Alan F. Alford - Theories On The Great Pyramid

Theories On The Great Pyramid

Unlike other alternative pyramid theorists, Alford interprets the Great Pyramid in the context of ancient Egyptian religion. Crucially, however, he redefines the builders’ religion, arguing that it was not a sun cult per se but a ‘cult of creation’, and he devotes an entire volume The Midnight Sun (2004) to the establishment of this idea.

Alford takes as his starting point the golden rule that the pharaoh had to be buried in the earth, i.e. at ground level or below, and this leads him to conclude that Khufu was interred in an ingeniously concealed cave whose entrance is today sealed up in the so-called Well Shaft adjacent to a known cave called the Grotto. He has lobbied the Egyptian authorities to explore this area of the pyramid with ground penetrating radar, and although nothing has happened yet it is quite possible that one day this theory will be put to the test.

The cult of creation theory also provides the basis for Alford’s next big idea: that the sarcophagus in the King’s Chamber – commonly supposed to be Khufu’s final resting place – actually enshrined iron meteorites. He maintains, by reference to the Pyramid Texts, that this iron was blasted into the sky at the time of creation, according to the Egyptians’ geocentric way of thinking. The King’s Chamber, with its upward inclined dual ‘airshafts’, was built to capture the magic of this mythical moment.

The rest of the Pyramid is interpreted by Alford as a network of secret chambers in which religious relics were concealed – hence the title of his book Pyramid of Secrets. This is the weakest part of his case, as the textual support for the idea is thin and there is no way of knowing what might have been contained in the chambers that we know of today. Once again, Alford’s theory can be proven or negated by future exploration, since it is central to his case that further secret chambers exist. In this regard, his thoughts are guided by the scholar J.P. Lepre, who claimed that anomalous patterns in the Pyramid’s masonry joints might be signs to the existence of hidden passages and chambers.

Alford’s most speculative idea is that the King’s Chamber generated low frequency sound via its ‘airshafts’, the purpose being to re-enact the sound of the earth splitting open at the time of creation. This theory is an attempt to explain the builders’ use of stacked roofs with enormous granite beams above the chamber’s ceiling. Egyptologists, however, do not see a mystery in these roofs and would therefore reject this as an unnecessary hypothesis.