touched, or that is what the Egyptian authorities want us to believe, which I don’t for a second. Archaeologists think that behind that ‘stone door’ lies a third which would lead us to the ‘Secret Chamber’. The reason for thinking there are three doors is because there were three which blocked access to the King’s Chamber, and if there is another hidden chamber it will probably also lie behind three stone blocks.”