The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only known eight-sided pyramid

https://curiosmos.com/the-great-pyramid-of-giza-is-the-only-known-eight-sided-pyramid-in-existence/

by evo_9 • 6 years ago

35 50 6 years ago

ceejayoz4• 6 years ago

The "related video" on the very article references another "eight-sided" pyramid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bent_Pyramid

They're only eight sided if you don't count the base, too.

leto_ii4• 6 years ago

I saw a similar post recently on a different site. This seems fake to me.

Does anybody have different, perhaps more reliable sources to confirm this?

npt4279• 6 years ago

This has a hypothesis as to why: http://awesci.com/the-great-pyramid-is-not-your-average-squa...

DiabloD32• 6 years ago

The issue is how do you define "eight sides."

It's a four sided pyramid, where each side has a concave bend in the middle, only really visible from a top down perspective. The article contains enhanced, but completely valid photos of it.

It is unknown if this was an intentional design aspect. It does not seem to be a feature of any occult purpose. Sneferu's Bent Pyramid does "not" have 8 sides, but was incorrectly completed at a later date at the wrong angle, thus often used as a (useless) comparison.

All other pyramids in Egypt seem to just be normally 4 sides with no concave outer walls.

tl;dr The Pyramid of Giza is only 8 sides on a technicality. It approximates the usual, and expected, tetrahedral shape.

leto_ii4• 6 years ago

I'm still not convinced. Are you sure the photos are valid? Is curiosmos a trustworthy site?

William Matthews Flinders Petrie is mentioned as having written La Description de l’Egypte in the 1700's - this is inaccurate, the man was born in 1853: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flinders_Petrie. On a quick search I can't find mention of La Description de l’Egypte, either in French or English.

They're also quoting a text by I.E.S. Edwards at the end. He seems to be a real person, but they quote a 1975 edition of his book, which I can't find on google books (https://books.google.nl/books?q=editions:ISBN0140136347&id=d...).

The mention of British Air Force pilot, P. Groves pops up in multiple places, but none looks particularly trustworthy to me.

dragonwriter5• 6 years ago

Hey, if being convex with a crease on the middle makes an otherwise tetrahedral pyramid “8 sided”, does convexity plus a protrusion in the middle of each of the four faces also count as 8-sided? Because, of so, there are lots of 8-sided mesoamerican pyramids.

zarmin11• 6 years ago

A search for "great pyramid from above" will return a ton of images where you can see this for yourself. It's definitely true, just not very well known.

Sample image: https://hiddenincatours.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/b3eab...

leto_ii4• 6 years ago

The view from Google maps is far less convincing to me.

pavel_lishin5• 6 years ago

Google Maps seems to show an indent on one side: https://www.google.com/maps/place/The+Great+Pyramid+of+Giza/...

https://i.imgur.com/sGGvSPn.png

leto_ii4• 6 years ago

The left side of the base of the pyramid seems parallel to the road to me.

deepsun• 6 years ago

Slightly curious fact, with tons of advertisement trying to squeeze some money off it.

frandroid• 6 years ago

And there I was expecting that it had a buried bottom half, making it the shape of a D8...

torben-friis• 6 years ago

The link is unreadable for me on mobile (Safari on ios 13). The usual cookies popup appears hiding the view and no action can remove it (neither accepting not rejecting it).

zarmin11• 6 years ago

More fun facts:

- The Great Pyramid is a scale model of Earth, at a ratio of 1:43,200 (a significant number)

- It also encodes its own latitude and longitude

- Its base perimeter is equal to 1/2 a minute of latitude (1/43,200th of 360 degrees)

- It's aligned to true north within 3/60 of one degree (making it, I believe, the most accurately aligned structure on the planet)

These are not undisputed claims, but there is absolutely something different about 4th dynasty pyramids that is worth exploring. There are many, many anomalies about Giza that defy explanation. Another example is precision stone cutting and drilling from thousands of years ago.

For detailed explanations of the above, check out the video here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhGQU3m9E34&t=795 (timelinked, but the entire video is excellent)

https://youtu.be/H43z2xAis4c?list=PLvuraN2vNappZ6m4jNiK5rDDm...

and this blog: http://garyosborn.moonfruit.com/1-43200/4594099844

This is one of my favorite topics to discuss.

ceejayoz4• 6 years ago

The Great Pyramid is a scale model of Earth…

Is this a joke that’s whooshing over my head?

zarmin11• 6 years ago

Nope. Timelinked video: https://youtu.be/rhGQU3m9E34?t=1103

pavel_lishin5• 6 years ago

I think this screenshot from the video explains what they're talking about: https://i.imgur.com/F8ISnSq.png

So, what are the odds that this is or isn't a coincidence? Could the ancient Egyptians have measured the two circumferences of the Earth that accurately at that point in history?

pavlov3• 6 years ago

” It's aligned to true north within 3/60 of one degree (making it, I believe, the most accurately aligned structure on the planet)”

Is that referring to true North today or in 2560 B.C?

turdnagel• 6 years ago

True north doesn’t change - magnetic north does.

zarmin11• 6 years ago

True north meaning the fixed point we call the north pole. It doesn't change because it's geographic; nothing to do with the pole star.

eesmith• 6 years ago

https://www.nature.com/articles/35042510 argues they were aligned to the stars, using a method which co-incidentally aligned it best to the Earth's spin at the time the Great Pyramid was built:

Here I use trends in the orientation of Old Kingdom pyramids to demonstrate that the Egyptians aligned them to north by using the simultaneous transit of two circumpolar stars. Modelling the precession of these stars yields a date for the start of construction of the Great Pyramid that is accurate to ±5 yr, thereby providing an anchor for the Old Kingdom chronologies.

or commentary from New Scientist, https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn174-pyramid-precision...

Instead, the alignment of successive pyramids first steadily improved up to the building of the Great Pyramid, then later deteriorated. This makes perfect sense, she says, if the architects were measuring the alignment using not one star, but two: Mizar in Ursa Major (the Big Dipper) and Kochab in Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper).

Others have other ideas of how to do the alignment - https://www.sciencealert.com/archaeologist-secret-why-the-gr... .

_kst_• 6 years ago

It's aligned to true north within 3/60 of one degree (making it, I believe, the most accurately aligned structure on the planet)

3/60 of a degree is mildly impressive (Wikipedia says 4 minutes of arc rather than 3), but I seriously doubt that it's the most accurately aligned structure on the planet. With modern technology, surely we could align something much more closely than that given a good reason to do so.

zarmin11• 6 years ago

I definitely agree that we could, given a good reason to. I took a cursory look and couldn't find anything to dispute its precision relative to other structures on Earth.

fanf2• 6 years ago

Transit telescopes are more accurately aligned but a lot smaller https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_circle

dragonwriter5• 6 years ago

The Great Pyramid is a scale model of Earth, at a ratio of 1:43,200 (a significant number)

No, it's not.

It's a rectangular pyramid, and the Earth is a slightly oblate spheroid. If you were given a task to make a scale model of the latter and produced the former, regardless of measurement, you'd be laughed out of the room.

zarmin11• 6 years ago

The relationship is between the earth's polar/equatorial circumferences and the pyramid's base perimeter and its height.

https://youtu.be/rhGQU3m9E34?t=1103

candiodari• 6 years ago

Clearly, it is:

https://greatseal.com/symbols/PyramidEarth.jpg

Mountain_Skies• 6 years ago

The indention is where the tube used to sit that was used to carry grain to the top back when the pyramid was used as a grain silo.

(Yes, I'm joking)

The Great Pyramid of Giza is the only known eight-sided pyramid

Related Stories