What exactly are the Egyptian Pyramids?

It is the common belief of most experts in the field that the pyramids in Egypt are ancient burial tombs of the pharaohs, or kings of Egypt. It was thought that when a pharaoh dies he becomes Osiris, King of the Dead, by the ancient Egyptians, who also thought that he wouldn’t be able to carry out his duties if the body was taken proper care of. For this reason the corpse was mummified and sealed in an impenetrable chamber inside a pyramid, along with all the king’s treasure. It was also thought by the ancient Egyptians that the dead needed all their worldly belonging in the afterlife.

There have been many stories about old Egyptian curses connected to mummies, tombs and pyramids, but most of these were made popular during the Victorian era of exploration, often magnified by sensational journalism reporting explorers’ deaths being the fault of these deadly curses – using the deaths themselves as proof that they existed. It seems more likely to modern scientists that the pharaohs had their tombs decorated with warnings and scary-looking imagery to ward off looters and grave robbers. It is a fact that for every person that has died exploring the tombs there have been many more undertaking the same pastime that have lived to a merry old age.

Still, there is certainly an air of mystique surrounding the pyramids, with more conspiracy theories connected to them than Area 51 and all the presidential assassinations put together. Some believe that the pyramids were not giant tombs at all, but sophisticated water pumps, while others think they were used for navigation, and yet others say that they were not built by human hands at all. It is believed by many that the pyramids were built by space aliens that visited Earth to breed with our ancestors; they say that the way the pyramids are built is too exact and refined for the primitive humans of the time to have constructed them – the Great Pyramid at Giza is 450 feet tall, with four corners at perfect right-angles, aligning pretty much exactly with the four compass points, something many believe an impossible achievement at the time, some four and a half thousand years ago.

Whatever the truth is behind their construction, it is certain that whoever built them had to be adept at mathematics, and some believe they must have had some form of psychic ability due to the surprising measurements of some of the passageways that run inside the Great Pyramid, which match up to important events. One example used by the believers of this theory is the floor of the Queen’s Chamber in the Great Pyramid that meets a slope going up into the next chamber at a point 33.5 inches before the end of the passage, which some Egyptologists think points to the exact date of Christ’s crucifixion, halfway through the year 33AD.

There are other theories suggesting that the pyramids were used to transmit information into outer space, connecting with alien creatures on other planets; a theory upheld for a while by the mysterious sphinx-like object on the surface of Mars, which modern photography has shown to be eroded mountains. There are many more theories besides the myriad alien ideas, such as the pyramids were built by the lost civilization of Atlantis, who are thought to have technology far in advance of our own today. Other ideas include Egyptian psychics and magicians who were able to manipulate materials and form the pyramids out of the ether. It could of course be that the truth is a lot more mundane; that the Egyptians were highly skilled mathematicians who used millions of slaves, bribes with promises of freedom and alcohol, to lug the two-ton blocks into place.

It is thought in contemporary scientific circles that a great deal of planning went into building a pyramid; the Egyptians were very keen on astronomy and placed their pyramids at Giza especially to reflect the layout of the stars that circle the North Pole, which they connected with eternity and the afterlife of their pharaohs.