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The Pyramid Inch

© Copyright 2001, Jim Loy

See Pi and the Great Pyramid and My Pyramids.

A few times within and without the Great Pyramid, people have measured a length of slightly longer than 25 inches. There was apparently a "sacred cubit" of about 25 inches (a more popular cubit was about 20.6 inches). The polar radius of the earth is approximately 3949.89 mi. One ten-millionth of that is apparently 25.0265 inches, quite a coincidence, huh? And so, these folks "deduce" that the Egyptians knew the polar radius of the earth, very accurately, and that they defined the sacred cubit based upon this measurement of the polar radius. So they "deduce" that the "sacred cubit" was 25.0265 inches. And they claim to have measured this length, to the ten-thousandth of an inch (that is unlikely), within and without the pyramid. By the way, our estimates of the length of the polar radius have changed over the years. So have the resultant estimates of the length of the sacred cubit.

And these people "deduce" a standard unit which they call the "pyramid inch" (1/25 of a royal cubit) which is slightly longer than an inch. How do they justify this? It is considered common for ancient societies to use a unit of length of approximately one inch, equal to the width of a finger (maybe a thumb), maybe determined by measuring the king's hand. So there is some support for an "inch" back then that is nearly equal to an inch now. But these "pyramidologists" seem to have another reason for coming up with a very accurate estimate of a "pyramid inch." These folks claim to have found several lengths of one pyramid inch in the pyramid. I don't know what objects they are measuring that are this small, again to within a ten-thousandth of an inch.

The length of a year is 365.25636 days. (25.0265 inches) x (365.25636 days) is approximately the length of one side of the pyramid (in inches, not inchdays). So these people "deduce" that the Egyptians knew the length of the year very accurately, even though they used a 365 day calendar, which was off by one day every four years.

They also claim that the dimensions of the pyramid reflect the distance to the sun. They also say that the dimensions of the pyramid predicted the birth of Jesus. I haven't studied these two claims.

This all sounds rather stupid to me.


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