ARCHEOLOGIA NUOVA

We know lots about the Great Pyramid of Giza – it’s age (about 4,569 years), who it was built for (the Fourth Dynasty Egyptian King Khufu), who designed it (Khufu’s brother, the architect Hemienu) and even who rolled up their sleeves and did the work (tens of thousands of skilled labourers from across the kingdom, as opposed to slaves as was once believed). But ask a room full of experts how it was built, and you can expect a whole lot of head-scratching and beard-stroking, followed by heated argument and possibly some light fisticuffs.

The main bone of contention is: how the heck did the ancient Egyptians manage to elevate around two million stone blocks, weighing an average of 2.5 tons, as high as 146.6 metres off the ground? Some kind of technology highly advanced for the time was clearly employed, with most scholars at least agreeing that a ramp of sorts must have been involved. Yet how come no evidence of such a contraption has ever been located? It would have had to be so huge as to leave almost as indelible a mark on the Giza landscape as the pyramid itself.

French architect Jean-Pierre Houdin reckons he has the answer, and he’s dedicated the last decade to trying to prove it. While there are still holes in his hypothesis, it holds water better than perhaps any other – the ramp’s inside the pyramid, stupid.

Ramping It Up

Cranes in the 46th century BC were relatively rudimentary devices, and helicopters were a cool four millenia away from being even a sparkle in Leonardo da Vinci’s eye. So the best means Hemienu – or rather his huge gang of skivvies – had of stacking a load of enormous chunks of limestone one on top of the other was shoving and dragging each of them slowly, inch by inch, up a ramp. The precise shape and form of this ramp is a fierce bone of contention. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll divide the opposing theories into two broad camps: the straights and the spirals.

The straights argue that the ramp was without-bend and basically stretched directly from the ground up to the side of the pyramid. The weakness of this idea is a matter of gradient: an incline of 8° is as steep as the Egyptians could realistically angle their ramp and still hope to move the stone blocks. Therefore to reach the pyramid’s highest point it would had to have been about a mile long. There simply isn’t enough room on the Giza plateau for such a thing, and besides, the mass of the structure would have been almost equivalent to the pyramid itself, and therefore, we can speculate that it would have taken nearly as long to construct – i.e. 20 years. Nobody needed that, not least Khufu, who could hardly delay his own death any longer than nature permitted.

So the ramp must have been of spiral shape, winding its way up around the outside of the pyramid as it grew then, right? The spiral theory does sound more feasible on paper, but there are flaws in this one too. Mainly that a spiral ramp would have permanently shrouded the corners of the pyramid, which were absolutely vital to the complex, ongoing process of calculations required to ensure that the structure came to a precise point at the top. A quick reminder of the difficulties the builders of Pharaoh Sneferu’s pyramid encountered is sufficient reason to conclude that Hemienu knew fine well the trouble a spot of bad maths could cause. It took them three attempts to get Khufu’s dad's funerary monument right; the second effort is affectionately known as the Bent Pyramid for its imperfect shape.

Solving Ancient Egypt’s “Greatest Mystery”

Enter Houdin, or – in the first instance at least – his father Henri Houdin, who was a retired civil engineer. He had the flash of inspiration that might just be the key to resolving this five millennia old teaser. What if the Great Pyramid’s builders did predominantly use a spiral ramp, but instead of wrapping it around the outside of the monument, instead constructed it inside?

Houdin the younger – a successful architect, with a specialty in 3D graphics – was asked by his father to join him in his efforts to prove his theory. He became so hooked, that he eventually quit his day job and dedicated himself full-time to the cause. Houdin and his wife lived in a tiny studio apartment for four years while he toiled passionately at his self-financed project, which remains ongoing. A measure of his commitment can be detected in the title of his 2007 book, co-written with a fellow believer, Egyptologist Bob Brier: The Secret of the Great Pyramid: How One Man’s Obsession Led to the Solution of Ancient Egypt’s Greatest Mystery.

Has the French architect really “solved” ancient Egypt’s greatest mystery? His conclusion – based on extensive projections using advanced 3D-modelling computer programmes – is that an external ramp was used to erect the first 43 metres of the structure, then an inner ramp built into the fabric of the pyramid itself was used to lift stones (taken from the dismantled external ramp) towards its 147-metre apex. A 3D representation of his theory, by industrial software giant Dassault Systemes, can be viewed here. Many of Houdin's ideas still rest on mere hypothesis, but a few concrete finds have thus-far backed up his claims.

The Proof?

A small open notch on the outer façade of the pyramid, about 90 metres above the ground, is the main building block of Houdin’s pyramid theory. It has been previously noted by pyramid experts, but never considered of great significance. To the French architect, it's vital to proving how the ancient Egyptian builders managed to turn the great stone blocks, as they gradually shoved them up the internal ramp. In 2008, Brier and a National Geographic camera crew – together with an expert mountaineer – climbed up to the notch, squeezed inside and entered a narrow L-shaped room, which was exactly where Houdin had predicted it would be. It was in hollow corner sections such as this, he claims, that the pyramid builders spun the blocks 90° – for the ascent of the next side – using a crane.

Even more vitally, the French surveyor presented to Houdin a microgravimetry scan of the pyramid – a measurement of the density of different sections of the pyramid that they had applied in order to try and detect hidden chambers. They hadn’t found any, but the scan did show up a baffling pattern – a hollow that appears to spiral its way up the inside of the pyramid. They had originally written-off it as inconsequential, but to Houdin this was critical proof of his hypothesis.

Future Studies

“A green light from Cairo and the Great Pyramid mystery is over,” Houdin commented boldly to National Geographic in 2008. It’s his belief that a system of simple, well-understood, non-invasive studies of the famous Egyptian monument is all that is required for him to prove his theory, and put to bed the centuries old question of how the ancient Egyptians built the Great Pyramid of Giza. He’s prepared an application to the Egyptian Supreme Council of Antiquities (SCA) to carry out a survey, together with Rainer Stadlemann, former director of the German Archaeological Institute in Cairo and one of the greatest authorities on pyramids. All Houdin is waiting for is the nod of approval. But it may be a long time in coming.

There are voices that express doubt about Houdin’s theories – speaking to The Engineer in 2007, University College London Egyptology professor David Jeffreys called his internal spiral hypothesis “far-fetched and horribly complicated”, while Oxford University Egyptology professor John Baines stated more broadly that he was “suspicious of any theory that seeks to explain only how the Great Pyramid was built.”

Zahi Hawass, Secretary General of the SCA, revealed in an interview with Heritage Key that he was also sceptical. “The theory is completely wrong,” he commented. “We did investigate the theory and we, I wrote about it everywhere. The theory is the theory of other theorists. This Houdin wants to make his theory famous and that’s why he took Bob Brier to be with him as a co-author but really Bob Brier doesn’t know anything about pyramids. He’s a good guy, he knows about mummies, but pyramids are not his field.”

Houdin believes that a technique as simple as placing an infrared camera in front of the pyramid and recording subtle differences in its interior materials and temperatures could be all that’s required to finally prove, beyond all doubt, that an internal ramp exists. Yet – in an exclusive interview with Heritage Key – he explains why his theory is still not accepted by the mainstream.

If an internal ramp is detected, and then – better still – later accessed and walked through, it’s hard to see how anyone could deny that perhaps ancient history’s greatest conundrum has been as good as solved. When might that happen? “Buy me a crystal ball!” Houdin jokes.

Pictures by Dassault Systemes. All rights reserved.

Egyptian workers are here shown dragging blocks up the first section of the pyramid, which was built using a long external ramp. Houdin too may face a long uphill struggle in finally proving his theory.

A look at Houdin's internal ramp from above - note the notches on the corners, which the Frenchman speculates were used for turning the stones as they were shoved upwards.

3D graphic representation of Houdin's theory, showing how the internal ramp spiralled around the inside of the pyramid. An image from Dassault Systemes