Pyramid Quest : Secrets of the Great Pyramid and the Dawn of Civilization

by Schoch, Robert M.; McNally, Robert Aquinas

• ISBN13: 9781585424054
• ISBN10: 1585424056
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-02
• Publisher: Tarcher

Summary

The Egyptologist acclaimed for re-dating the Great Sphinx at Giza sets his sights on one of the true mysteries of antiquity: the Great Pyramid of Giza. What is the Great Pyramid of Giza? Ask that basic question of a traditional Egyptologist, and you get the basic, traditional answer: a fancy tombstone for a self-important pharaoh of the Old Kingdom. This, Egyptologists argue, is the sole finding based on the data, and the only deduction supported by science. By implication, anyone who dissents from this point of view is unscientific and woolly-minded-a believer in magic and ghosts. Indeed, some of the unconventional ideas about the Great Pyramid do have a spectacularly fabulous ring to them. Yet from beneath the obvious terms of this controversy, a deeper, more significant question arises: how is it that the Great Pyramid exercises such a gripping hold on the human psyche- adding cryptic grace to the back of the one-dollar bill and framing myriad claims of New Age "pyramid power"? In Pyramid Quest, Robert M. Schoch and Robert Aquinas McNally use the rigorous intellectual analysis of scientific inquiry to investigate what we know about the Great Pyramid, and develop a stunning hypothesis: This ancient monument is the strongest proof yet that civilization began thousands of years earlier than is generally thought, extending far back into a little-known time. In tracing that story, we come to understand not only the Great Pyramid but also our own origins as civilized beings.

Author Biography

Robert M. Schoch, Ph.D., a full-time faculty member at the College of General Studies at Boston University, earned his Ph.D. in geology and geophysics at Yale University. He was featured in the Emmy Award-winning documentary The Mystery of the Sphinx.

Robert Aquinas McNally is the author of numerous books, and is a classically educated writer and poet.

Table of Contents

A distant mirror	p. 1
The standard story	p. 17
Thinking outside the sarcophagus	p. 42
A certain age	p. 61
Naming the builder	p. 82
Tracking the heavens	p. 107
Boundaries of seasons and the earth	p. 127
God's numbers	p. 143
Pi and the golden section	p. 160
Secret knowledge	p. 175
An entry into the mysteries	p. 190
A fresh look at an ancient wonder	p. 204
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