Walking the Bible (23 page)

The issue of Egypt as enemy was on our minds the following morning when, after having dinner with some friends of Avner’s, we made the daylong taxi trek to Giza and began to confront two of the more confounding—and abiding—questions of biblical history: Were the Israelites actually enslaved in Egypt? And if so, did they build the pyramids?

Our first stop was fifteen miles south of Giza at the funerary complex of Saqqara. Here, in the twenty-seventh century
B.C.E.
, King Zoser erected the first pyramid, a four-stepped stone monument, covered with white limestone, that looks something like an oversized wedding cake, only square and without the flowers. Over 150 feet tall, it was, at the time, the largest structure ever built of stone and, according to one historian, the “beginning of architecture.” Before then, pharaohs had been buried in subterranean tombs covered by mastabas, mud-brick structures about the size of a modern minivan that looked like loaves of bread. Pyramids, from the Greek word
pyramis,
or wheaten cake, allowed the soul of the deceased pharaoh to ascend closer to the sun god. Indeed the shape of the structure is thought to be a three-dimensional re-creation of a sun ray, a physical embodiment of the divine. In all, ninety-seven pyramids remain standing.

The three jewels in this series are grouped together like collectibles on a coffee table, just west of downtown Cairo, on a sandy plateau above the Nile. It was late morning when we arrived, and walking up the hill, through the clog of souvenir shops and camel rides (“Special price for
you!”), we decided to say hello to the chief archaeologist. The previous day, the dean of the Department of Tourism at Helwan University, in downtown Cairo, had given us the man’s name and suggested we inquire about his recent discoveries. We approached the office, which was shaded by palm trees and crawling with cats. “Do you have an appointment?” the guard asked. “No, we have an introduction.” He led us to a waiting room. “Do you have an appointment?” another man asked. “No, we have an introduction.” He asked us to sit down. “Do you have an appointment?” a woman asked. “No, we have an introduction.” She disappeared for a few seconds and invited us into the director’s office. “You don’t have an appointment,” he said, not getting up, not stopping work, and, for the first time I had ever seen in the Arab world, not offering us a drink. “I’m a very busy man,” he said.

I explained the nature of our project and why his friend thought he might be able to guide us during our visit. “Have you read my writings on this subject?” he asked. I mentioned that I had seen his article in the EgyptAir
Inflight Magazine
. “Well, I also have a chapter in the book called
Ancient Egypt
and an article in
Archaeology Magazine
. I write for
National Geographic
and—” Avner mentioned that he was familiar with some of his writings. “I think you should go read all of my writings,” he said, “then call back and get an appointment.” He nodded to indicate that our meeting was over. Chastened, we mumbled our apologies. He handed us a card that read Dr. Zahi Hawass, Director of the Pyramids, Cairo, Egypt. It was embossed in gold. We left his office and spent the next three hours wandering around the complex. Everywhere we were asked for admission tickets, I flashed the golden card. It saved us well over $100.

The pyramids are the only surviving object of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World and would probably still make a list of the seven most wondrous objects in the world. Stop a hundred people anywhere on the planet and ask them where the pyramids are and it’s hard to imagine a score below 100. The oldest and largest of the pyramids, built to house the Fourth Dynasty pharaoh Khufu, or Cheops, around 2650
B.C.E.
, is 480 feet high and covers an area of 13.6 acres, equivalent to seven square blocks in midtown Manhattan, or twice the size of Times
Square. The building uses 2,300,000 limestone blocks, each one about the size of a large refrigerator-freezer and weighing an average of three tons, with a few reaching fifteen tons. Lined end to end, these stones would pave a single-lane road from San Francisco to New York.

While the Great Pyramid alone could provide enough questions for a special boxed set of Trivial Pursuit, its dimensions have been grist for elaborate theories, which attempt to prove it has New Age, or maybe that’s Old Age, power. The pyramid, for example, is said to be located at the exact center of the earth’s landmass. Each of its bases measures 9,131 inches long, for a total perimeter of 36,524 inches. Though that number may appear insignificant, move the decimal point two places and you get 365.24, the exact length of the solar year. Also, the average height of all land on earth above sea level is said to be 5,759 inches. The Great Pyramid, naturally, is precisely that high. While these calculations may seem amusing, to many they are deadly serious, even spiritual. Basem was leading a tour the following week of women from America who had applied for special permission to meditate inside the pyramid. They were apparently bringing apples, convinced that if they placed them in the exact center of the structure the fruit would never spoil.

Such calculations, inevitably, have been applied to the Bible in an attempt to link the pyramids with the prophetic traditions of Judaism and Christianity. To some, the pyramids are a divine revelation and foretell the future. The Great Pyramid, for example, was covered with 144,000 casing stones. The Bible says the number of people who will save the world on Judgment Day will be 12,000 from each of the twelve tribes, or 144,000. The Great Pyramid was built with ascending and descending passages to allow the king to be buried and his soul to escape. The point where the passages meet is 1,170 inches aboveground. If you subtract this figure from the starting date of construction, the resulting figure is said to predict the start of the Israelites’ Exodus from Egypt, the death of Christ, and the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand. Further, if you draw a line from the center of the pyramid through the east-west axis you will apparently hit the exact spot where the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, and later where they crossed the Jordan. According to Art Bell, an American pyramidologist, this line “also passes directly
through the town of Bethlehem, the birthplace of Christ. As incredibly precise as this may seem, the Pyramid actually pinpoints Christ’s birthplace.” As if that’s not enough, one website I saw insisted that NASA images show three pyramids and a sphinx on the surface of Mars and that both complexes were built by God, in the shape of Orion’s Belt, in such a way that they are communicating with each other in a plot to destroy the world. Photos were provided.

One reason for all this hysteria is a deeply serious question: Do the pyramids have any relation to the stories in the Bible? The idea that they do has been around since the first millennium
C.E.
, when, unable to read hieroglyphics, few knew why the pyramids were built. Sir John Mandeville, an English pilgrim of the fourteenth century who wrote a travel book widely read across Europe, said the pyramids were “granaries of Joseph,” built to store grain after he interpreted the pharaoh’s dreams. “Some men say that they are sepulchers of great lords that were formerly; but this is not true.” The wishful idea of the pyramids as Judeo-Christian creations was given credence in the nineteenth century when British scholars Piazzi Smith and David Davidson called the pyramids the “Bible in stone” and said they were built by the Israelites as a resting place for God. Even as late as the 1970s, when Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin paid a state visit to Egypt, he stood with Anwar Sadat at the pyramids and boasted, “Our forefathers built these.” Sadat, dumbfounded, replied, “I don’t see this.” Aides came scurrying, but Begin brushed them away. “Begin was a very formal guy,” Avner said. “It was hard to whisper in his ear.”

What the aides were pointing out, no doubt, was a simple case of mathematics. The first of the Giza pyramids was begun around 2600
B.C.E.
Abraham was likely born around 1900
B.C.E.
Even outmoded thinking from earlier this century dated Abraham to no earlier than 2200
B.C.E.
, which in any case wouldn’t place Joseph in Egypt until 150 years later, which in turn wouldn’t have produced a sizable enough population of Israelites until several hundred years after that. The Bible says, in Exodus 1, that the Israelites were forced into bondage by the pharaoh, who feared their size. Egyptian documents confirm that there
was a significant Central Asian population, like the Israelites, in Egypt during the New Kingdom, in the middle of the second millennium
B.C.E.
But that was over a thousand years from when the pharaohs built in Giza. The bottom line is clear: It was as long from the pyramids to Moses, as it is from Emperor Constantine to us. We didn’t build Constantinople; the Israelites didn’t build the pyramids.

So who
did
build the pyramids?

“Actually, it’s not that complicated,” Avner said. We had wandered around the site for a while and settled on a corner of the middle structure, built for Khafre, Khufu’s son. Over the years, people have devised hundreds of theories on how the Egyptians built the pyramids: using slaves, cranes, catapults, slingshots, lasers, crocodiles, bulls, aliens—or some combination thereof. In fact, they used people, Avner said, as many as one hundred thousand, hired by the state and organized into teams of ten. Most of the stone was quarried near Cairo, floated across the river on barges during the flood, then dragged up the plateau using levers and rollers. When each layer was complete, the crews built a ramp of sand and brick to drag the blocks to the next level. Moreover, these people were not slaves like those found in the American South—individuals owned by other individuals—they were usually peasants recruited by the state to serve the pharaoh and were housed, clothed, and fed. Even foreigners wouldn’t have resisted. As one historian put it, “Better to live a well-fed factor in Egypt than die a starving ‘free man’ on the steppes of Asia. Whether emigrating voluntarily, or sold by their village headman, or captured in battle, it is doubtful whether any of the Asiatics regretted their fate.” In the end, the pyramids are less a feat of construction and more one of organization.

Avner gave an example to prove this point. “The first project I organized when I worked in the Sinai as chief archaeologist was the restoration of an Egyptian temple,” he said. “We had to move blocks that were three and a half tons. But the place was on top of a mountain, and there was no way to bring in machinery, or cranes. So we brought ropes, winches, and about thirty bedouin. At first we couldn’t do it. We put all the Israelis on one side, and the bedouin on the other. We said,
‘Hey, hup, pull,’ but the bedouin were just leaning on the rope and they fell down like dominoes. Eventually we devised a system and were able to do it. It taught us that all you need is the right organization, and you can achieve quite a lot.”

“If that’s the case, why all the crackpot theories?” I said.

“We’ve just lost the appreciation for manual work, because we don’t do it anymore. Also, most of the people coming up with these theories know nothing about ancient Egyptians. If you get to know them, it’s easy to understand how they could invest so much labor. There was a very deep motivation of faith. They took part in a very important process that blessed them, their children, and their country.”

“What about the symbolism? Why so many theories about that?”

“It’s the times. People are in a deep search for meaning. Mystery plays a very big role, as do cults. There’s a huge crisis of belonging. The pyramids are the most visible religious structures on earth. It’s natural that they inspire such beliefs.”

And inspire they do. No matter how many times you see them, they still make you happy. This is their secret, I believe: a perennial ability to inspire awe and speculation in each generation. In this way, Smith and Davidson were right. The pyramids are to Egypt what the Bible is to Israel: the great blank slate onto which each age imposes a meaning and takes a set of lessons unique to its time and place. In some ways it doesn’t matter what the builders of the pyramids, like the authors of the Bible, had in mind. The genius of their creations is that their meaning is subtle enough to change over time. As one proverb oft quoted around Giza says:“Things dread time; Time dreads the pyramids.”

Late that afternoon we decided to descend the narrow passage to the heart of Khafre’s pyramid. We flashed Dr. Hawass’s card at the entrance and started down the shaft, which was no more than four and a half feet high. Claustrophobia quickly engulfed us. It was the first time I felt like Indiana Jones, just hoping one of those giant stone balls didn’t trap us inside. The deeper we got, the lower the roof, until we were bending
over like baboons, dragging our arms on the ground. “No one who has not crawled along the galleries beneath a pyramid,” wrote Egyptian archaeologist Zakharia Gnomein in 1956, “and experienced the silence and darkness, can fully appreciate the feeling which at times overwhelms one. It may sound fantastic, but I felt that the pyramid had a personality, and that this personality was that of the king for whom it was built and which still lingered within it, possibly the soul.”

Every now and then the path would level out for a few moments and we could stand up, then it would fall again, and we’d have to bend over. I heard one man say earlier in the week that after making this trip he had “pyramid legs” and couldn’t walk for a week. As it was, even in early winter, one could feel the air being sucked from the corridor and sweat accumulating at a rapid rate. Every visitor to the pyramids leaves behind twenty grams of water, I had read, just by breathing and perspiring, which in turn creates corrosive salts. The mere act of entering the pyramid, it turns out, slowly diminishes it.

Twenty minutes later we reached the bottom of the corridor, where a man stood at the entrance to the tomb, asking for baksheesh, a small bribe. We demurred and stepped into the chamber, about the size of a subway car, which at the time of burial in the twenty-sixth century
B.C.E.
would have contained the mummy, the viscera, and an idol with what one observer called “fierce and sparkling eyes” bent on slaying intruders. Ancient writers believed the tomb had no entrance, but in 1818 Giovanni Battista Belzoni, a former circus sideman from Italy, dynamited the sealed portal and discovered the tomb. As a mark, he scrawled his name in black paint on the wall, which is still visible. With no decoration, and no contents other than the empty sarcophagus, the room was creepy, an echo chamber where the echoes bounce five thousand years.