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ANCIENT MYSTERIES • BY ROBERT BAUVAL One of the mysteries of Fractal Patterns Giza is the missing pyramidion or capstone of the Great Pyramid of Khufu. In modern recorded history the Great Pyramid has been topless, with several meters of its apex missing. Egyptologists have long assumed that the pyramid was originally capped by a small pyramid called a pyramidion. If that is true, then what happened to it, and what could it have looked like? In October 1900 the guards of the Egyptian Antiquities Organization (EAO) in the area of Dashur, a site on the western desert some 20 kilometers south of modern Cairo, were attacked by a group of armed brigands. A few days later, Gaston Maspero, head of EAO, went to inspect the site. He was then taken to see an amazing and rather unique artifact embedded in the sand near a pyramid of the twelfth dynasty belonging to pharaoh Amenemhet III. It was a magnificent pyramidion made of black granite. Maspero could hardly believe the amazing preservation of the 4000-year-old artifact which, in his excitement, he described as “polished like a mirror.” The pyramid, measuring 1.85 meters at the base, had a height of 1.40 meters, and was decorated with wonderful inscriptions. On one face was a winged solar disk flanked by two ureus (sacred cobras), and under the solar-disk were two large eyes. Under the eyes were three lutes above a large sun disk. On each side of the sun disk were the royal cartouches bearing the names of Amenemhet III, and at the base of the triangular face were two lines of hieroglyphs. In an article published in the Annales Du Services Des Antiquités in 1902, Maspero gave this translation: “May the face of the king be opened so that he may see the Lord of the Horizon when he crosses the sky; may he cause the king to rise as a god, lord of eternity and indestructible... Horakhti has said I have given to the king of Upper and Lower Egypt the beautiful horizon who takes the inheritance of the two lands...so that See Our Great 8-page Catalog Beginning on Page 74 you may unite with the horizon...the horizon has said that you rest upon it, which pleases me.” In view of the mention of Horakhti (Horus of the Horizon), who was regarded as the symbol of the rising sun in the east, Maspero concluded that this particular face with the winged sun disk was the East face of the pyramidion. Maspero did not give a full translation of the other three faces which also bore two lines of inscriptions each, but he nonetheless adds that “the invocation is similarly addressed on the South face to Anubis; on the <strong>We</strong>st face to Ptah-Sokar-Osiris; on the North face to Sah-Orion.” The same view was later expressed by the American Egyptologist James Henry Breasted in 1912. Breasted wrote: “On the side which undoubtedly faced the east appears a winged sun disk, surmounted by a pair of eyes, beneath which are the words ‘Beauty of the Sun,’ the eyes of course indicate the idea of beholding which is to be understood with the words, ‘beauty of the sun.’ ” Today Egyptologists agree that the pyramids of ancient Egypt represented the dead kings. Indeed, the pyramid was regarded as an ac- tual personification of the dead king. Moreover, the name given to the pyramids show clearly that these monuments were considered to be the afterlife form of the king himself. Yet Egyptologists also agree that in the Pyramid Texts, the afterlife form of the king is said to THE THE GREAT GREAT PYRAMID’S PYRAMID’S MISSING MISSING CAPSTONE CAPSTONE Everybody Everybody Everybody Everybody Agrees Agrees Agrees Agrees It It It It Was Was Was Was Probably Probably Probably Probably There There There There Once, Once, Once, Once, but but but but Where Where Where Where Did Did Did Did It It It It Go? Go? Go? Go? Pyramidion of the Pyramid of Amenemhet III at Dashur, in the Cairo Museum be a ‘star’ in the sky. This, then, may explain why in the case of at least three pyramids, the monuments were given stellar names while also personifying the dead king. But two questions now must also be considered. For if indeed the pyramidion represented the The view from atop the Great Pyramid form of the king as a star, then what could possibly have given the ancient Egyptians the idea that a star had the physical shape of a ‘pyramid’ and, furthermore, that it was <strong>com</strong>posed of very hard “black stone” such as black granite? Most Egyptologists agree that the shape of pyramids was inspired by the Benben Stone that was venerated in the ‘Mansion of the Phoenix’ at the city of Heliopolis. Many scholars claim that the Benben was symbolic of the sun. In 1912 Breasted noted the similarity of the word ‘Benben’ with the word ‘Benbenet’—the pyramidshaped apex of an obelisk—and concluded that “an obelisk is simply a pyramid upon a lofty base Continued on Page 71 Number 95 • ATLANTIS ATLANTIS RISING RISING 45