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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
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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 West 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 composed 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
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