Why the Summit of the Great Pyramid is Missing

[Music] welcome to history for granite join me to explore ancient Egypt Please Subscribe and together we'll uncover Secrets From the Past written in stone when looking at the stone pyramids of ancient Egypt even the most casual viewer will notice that something is missing from the Great Pyramid despite other pyramids also having their casing Stones removed those pyramids remain rather pointy at the top in contrast the Great Pyramid has a flat and wide Summit which is surely due to some extra destruction that was rought upon it the large amount of material missing at the summit has occasionally produced fanciful speculation about an enormous gilded Capstone that would have been stolen long ago in a previous video I discussed how the summit of cfr's pyramid proves its pyramid Midian at the top couldn't have been taller than 2. 5 M it was probably closer to 1 m in height based upon another example found nearby another of my videos also elaborated on how a gilded Capstone would not visibly contrast the white Limestone of the pyramid in daylight especially at such a far distance from the ground but if the Great Pyramid had a plain and modestly sized pyramidan like we might expect why would so much of its Summit be missing compared to other pyramids in a recent video I also speculated that another Pharaoh might be incentivized to give the Great Pyramid a haircut to diminish the accomplishment of kufu projecting power over one's predecessors was a common practice by the kings of ancient Egypt but the Great Pyramid has stood for 4,500 years and it's not hard to imagine the damage was a slow attrition wrought by the recklessness of visitors for Millennia this is a safe and rather boring explanation but something about that narrative wasn't supported with my understanding of human behavior at pyramids if rolling blocks off the top of a pyramid is so much fun why have other pyramids been spared this form of entertainment it would be much easier to roll off the top block at other pyramids rather than move one from the center of kufu flat Summit all the way to the edge furthermore you would need to plan and haul equipment to the top of the Great Pyramid to move enormous blocks that far this scale of Destruction could be done by tourists at the top getting a sudden desire to watch Gravity work its magic a quick note about The Summit in this video you will see a wooden Mast appear and disappear depending upon when the images were captured the Mast was constructed by astronomer David Gil around 1874 and probably was used to triangulate the pyramid's height years later the top broke off and it was no longer an accurate representation in 2019 a mentally distressed person climbed to the top of the pyramid and partially destroyed it this presumably LED authorities to use the opportunity to bring the whole thing down there are many old accounts of visitors summoning the Great Pyramid but nobody confesses to a campaign of Destruction at the top it's a mystery long ignored by egyptology but I believe we can solve this puzzle by determining when the damage occurred we may not have a time machine to know for certain but identifying the means motive and opportunity for this crime will give us a plausible explanation for what happened as it turns out determining exactly when the damage occurred is a big challenge because written records about the height and Summit of the pyramid are wildly inconsistent how can we know who to trust when narrowing down the time of Destruction the only place to start is the two accounts from Antiquity diodorus culus in the 1st Century BC and plenny the Elder in the first century ad both men State the summit was flat in their time and give measurements for the pyramid's base height and the size of the platform at the top their measurements for the pyramid height correspond to the length one would climb the face of the structure from the ground to the top this also makes sense because they would not have the ability nor incentive to measure the vertical axis of the structure we can roughly evaluate their accuracy by comparing the ratio of the pyramid's known height and base to the figures given by plini and diodorus and both are quite close given the challenge of such an Endeavor this proves both these men took quality measurements and journeyed to the pyramid Summit to document the platform in their time diodora states that each side at the top is 6 cubits long about 2. 76 M and plenty measures the perimeter of the platform at 16.

5 ft which converts to about 1. 22 m in length averaging the two data points the Great Pyramid Summit was about 2 m on each side considering plenty came after diodorus and plenty's platform is measured smaller it's safe to assume they witnessed the same condition of the pyramid despite this occurring 2,000 years ago we're on firm ground with these observations a quick note about this diagram I needed a close symmetrical image at just the right elevation and this corner view was the best I could find measurements will reference the side length of the pyramid and not the diagonal even though the diagonal is what we see for the ancient accounts some basic trigonometry gives us a missing height of a little under 1 and 1/2 M this would be about three cses of stone removed from the Great Pyramid if the Capstone was only one course tall the pyramidan may have been taller than a standard course near the top but we'll assume it was close to one course in height to simplify keeping track of later missing courses under this assumption with 201 existing courses plus the fragments of two more the original pyramid was a maximum 217 corses tall based B upon what we know about the height of an average course thus the damage 2,000 years ago was limited to the pyramidan and one or two courses of stone beneath it the casing stones of the pyramid were intact at this time and so this was a narrow and limited amount of Destruction stealing or knocking off the pyramidan was the only degree to which ancient Egyptians seemed to have dismantled the summit but after the Romans it's a very long time before we get precise measurements of the Great Pyramid abdal Atif Al bagdadi in 1200 ad describes the casing Stones intact and measures the length of the summit at 10 Turkish cubits or about 5. 78 M that makes 3.

68 M of missing height or about seven standard courses of stone by the year 1395 a noble Frenchman from angur witnessed the large scale removal of the casing Stones stating quote about halfway up the slope there were certain Masons who were using tackle to remove the great hone Stones which form the facing of The Granary and were letting the stones down to the bottom end quote this testimony also counters a textbook narrative that it was an earthquake in the early 14th century That Shook the casing Stones loose it's more likely that the earthquake seriously damaged Cairo which precipitated the need to use the pyramid as a quarry for rebuilding and that's why the two events are connected one could imagine most of the summit being destroyed with the removal of the casing stones but we need evidence to support that assertion however it becomes dramatically more difficult to track the pyramid's height after the casing Stones were removed the problem is that with the core of the pyramid exposed visitors start measuring the height of the pyramid by counting the courses on their way up this would seem like a simple and reliable method of accounting but it turned out to be the worst possible way to observe the structure egyptologist georia Goen studied the courses of the Great Pyramid in 19 1978 and he writes quote during my asense I had naturally counted the number of steps but depending on the path I took I noticed each time that the number was not the same this is explained by the fact that the stones of the same course did not all have the same height although the whole course was built on the same horizontal plane end quote goyen is describing that while the casing stones may have been kept even horizontally the backing Stones behind them would sometimes d up smaller blocks to equal the height of one course of casing thus if you're counting steps beneath you it's easy to accidentally count a single course twice because you step up two times furthermore errors made by climbers would vary depending upon which side of the pyramid they climbed and thus we end up with a ton of Incorrect and misleading data here is a table with step counts of visitors to the Great Pyramid centuries after the casing Stones were removed clearly some people were just estimating but even prec precise figures vary through the 15th 16th 17th and 18th centuries the number of courses Trends down as you move forward in time and so it's tempting to interpret the pyramid as shrinking you're going to laugh but only three of these testimonies accurately counted the number of courses on the pyramid in their time I know this because the number of courses did not change in this era the correct number was 206 as listed by Johan wansan Johannes Egmont and Nathaniel Davidson the key to tracking damage at the summit was Davidson's 1765 testimony in which he was the first person to document the individual height of each step up the pyramid Davidson's measurements are the most accurate until Fender Petrie's Landmark study over a century later however Davidson never published his work and it only partially survived with his friend Robert walpole's Memoirs which were published in 1818 these Memoirs contain most of Davidson's data but the measurements still had enough errors to make it questionable courses one and two had transposed measurements and three other courses were accidentally recorded 1T shorter than reality furthermore you can't use the pyramid's present total height as a reference because if the data is off by even a quar in per course your margin of error is several courses of stone at the top lastly Davidson noted course 206 was exceptional tall just under 1 M which is about twice the height of the existing courses near the summit looking at the summit today some of the uppermost stones are abnormally tall and this caused me to wonder if Davidson had mistakenly counted these partial course numbers 2002 and 203 as course number 206 on a tip from independent researcher Stefan bergdall last year I tracked down Davidson's original manuscript and found his handwritten notes and measurements included is a sketch of the summit with six scattered blocks and I wondered if these were just the same stones from today moved around a bit but Davidson's diary also listed the length of the summit at 5. 23 M and this is less than half of the size of the present Summit AT 10. 96 M the discrepancy was too large to be a measurement error and so Davidson saw more courses of the pyramid in 1765 with Davidson's accuracy validated I could now use his observations as reference points to evaluate other testimonies the length of the summit and the oversized blocks on course 206 were the key points to cross reference with other testimonies that counted courses and sure enough despite the number of courses fluctuating for centuries Summit observations and measurements always agreed with Davidson those other measurements used all manner of units Paces long steps feet black cubits and even fathoms but all numbers could be ballparked close to the 5 MERS Davidson recorded and even though the measurements varied by a meter or more the oversized blocks at the summit always stood out to visitors moving backwards in time from Davidson in 1765 we get numerous accounts of these six stones at the summit some of which explain there was enough space for six more stones that were then missing a description from Paul Lucas in 1699 is the earliest account which describes the top course has about six oversized blocks in 1693 the missing stones are observed and the top course is described as 12 very large Stones by earlier explorers in the 17th century so magnificent was the quality of course 206 that in the year 1589 Jac de vont believed the summit was one solid block measuring 15 ft long on each side it is the exceptional size and quality of course 206 which gives us confidence that minor variations in measurements at the summit were simply human error and that the pyramid was not shedding courses in this era the earliest European account with measurements comes from Marco griman around 1540 who measured eight long steps at the summit extra credit to Gman for also being the first person to record the Northern Air Channel exit around course 100 now we're back to abdal Latif Al baghdaddy in the year 1200 with the casing stones still on the Great Pyramid his measurement of 5.